targeted at the qualified person of the importing firm who has complete and

specialized knowledge regarding the information sought and possible shared interest
in the study. Keeping these qualifications in mind the key informant selected for this
study was either the owner or manager of the firm or any other responsible person
within the firm who is actively involved in the import decision-making process.
These high-ranking informants were considered more reliable and enabled
standardisation of information across the firms (Mitchell, 1994). These were the
important considerations regarding the span of absolute judgment of a key informant
(Miller, 1956).

Multiple respondents per firm would have been better to reduce the source of
common method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003) but the research context may not
permit that approach where a vast majority of the firms were small and medium sized
enterprises (SMEs). It should be indicated here that many of the importers are small
entrepreneurial sole trading or partnership firms owned by one or two owner(s) where
a single key informant was the only option. Since the key respondent was assessing
the relationship with specific reference to a supplier of a specific product the person
has been dealing with (rather than the firm wide relationship in general), it was
Md._Abu_Saleh_Thesis 2006
assumed that the informant is qualified to assess the relationship with a high degree
of accuracy and reliability.

While importers are usually engaged with more than one foreign supplier, even for
the same importing item; they may have different commitments to different suppliers
based on the imported product or the size of imports (Skarmeas et al., 2002).
Therefore, informants were instructed to keep their major supplier of a major product
in their mind while they filled out the provided questionnaire. Furthermore, the
informants were instructed to consider the commitment relationship for an import
venture with at least a two year business relationship. This was to incorporate a more
meaningful representation of data in terms of commitment to an import supplier
perceived over a reasonable time of working together.

4.2.4 Measurement of Constructs

Podsakoff et al.’s (2003) state in their discussions that “common method variance can
have a substantial impact on the observed relationships between predictor and
criterion variables in organizational and behavioural research” (p. 897). To control for

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