Dark side of sharing economy: examining the unethical practices and its impact on coopetition and firm performance

The business model for the sharing economy is becoming popular in business-to-business marketing literature. Firms can utilize resources of other firms lying idle and reduce cost, optimize resource utilization and achieve greater flexibility. Some organizations also share their resources with rival firms. However, there are concerns about unethical practices by rival firms, which may be due to the misuse of data, human resources, and intellectual property, and so on. Few studies have investigated the unethical practices that may take place in the sharing economy, but there is a growing interest among the practitioners, researchers, and academicians in this area. Therefore, this study examines the unethical practices that could take place in the sharing economy and their impact on B to B cooperation and competition among rival firms and on firm performance. From the literature review and theories, a theoretical model has been developed. The model is later validated using the structural equation modelling technique considering samples from 16 firms involved in sharing resources. The study found that there is a significant negative impact of unethical practices in the sharing economy for B to B coopetition, which in turn negatively impacts firm performance.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing on 02/01/2022, available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1051712X.2022.2039479