The impacts of sustainable inter-firm collaboration on business performance of shipping companies

Abstract

PurposeTo gain competitive advantage, shipping companies need the abilities to manage environmental requirements, which this study refers to as sustainable shipping capabilities, including internal resources and external factors such as inter-firm collaboration. However, previous studies mainly focused on the effectiveness of internal resources, leading decision-makers in shipping companies to undervalue the significance of external relationships in managing sustainability issues and their impact on performance. Therefore, this paper aims to identify and examine the impacts of sustainable inter-firm collaboration on shipping companies' business performance (i.e. shippers' loyalty and financial performance).Design/methodology/approachA proposed model that explains the relationships between relation bonding strategies, sustainable inter-firm collaboration and business performance was developed. Accordingly, a survey questionnaire was constructed and sent to 294 shipping companies in Vietnam. Structural equation modeling was deployed to examine the validity of the measurement items and investigate relationships among the latent constructs.FindingsThe findings show that financial bonding strategies have the most significant impact on sustainable inter-firm collaboration, followed by social bonding strategies and structural bonding strategies. Furthermore, sustainable inter-firm collaboration has direct and indirect (via perceived shippers' loyalty) effects on business performance.Research limitations/implicationsRelational bonding strategies provide a unique perspective to sustainable inter-firm collaboration. This study also contributes to allocate external resources and capabilities to improve inter-firm collaboration, thereby maximizing financial performance.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature by applying relational bonding strategies that determine the key factors enabling sustainable inter-firm collaboration.

Capability bundling for effective supply chain management: An integrative framework and research agenda

“…Upstream interfirm capabilities concern a firm's ability to jointly leverage and deploy both firm and supplier resources to effect mutually beneficial outcome(s); downstream interfirm capabilities concern a firm's ability to jointly leverage and deploy both firm and customer resources to effect mutually beneficial outcome(s). Notably, because some papers were unclear regarding whether the interfirm capability was upstream or downstream, we classified some capabilities as interfirm capabilities, which could involve customer and/or supplier (Iyer et al, 2019; Seggie et al, 2006; Tran et al, 2021). Additionally, a key distinguishing factor between interfirm capabilities and network capabilities is that interfirm capabilities involve dyadic relationships, whereas network capabilities concern “a system of mutual relationships between at least three parties […] organized by an interconnective web of relationships” (Bagozzi, 1975, p. 33).…”

Bibliometric analysis of sustainable shipping in Web of Science database in 2020 and 2021

“…A search on the Web of Science Core Collection database [43], topic sustainable shipping, is composed of 35 scientific papers published in the last two years, 2020 and 2021 [1,2,6,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,37,39,40,41,42]. Topic search used for this purpose was ''sustainable shipping'' or sustainable shipping*.…”

The approach to supply chain cooperation in the implementation of sustainable development initiatives and company's economic performance

“…They also revealed that the researched companies are more likely to have implemented both types of supply chain practices -environmental and social, then just one of them. Tran et al (2021) showed that the existence of financial, social and structural bonds in relationships of shipping companies in Vietnam has impact on their sustainable cooperation. Nath and Agrawal (2020), based on their research of Indian manufacturing sector, conclude that supply chain agility and lean management practices may act as antecedents of supply chain social sustainability.…”

“…These approaches can also have a significant impact on the extent to which links in the supply chain cooperate when implementing sustainable development initiatives. Some of the previous studies were targeted at determination of the antecedents of inter-firm supply chain cooperation in the implementation of sustainability initiatives, revealing, for example, that the internal imple-mentation of sustainable development initiatives, governance board characteristics (Sebastianelli & Tamimi, 2020), existence of various bonds in relationships (Tran et al, 2021), or management and work organisation methods (Nath & Agrawal, 2020) impact their implementation at the supply chain level. However, to my best knowledge, no research has verified whether companies can have different approaches to cooperation in the supply chain when implementing sustainable development initiatives, i.e., whether they generally strive to cooperate in this area or usually try to implement them on their own.…”