Environmental uncertainty, relationship commitment, and information sharing: the social exchange theory and transaction cost economics perspectives

Although relationship commitment (RC) is the foundation for inter-firm information sharing (IS) activities, extant studies have only discussed the influence of normative RC on IS but ignored the impact of instrumental RC and the moderators that affect these relationships. Combining transaction cost economics (TCE) and social exchange theory (SET), this study probes the impacts of normative RC and instrumental RC on IS content and IS system between manufacturers and suppliers and investigates the moderating effects of environmental uncertainty (EUN) on these relationships. Using the data collected from 410 Chinese manufacturers, this research finds that normative RC promotes IS content and IS system, but instrumental RC generates non-significant impacts on them. However, these effects significantly change when the business environment becomes more uncertain, demonstrating the necessity to consider EUN as the moderator. Besides, supplier IS content and IS system improve service performance and IS system increases IS content.