IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v16y2024i23p10541-d1534346.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Eco-Participating Firms Can Increase Their Willingness to Cooperate Sustainability: A Perceived Contractual Equity Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Yaoyao Yao

    (School of Water Conservancy & Civil Engineering, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China
    College of Economics and Management, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin 150040, China)

  • Meng Li

    (School of Chemical and Printing and Dyeing Engineering, Henan University of Engineering, Zhengzhou 450007, China)

  • Hongda Lian

    (School of Water Conservancy & Civil Engineering, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China)

Abstract

In the era of digital intelligence, sustainable ecological cooperation in cross-border integration has become a trend, and the willingness of sustainable cooperation is the key to stabilising the cooperative relationship between enterprises and partners and obtaining more profits. Due to the heterogeneity of enterprises, the sense of fairness of enterprises in a relatively disadvantaged position can only be improved to achieve the sustainable development of the cooperative relationship between the two parties. In the business ecosystem, there are some enterprises with obvious differences in resource endowment, market influence, innovation engines, and technology leadership, etc. Enterprises with core competitive advantages occupy the ecological high position and become the ecological core enterprises, while enterprises with relatively weak competitive advantages need to depend on the core enterprises in order to survive in the business ecosystem and become the ecological participating enterprises. This paper takes ‘core enterprise–participating enterprises’ as the main body, establishes a dynamic evolutionary game model to explore the factors affecting the two parties ‘willingness to sustain cooperation, and finds that the increase in the coefficient of willingness to sustain cooperation and the coefficient of maintaining the relationship between core enterprises and participating enterprises, as well as the decrease in the losses caused by opportunistic behaviours of the other party’s enterprises to their own enterprises, will promote the two parties’ willingness to sustain cooperation. In order to verify the connection between the numerical model derivation and the actual situation, we refer to the research of domestic and international scholars, design the scale, and finally obtain 242 valid questionnaires through the research of 263 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China. The results find that the sense of distributive fairness, procedural fairness, and interactive fairness positively promote the willingness to cooperate on a sustainable basis; the sense of contractual fairness increases the willingness to cooperate on a sustainable basis through the relationship value enhancement; and the risk of opportunism negatively moderates the relationship value’s impact on the willingness to cooperate on a sustainable basis. The findings can provide lessons for Chinese SMEs to achieve cross-border integration and for SMEs to improve their ability to manage partnership uncertainty.

Suggested Citation

  • Yaoyao Yao & Meng Li & Hongda Lian, 2024. "How Eco-Participating Firms Can Increase Their Willingness to Cooperate Sustainability: A Perceived Contractual Equity Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(23), pages 1-22, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:23:p:10541-:d:1534346
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/23/10541/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/23/10541/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Xuemei Zhang & Jian Cao & Yang Zhao & Jiansha Lu, 2022. "Fairness Concern in Remanufacturing Supply Chain—A Comparative Analysis of Channel Members’ Fairness Preferences," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-23, March.
    2. Luo, Yadong, 2009. "From gain-sharing to gain-generation: The quest for distributive justice in international joint ventures," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 343-356, December.
    3. Chuanyun Li & Xia Cao & Ming Chi, 2020. "Research on an evolutionary game model and simulation of a cluster innovation network based on fairness preference," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Guercini, Simone & Milanesi, Matilde, 2020. "Heuristics in international business: A systematic literature review and directions for future research," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 26(4).
    2. Noémi Piricz, 2017. "The Role and Impact of Fairness on Cooperation in Hungarian Metal and Machinery Supply Chains," Proceedings- 11th International Conference on Mangement, Enterprise and Benchmarking (MEB 2017),, Óbuda University, Keleti Faculty of Business and Management.
    3. Zongbao Zou & Cong Wang & Qinjia Zhong, 2022. "How Does Retailer-Oriented Remanufacturing Affect the OEM’s Quality Choice?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-21, June.
    4. Isidor, Rodrigo & Schwens, Christian & Hornung, Frank & Kabst, Ruediger, 2015. "The impact of structural and attitudinal antecedents on the instability of international joint ventures: The mediating role of asymmetrical changes in commitment," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 298-310.
    5. Ingunn Y. Gudbrandsdottir & Gudrun Olafsdottir & Gudmundur Valur Oddsson & Hlynur Stefansson & Sigurdur G. Bogason, 2021. "Operationalization of Interorganizational Fairness in Food Systems: From a Social Construct to Quantitative Indicators," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-24, January.
    6. Xuan Bai & Jeanine Chang & Julie Juan Li, 2019. "How Do International Joint Ventures Build Legitimacy Effectively in Emerging Economies? CSR, Political Ties, or Both?," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 59(3), pages 387-412, June.
    7. Marius G. Gehrisch & Stefan Süß, 2023. "Organizational behavior in international strategic alliances and the relation to performance – a literature review and avenues for future research," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 73(3), pages 1045-1107, September.
    8. Gibbs, Jennifer L. & Eisenberg, Julia & Nekrassova, Dina, 2023. "Second-Class Citizens or Free Agents? Social Construction of Equity Perceptions of Contractors in Global Offshoring Arrangements," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(6).

    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:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:23:p:10541-:d:1534346. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.