The purpose of this study was to understand the opportunistic behavior of the concepts from uncertainty, bounded rationality and asset specificity. A theoretical model was proposed and tested where the specificity was operationalized according to the dedicated, physical and human assets following Anderson and Schmittlein (1984), Carson, Madhok and Wu (2006) and Skarmeas, Katsikeas and Schlegelmilch (2002), anchored in the Transaction Cost Theory (TCT). The opportunistic behavior was operationalized as the indicators proposed by Carson, Madhok and Wu (2006). The bounded rationality has been studied from the perspective of Simon (1957, 1980) and the operationalization of the construct uncertainty in line with Knight (2002), Duncan (1972), Gordon and Narayanan (1984), Milliken (1987) and Milliken (1990). The data was collected from 111 managers in the manufacturing industry in Brazil selected on the basis of Industrial Federation of the São Paulo and submitted to Structural Equation Modeling. The results showed that bounded rationality and asset specificity positively influence the opportunistic behavior of economic agents, confirming the arguments of the theory of transaction costs, meaning that as greater the specificity of the assets less are the investment possibilities of reuse, making continuity valuable relationship and potential target of opportunistic. The results confirmed the multidimensionality of the construct uncertainty, too, reinforcing the theoretical arguments from the perspective of Uncertainty Information. This finding, with Simon (1957, 1980) definitions, enabled the operationalization of the construct bounded rationality from the uncertainty effect and response uncertainty, and the realization of the importance of this premise to explain the existence of transaction costs. In this sense the results allows a range of possibilities and contributes significantly to the advance of empirical studies in the field of TCT.
Transaction costs; Uncertainty; Bounded rationality; Specificity; Opportunistic behavior
