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The principal–agent literature often draws criticism for its ahistorical, acontextual and static nature, particularly when theories such as the agency or the stewardship theory are being used. This is because the field of economics tends to develop universalistic models and theories, excluding history, context and change, which renders them unusable for practitioners whose behavior is (partially) guided by the complex and differing environments in which they find themselves. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this criticism by investigating how (and if) history, context and change influence the principal–agent relationship.

Instead of using the typical economic methodologies to study the principal–agent relationship, this paper makes use of the methodologies of the field of history to investigate how history, context and change affect principal–agent relationships in three cases in the early modern Southern Netherlands (the Dukes of Arenberg, the Roosewalle farm and Abbot De Loose of the Abbey of Ename). This methodology is especially suited, as it results in historical narratives that incorporate all of these three elements.

The main finding is that the cases show how history, context and change clearly affect the principal–agent relationship. These aspects are intricately intertwined, as earlier choices and context can cause a change in the principal–agent relationship, this creates a new presence (with an altered history) and sometimes even a new context. This results in a highly dynamic relationship that can evolve in very short periods, mostly in a path-dependent manner.

The paper advocates by example for a shift in principal–agent research, emphasizing the necessity of considering history, context and change. This study demonstrates that these factors greatly affect the nature of the principal–agent relationship. In doing so, it may provide practitioners with better insights, as real-world principal–agent relationships are indeed impacted by these three factors.

By using historical methods, this study shows for the first time how context, change and history indeed influence principal–agent relationships. The findings of this paper encourage the development of theories and theoretical frameworks that more closely resemble reality, rather than being universalistic.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical historical analysis of the business (mis)behaviors and influencing factors that discourage enduring cooperation between principals and agents, to introduce strategies that embrace the social values, economic motivation and institutional designs historically adopted to curtail dishonest acts in international business and to inform an improved principal–agent theory that reflects principal–agent reciprocity as shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, strategic and ideological forces

The critical historical research method is used to analyze Chinese compradors and the foreign companies they served in pre-1949 China.

Business practitioners can extend orthodox principal–agent theory by scrutinizing the complex interactions between local agents and foreign companies. Instead of agents pursuing their economic interests exclusively, as posited by principal–agent theory, they also may pursue principal-shared interests (as suggested by stewardship theory) because of social norms and cultural values that can affect business-related choices and the social bonds built between principals and agents.

The behaviors of compradors and foreign companies in pre-1949 China suggest international business practices for shaping social bonds between principals and agents and foreign principals’ creative efforts to enhance shared interests with local agents.

Understanding principal–agent theory’s limitations can help international management scholars and practitioners mitigate transaction partners’ dishonest acts.

A critical historical analysis of intermediary businesspeople’s (mis)behavior in pre-1949 (1840–1949) China can inform the generalizability of principal–agent theory and contemporary business strategies for minimizing agents’ dishonest acts.

Construction projects have become increasingly long, complex and costly with waste and inefficiencies and often fail to achieve the desired results. Integrated project delivery (IPD) is believed to change these problems. A reasonable and fair profit distribution mechanism is a critical factor for ensuring the success of the IPD projects. This study aims to investigate the strategies of all participants in the profit distribution of an IPD project with respect to the factor of the effort level.

This study describes the influence of owners and participants on profit distribution due to their respective efforts in the IPD project alliance. The influence of effort level on profit distribution is discussed based on the Holmstrom-Milgrom model of asymmetric information game theory and principal-agent theory, combined with incentive compatibility (IC) constraints and individual rationality (IR) constraints.

The results show that the optimal level of effort by each participant optimizes the profit distribution of an IPD project. At the same time, in the revenue incentive contract, the effort level of the participants is positively correlated with the profit distribution, proportional to their contribution coefficient and inversely proportional to the square of the cost of their creative activities in terms of effort. Each party of an IPD project can adopt a series of measures to improve their own effort level and choose the optimal level of effort based on the profit distribution, while satisfying their own utility maximization.

This study introduces the Holmstrom-Milgrom model in the principal-agent theory to explore the influence of the effort level on profit distribution in IPD projects. The quantitative model can contribute to establish a fair and efficient profit distribution scheme for the IPD projects.

