IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v81y2017icp118-129.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A contingency theory of entrepreneurial debt governance

Author

Listed:
  • O'Brien, Jonathan
  • Sasson, Amir

Abstract

Access to debt can be crucial for entrepreneurs who need capital. Embedding economic ties within a social relationship with the debt provider can ensure capital availability and attenuate opportunism. However, such a relationship requires substantial investments in time and effort. We advance a solution to this entrepreneurial conundrum by proposing a contingency theory which prescribes aligning the fundamental transactional properties (i.e., asset specificity, uncertainty and frequency) with the nature of the entrepreneur-bank relationship (i.e., embedded versus arm's length). Our theory predicts that transactional properties affect the optimal governance of the entrepreneur-bank relationship, and that social embeddedness can transform what looks like a market transaction (e.g., a debt transaction) into a hybrid form of governance more akin to a hierarchy. Using a sample of small businesses in the U.S., we find that congruence between the optimal governance structure and the actual governance structure results in higher firm performance.

Suggested Citation

  • O'Brien, Jonathan & Sasson, Amir, 2017. "A contingency theory of entrepreneurial debt governance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 118-129.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:81:y:2017:i:c:p:118-129
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.08.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296317302722
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.08.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:3:p:567-91 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Amir Sasson, 2008. "Exploring Mediators: Effects of the Composition of Organizational Affiliation on Organization Survival and Mediator Performance," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(6), pages 891-906, December.
    3. Marianne P. Bitler & Alicia M. Robb & John D. Wolken, 2001. "Financial services used by small businesses: evidence from the 1998 survey of small business finances," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), vol. 87(Apr), pages 183-205, April.
    4. David J. TEECE, 2008. "Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Transfer And Licensing Of Know-How And Intellectual Property Understanding the Multinational Enterprise in the Modern World, chapter 5, pages 67-87, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Roy L. Simerly & Mingfang Li, 2000. "Environmental dynamism, capital structure and performance: a theoretical integration and an empirical test," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 31-49, January.
    6. Chemmanur, Thomas J & Fulghieri, Paolo, 1994. "Reputation, Renegotiation, and the Choice between Bank Loans and Publicly Traded Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 7(3), pages 475-506.
    7. Allen N. Berger & Gregory F. Udell, 2002. "Small Business Credit Availability and Relationship Lending: The Importance of Bank Organisational Structure," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(477), pages 32-53, February.
    8. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:2:p:635-672 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Berger, Allen N. & Goulding, William & Rice, Tara, 2014. "Do small businesses still prefer community banks?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 264-278.
    10. Berger, Allen N. & Saunders, Anthony & Scalise, Joseph M. & Udell, Gregory F., 1998. "The effects of bank mergers and acquisitions on small business lending," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 187-229, November.
    11. Mitchell A. Petersen & Raghuram G. Rajan, 2002. "Does Distance Still Matter? The Information Revolution in Small Business Lending," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(6), pages 2533-2570, December.
    12. Sharpe, Steven A, 1990. "Asymmetric Information, Bank Lending, and Implicit Contracts: A Stylized Model of Customer Relationships," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1069-1087, September.
    13. Kyle J. Mayer & Nicholas S. Argyres, 2004. "Learning to Contract: Evidence from the Personal Computer Industry," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(4), pages 394-410, August.
    14. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1998. "What Has Economics to Say about Racial Discrimination?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 91-100, Spring.
    15. Jeremy C. Stein, 2002. "Information Production and Capital Allocation: Decentralized versus Hierarchical Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 1891-1921, October.
    16. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1994. "The Benefits of Lending Relationships: Evidence from Small Business Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-37, March.
    17. Jay B. Barney & Mark H. Hansen, 1994. "Trustworthiness as a Source of Competitive Advantage," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(S1), pages 175-190, December.
    18. Binks, Martin R & Ennew, Christine T, 1996. "Growing Firms and the Credit Constraint," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 17-25, February.
    19. Berger, Allen N & Udell, Gregory F, 1995. "Relationship Lending and Lines of Credit in Small Firm Finance," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 68(3), pages 351-381, July.
    20. Romano, Claudio A. & Tanewski, George A. & Smyrnios, Kosmas X., 2001. "Capital structure decision making: A model for family business," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 285-310, May.
    21. Brian Uzzi & Ryon Lancaster, 2003. "Relational Embeddedness and Learning: The Case of Bank Loan Managers and Their Clients," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(4), pages 383-399, April.
    22. Wintoki, M. Babajide & Linck, James S. & Netter, Jeffry M., 2012. "Endogeneity and the dynamics of internal corporate governance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(3), pages 581-606.
