Knowledge acquisition through effective contract design. An empirical study

Despite the extensive use of contracts in business transactions, little is known whether an organization can acquire new knowledge through the contract design process, thus promoting both organizational and relationship learning. To address these gaps an empirical quantitative study using a single-case study from a leading international manufacturing company was drawn. A novel multi-criteria decision making method (MCDM) was implemented to analyse empirical data collected from seventeen experts. The study findings support that contract design facilitates knowledge acquisition. The newly acquired knowledge assists organizations to effectively deal with contract opportunism and uniformity. Even more, contract design could be seen as an antecedent to both organizational and relationship learning. Work in progress will provide a large multi-sectored analysis and support data generalizability. Work in progress will provide a large-scale analysis and support data generalizability.