A Study on Structuration, Attachment and Performance:The Case of Convenience Store Franchise System

• Main Authors: Hui-Ling Huang, 黃慧玲
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/86696831409585362281

博士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 管理研究所 === 95 === ABSTRACT Franchising is regarded as cooperative arrangement between franchisor and franchisee. Franchisee is not only the agent of franchisor but also interacts with customer and franchisee’s performance directly affects the customer relationship. Although the contract clarified the principles that the franchisees must obey, not every one truly follow the rules. The phenomenon called “fractured social practice” causes the discrepancy in service quality. Accordingly, the improvement of service quality is determined by the franchisee’s willingness to perform organizational citizenship behavior. Therefore, the monitoring costs resulted from agency problem will reduce. Drawing from the literature on structuration and relationship marketing theory with those related factors as antecedents, the author develops and tests a model that explains how these factors affect attachment (as measurement in organizational identification and commitment) and performance (as measured in organizational citizenship behavior and customer orientation). The frame of the sample is focus on convenience store franchise system in Taiwan, the purposes of this present research are: (1) understanding the effect and importance of structuration process (signification, domination, and legitimation) in organizational identification and commitment; (2) examining the effect of economic factors (relationship benefits and relationship termination costs) of relationship marketing in commitment; (3) verifying the effect of attachment (organizational identification and commitment) in performance(organizational citizenship behavior and customer orientation). A judgment sampling was chosen. Seven hundred and seventy empirical data for hypotheses testing are collected from supervisors and franchisees in Taiwan, yielding 419 valid samples with a response rate of 54.42%. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with LISREL 8.53 was applied to test the research hypotheses. The findings are summarized as follows: (1) Signification structure, domination structure and legitimation structure have significant positive influences on organizational identification and explain 46% variances of organizational identification whereas domination structure is the most important factors of the antecedents. (2) When comprised with structuration and economic factors, they have a great explanatory power on commitment (R2=69%). (3) Organizational identification has a positive significant influence on commitment. (4) Organizational identification has direct positive significant influence on customer orientation. Conversely, commitment has direct significant influence on organizational citizenship behavior, and indirect significant influence on customer orientation. The research limit, future research direction, and theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed.