Using an unusually comprehensive database on 858 transactions for information technology products and accompanying services, Professor Shannon Anderson and co-author Henri Dekker from the University of Amsterdam study how close partners exposed to opportunistic hazards structure and control a significant transaction.

Anderson and Dekker analyze data on the terms of contracting to determine whether transaction and supplier characteristics that generate opportunistic hazards are related to the formal management control structure. They also examine whether misalignment between transaction and supplier characteristics and the control structure is associated with ex post performance problems.

This study won Anderson and Dekker the Greatest Influence on Practice Award, an annual award presented by the American Accounting Association’s Management Accounting Section for a piece of research published in the last five years that is most likely to influence the practice of management accounting