Research On Opportunism In Project Alliance From Perspective Of Psychological Motivation

The establishment of project alliance,to a certain extent,can alleviate the alliance participants' confrontation resulting from divergent interests,which beneficial to shorten the project duration,reduce costs and litigation claims,and maintain friendly relationship between alliance participants while share resources and risks.However,from a practical point of view,the prevailing opportunism in the alliance still leads to its high risk and failure rate,and the expected alliance performance is harder to achieve.Based on the theory of regulatory focus and inter-organizational trust from the perspective of psychological motivation,this thesis studies the impact of institutionalized regulatory focus on participants' propensity to implement opportunistic behavior and its sensitivity and tolerance to opportunistic behavior.Furthermore,we study the direct impact of inter-organizational trust on alliance performance and cooperation satisfaction and the indirect impact of opportunism as a mediator.First,two kinds of institutionalized regulatory focus – promotion focus and prevention focus,significantly influence the participants' willingness to implement opportunistic behavior and their sensitivity and tolerance of opportunism.Second,inter-organizational trust can improve alliance performance and satisfaction with cooperation while opportunism will negatively affect the performance of alliance.Third,moderate level of inter-organizational trust could effectively mitigate opportunism,but too low or too high trust may put the alliance members in the risk of opportunism.That is to say there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between inter-organizational trust and opportunism.The conclusion provides a theoretical support for enterprises to carefully consider the psychological motivation in the process of evaluating and selecting potential alliance partners.In the meantime,it is necessary to balance inputs and benefits of cultivating inter-organizational trust,which helps to curb opportunism and achieve satisfied alliance performance.