    23. Oliver E. Williamson, 1999. "Strategy research: governance and competence perspectives," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(12), pages 1087-1108, December.
    24. James S. Ang & James Wuh Lin & Floyd Tyler, 1995. "Evidence on the Lack of Separation between Business and Personal Risks among Small Businesses," Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, Pepperdine University, Graziadio School of Business and Management, vol. 4(2), pages 197-210, Fall.
    25. William M. Dugger, 1996. "The Mechanisms of Governance," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 1212-1216, December.
    26. Boot, Arnoud W. A., 2000. "Relationship Banking: What Do We Know?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 7-25, January.
    27. Srinivasan Balakrishnan & Isaac Fox, 1993. "Abstract," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 3-16, January.
    28. James, Barclay E. & McGuire, Jean B., 2016. "Transactional-institutional fit: Corporate governance of R&D investment in different institutional contexts," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 3478-3486.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Honig, Benson & Hopp, Christian, 2019. "Learning orientations and learning dynamics: Understanding heterogeneous approaches and comparative success in nascent entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 28-41.
    2. Diwei Lv, David & Zhu, Hang & Chen, Weihong & Lan, Hailin, 2021. "Negative performance feedback and firm cooperation: How multiple upward social comparisons affect firm cooperative R&D," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 872-883.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Uchida, Hirofumi & Udell, Gregory F. & Yamori, Nobuyoshi, 2012. "Loan officers and relationship lending to SMEs," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 97-122.
    2. Beck, Thorsten & Degryse, Hans & De Haas, Ralph & van Horen, Neeltje, 2018. "When arm's length is too far: Relationship banking over the credit cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(1), pages 174-196.
    3. David P. Ely & Kenneth J. Robinson, 2004. "The impact of banks' expanded securities powers on small‐business lending," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(1-2), pages 79-102.
    4. Allen N. Berger & William Goulding & Tara N. Rice, 2013. "Do Small Businesses Still Prefer Community Banks?," International Finance Discussion Papers 1096, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Beck, Thorsten & Degryse, Hans & De Haas, Ralph & van Horen, Neeltje, 2018. "When arm's length is too far: Relationship banking over the credit cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(1), pages 174-196.
    6. Berger, Allen N. & Goulding, William & Rice, Tara, 2014. "Do small businesses still prefer community banks?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 264-278.
    7. Song Zhang & Liang Han & Konstantinos Kallias & Antonios Kallias, 2021. "The value of in-person banking: evidence from U.S. small businesses," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 1393-1435, November.
    8. Modina, Michele & Pietrovito, Filomena & Gallucci, Carmen & Formisano, Vincenzo, 2023. "Predicting SMEs’ default risk: Evidence from bank-firm relationship data," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 254-268.
    9. Hasan, Iftekhar & Jackowicz, Krzysztof & Jagiełło, Robert & Kowalewski, Oskar & Kozłowski, Łukasz, 2021. "Local banks as difficult-to-replace SME lenders: Evidence from bank corrective programs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    10. Cerqueiro, Geraldo & Degryse, Hans & Ongena, Steven, 2011. "Rules versus discretion in loan rate setting," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 503-529, October.
    11. Kirschenmann, K., 2010. "The Dynamics in Requested and Granted Loan Terms when Bank and Borrower Interact Repeatedly," Other publications TiSEM 300df022-4701-4773-a8b7-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    12. Berger, Allen N. & Miller, Nathan H. & Petersen, Mitchell A. & Rajan, Raghuram G. & Stein, Jeremy C., 2005. "Does function follow organizational form? Evidence from the lending practices of large and small banks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 237-269, May.
    13. Kirschenmann, K., 2010. "The Dynamics in Requested and Granted Loan Terms when Bank and Borrower Interact Repeatedly," Discussion Paper 2010-63, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    14. Kirschenmann, K., 2010. "The Dynamics in Requested and Granted Loan Terms when Bank and Borrower Interact Repeatedly," Other publications TiSEM 40d5005c-1626-4511-aa8a-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    15. Degryse, H.A. & Cerqueiro, G.M. & Ongena, S., 2007. "Distance, Bank Organizational Structure and Credit," Other publications TiSEM 34c2f607-3395-4fd9-9c52-4, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    16. Ergungor, O. Emre, 2005. "The profitability of bank-borrower relationships," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 485-512, October.
    17. Ross Levine & Chen Lin & Qilin Peng & Wensi Xie, 2020. "Communication within Banking Organizations and Small Business Lending," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(12), pages 5750-5783.
    18. Simon Cornée, 2012. "The Relevance of Soft Information for Predicting Small Business Credit Default: Evidence from a Social Bank," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) 201226, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS, revised Sep 2015.
    19. Elyasiani, Elyas & Goldberg, Lawrence G., 2004. "Relationship lending: a survey of the literature," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 315-330.
    20. Berger, Allen N. & Boot, Arnoud W.A., 2024. "Financial intermediation services and competition analyses: Review and paths forward for improvement," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:81:y:2017:i:c:p:118-129. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.