TY  - JOUR
ID  - discovery1406354
N1  - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt this work, but you must attribute this work as ?Organization Science. Copyright 2013 INFORMS. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2013.0861, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/?

SN  - 1047-7039
JF  - Organization Science
EP  - 1822
AV  - public
N2  - Two types of contractual solutions have been proposed for resolving incentive conflicts in vertical relationships: formal
and relational (i.e., enforceable or not by third parties). Much is known about the optimal structure of formal contracts,
but relatively little is known about the structure of relational contracts. We study a core feature of the latter: the conditions
leading to continuation of the relationship, whose prospect gives relational contracts their force. We build a formal model
of a vertical relationship between two parties that endogenizes the choice of the minimum performance necessary for
continuation as a function of the values of contractibles, noncontractibles, and outside options. The model highlights a basic
trade-off between providing strong incentives for the present (incentive effect) and safeguarding relationships for the future
(termination effect). The stable relationships that follow from a more forgiving contract are more important under certain
conditions (when a lot of value is jointly created by exchange partners, i.e., high contractible value, high noncontractible
value, or unattractive outside options); however, strong incentives from a less forgiving contract are more important under
other conditions (when a formal contract is insufficient and a relational contract is most important, i.e., high noncontractible
relative to contractible value). We discuss implications for the choice of governance of interorganizational relationships.
VL  - 25
SP  - 1807
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2013.0861
KW  - Relational contracts
KW  -  forgiveness
KW  -  vertical relationships
KW  -  shadow of the future
KW  -  formal contracts
TI  - Forgiveness in Vertical Relationships: Incentive and Termination Effects
IS  - 6
Y1  - 2014/11//
A1  - Vanneste, BS
A1  - Frank, DH
ER  -