This study aims to examine the effect of supplier behavioral characteristics (opportunism and symbiosis) on conflict management in buyer–supplier relationships and its final impact on continued transaction intention. By exploring these relationships, this study offers guidelines for sustainable supply chain collaboration and its management in terms of conflict management approaches.
This paper conducted a survey among employees working in supply chain management departments in South Korea and performed a statistical analysis using a total of 259 questionnaires. Structural equation modeling was conducted to test the hypotheses using SPSS and AMOS.
The overall findings suggest that while supplier opportunism may not directly affect conflict management in a Korean business context, symbiotic relationships and effective conflict management are crucial for maintaining long-term supply chain partnerships.
First, while this study analyzed prior research and emphasized the importance of trust and information sharing, it has limitations in that it did not directly prove the path through which these factors can prevent opportunism and pursuing symbiosis. Trust and information-sharing play important roles in partnerships; therefore, there is a need to present clear pathways showing how these elements specifically influence behavior. Future research should analyze the effects of trust and information-sharing on preventing opportunism and pursuing symbiosis and empirically examine the paths connecting these relationships. This would help to identify the practical effects of trust and information sharing more clearly. Second, while this study analyzed supplier behavior along two dimensions – opportunism and symbiosis – supplier behavior could also include additional aspects. These diverse behavioral types could have a significant impact on partnership formation. Future research should explore more detailed pathways through analyses that include multidimensional supplier behaviors. This would help to differentiate supplier behaviors and suggest detailed strategies for partnership success.
Although several studies have examined buyer–supplier relationship dynamics, this study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to couple both positive and negative supplier behaviors (symbiosis and opportunism) with conflict management. Using conflict management capabilities to study relationship continuity, this study provides new evidence on the impact of supplier behavioral orientations.