This study attempts to uncover the nonlinear relationship between public procurement and corporate total factor productivity (CTFP), and investigates the mediating roles of R&D investment and rent-seeking cost. Additionally, it conducts a heterogeneity analysis for firms with varying levels of political connections and corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Employing Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Olley-Pakes (OP) methods, the authors gauge CTFP and manually identify government customers to quantify public procurement. Leveraging panel data from Chinese listed companies, this study explores the relationship between public procurement and CTFP.

This study unveils a U-shaped relationship between public procurement and CTFP, highlighting R&D investment and rent-seeking costs as potential mechanisms. Furthermore, it identifies heterogeneous effects among companies with varying levels of political connections and CSR on the relationship between public procurement and CTFP, including their mediating effects.

This research enhances understanding of demand-side policies and provides crucial insights for the government to further improve public procurement policies.

By offering empirical evidence of how public procurement impacts CTFP, this paper enriches the literature on the behavioral repercussions of public procurement and the determinants of CTFP. It also overcomes the “black box” of the mechanism between public procurement and CTFP, based on the government’s dual role as a pathfinder and customer of enterprises. It broadens the application scenarios of institutional theory and principal-agent theory. Additionally, the heterogeneity analysis of firms with varying political connections and CSR extends the frontiers of related research.

Although outcome sharing in construction is a well-established concept in the literature, there is still an ongoing debate on the most effective approach for distributing project outcomes between an owner and downstream contracting parties (DCPs). To address this issue, this paper aims to investigate an optimal framework for distributing project outcomes among various levels of subcontracting in construction projects. The framework includes contractors, subcontractors, sub-subcontractors and other related parties.

To formulate the optimization problem, the principal–agent model is utilized. The theoretical development is validated through an experiment conducted with employees from road construction companies.

When distributing outcomes among various levels of subcontracting, the sharing should be determined by their contribution to the outcome, effort costs, level of outcome uncertainty and risk preference.

This paper expands on the existing principal–agent theory by incorporating multiple levels of agents, transforming the conventional view of outcome sharing among downstream subcontracting levels into testable hypotheses and well-defined concepts. The paper has practical implications for industry practitioners seeking to effectively allocate benefits and costs throughout a project's subcontracting chain.

This study aims to explore and present discussions regarding the interconnectedness of procurement fraud, supply chain education, professional maturity and ethics, and their relevance to adopting a transcendence concept as well as proposing research directions thereof.

This study adopts a conceptual, intending to synthesize insights and propose a new conceptual framework that incorporates the transcendence framework and the process matrix. This generic framework provides a holistic view of the procurement and supply chain landscape at multiple levels – individual, team, organizational and industry.

This paper delves into the complex landscape of corruption within procurement, involving a diverse array of participants, including procurement professionals. The effectiveness of current corruption theories may be limited in this context. Despite the introduction of ethical training and anti-corruption initiatives, corruption remains widespread. The delivery of content and the design of the curriculum in supply chain education necessitate a reorientation to include not only moral education but also practical or hands-on delivery methods. In Kenya, sectors such as health and education exhibit a lack of recognition and professional maturity. When all the research constructs are examined separately, they do not provide a holistic understanding, thus underscoring the need for a comprehensive approach across the supply chain spectrum. This topic is ripe for further academic investigation with empirical evidence.

This paper provides key insights for researchers and practitioners in the field of procurement and supply chain education, particularly in Kenya. However, it acknowledges the lack of empirical studies and the limitations of current research, including procurement fraud, the context-specific nature of the findings and the dynamic nature of corruption and procurement practices concerning the constructs. This paper calls for further research to address these gaps, validate its propositions and contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of public procurement and corruption in Kenya. It also emphasizes the need for continuous research due to the evolving nature of corruption and procurement practices.

This study has practical relevance for researchers, professionals and the procurement and supply chain ecosystem. It offers insights that can inform future research, professional advocacy and policy development regarding the shape of supply chain academia in Kenya. In addition, it contributes to the advancement of procurement and supply chain professionalism in the country.

This study underscores the necessity for breaking the cycle of procurement fraud, enhancing procurement and supply chain education in Kenya, and fostering active engagement of professional associations in promoting maturity and specialization within the field.

This study holds distinctive value by uncovering previously unexplored dynamics among supply chain constructs within the context of a lower-middle-income economy, i.e. Kenya. Deconstructing and synergizing these concepts calls for a more robust theoretical and empirical comprehension of these constructs within Kenya's unique background.

The objective of this paper is to develop a redesigned commissioning process for social care services that fosters integrated care, encourages collaboration and balances professional expertise with client engagement.

