Managing the Hidden Threat: A Five-Decade Review of Counterparty Opportunism

Opportunism, defined by self-interested behavior, spans from criminal fraud to minor reporting inaccuracies. As companies strive to outperform competitors, they often foster environments that encourage opportunism, harming interfirm relationships. In today's digitalized and globalized economy, firms must recognize opportunism, mitigation strategies, and its effect on performance. Despite extensive research, few literature reviews or meta-analyses summarize this knowledge for academics and practitioners. Thus, we lack a comprehensive overview of opportunism in interorganizational relationships and the validity of prior assumptions. Prominent cases like Enron, WorldCom, and the growing risk of data leaks and thefts highlight the potential for value destruction. This paper analyzes 81 articles on opportunism, identifying trends and research gaps. My study reveals three key shortcomings. First, I propose a new classification to resolve overlapping and ambiguous opportunism types, based on two dimensions: opportunistic behavior and opportunism saliency. This results in four settings that combine active/passive behavior with assumed/known saliency, each assigned an impact dimension to illustrate the effects on exchange relationships. Second, I highlight the need to consider cultural factors as moderating variables in opportunism research, expanding beyond dyadic relationships and the USA-China focus. Lastly, I propose using conjoint experiments to explore how different types of opportunism influence decision-making in various cultural contexts, offering a more nuanced empirical approach.