This study employs a two-pronged approach: a case study of a municipality’s use of subsidy tables and a literature scoping review on integrated care research.

The paper introduces a new framework for the study of the new “subsidy tables.” A well-defined and extensive consultation process involving both social care providers (suppliers), the Service Triad, and client representation adds to the existing research on supplier consultation, and on how to define the outcomes for clients via client engagement.

While aspects are clearly relevant to the Netherlands, the design of the commissioning process of social care has international relevance as well: finding definitions, formulating outcomes and incentives, designing a more collaborative instead of competitive process, stakeholder engagement and consultation.

Several Dutch municipalities started using the “subsidy tables” method for commissioning integrated social care. This paper offers clear improvements that benefit the commissioners, the social care providers and their clients.

Improving the commissioning process of integrated social care will lead to better fitting care for people who need social care.

This paper is one of the first to do a thorough analysis of the “subsidy tables” method for commissioning integrated social care.

Distributed photovoltaic (DPV) projects generally have output risks, and the production effort of the supplier is often private information, so the buyer needs to design the optimal procurement contract to maximise its procurement utility.

Based on the principal-agent theory, we design optimal procurement contracts for DPV projects with fixed payments and incentive factors under three situations, i.e. symmetry information, asymmetry information without monitoring and asymmetry information with monitoring. We obtain the optimal production effort and expected utility of the supplier, the expected output and expected utility of the buyer and analyse the value of the information and monitoring.

The results show that under asymmetric information without monitoring, risk-averse suppliers need to take some risk due to output risk, which reduces the optimal production effort of the supplier and the expected output and expected utility of the buyer. Therefore, when the monitoring cost is below a certain threshold value, the buyer can introduce a procurement contract with monitoring to address the asymmetry information. In addition, under asymmetric information without monitoring, the buyer should choose a supplier with a low-risk aversion.

Considering the output risk of DPV projects, we study the optimal procurement contract design for the buyer under asymmetric information. The results provide some theoretical basis and management insights for the buyer to design optimal procurement contracts in different situations.

This study aims to focus on public policy concerning the implementation of public procurement policies in Nigeria and Ghana toward achieving value for money in the procurement of goods, services and works. It specifically analyzes some major administrative challenges Nigeria and Ghana are faced with in the administration/implementation of public procurement policies toward achieving value for money. It looks at the relationship between the state (regulatory authorities) and substate (procurement entities) in the public sectors of Nigeria and Ghana.

A comparative case study approach is adopted, where the two countries are compared in terms of achieving value for money. Data was collected from multiple sources, including in-depth interviews. The use of official documents and direct observations at the procurement regulatory authorities and entities’ premises.

This study found Nigeria often used the four Es – economy, efficiency, effectiveness and equity while Ghana mainly used the traditional five rights (right quantity, right quality, right price, right place and right time) as their criteria for ensuring value for money. The major administrative challenges found include corruption, low capacity of procurement personnel and poor knowledge of the procurement laws.

It recommends effective collaboration between government and civil society groups in the fight against corruption in procurement-related activities, with the implication that there is a need for periodic training for public procurement officials.

It adds to the field of public procurement in terms of value for money in the procurement of goods, services and works in developing countries context.

This study aims to examine hotel guests’ acceptance of technology agency – the extent to which they would let artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems make decisions for them when staying in hotels. The examination was conducted through the prism of several antecedents of acceptance of technology agency, including perceived ethics, benefits, risks and convenience orientation.

A thorough literature review provided the foundation of the structural model, which was tested using confirmatory factor analysis, followed by structural equation modeling. Data were collected from 400 US hotel guests.

The most important determinant of acceptance of technology agency was perceived ethics, followed by benefits. Risks of using AI-based systems to make decisions for consumers had a negative impact on acceptance of technology agency. In addition, perceived loss of competence and unpredictability had relatively strong impacts on risks.

The results provide a conceptual foundation for research on systems that make decisions for consumers. As AI is increasingly incorporated in the business models of hotel companies to make decisions, ensuring that the decisions are perceived as ethical and beneficial for consumers is critical to increase the utilization of such systems.

Most research on AI in hospitality is either conceptual or focuses on consumers’ intentions to stay in hotels that may be equipped with AI technologies. Occupying a unique position within the literature, this study discusses the first time AI-based systems that make decisions for consumers. The value of this study stems from the examination of the main concept of technology agency, which was never examined in hospitality.