Sharing business partner behavior

Abstract

Purpose

The new concept of business partner behavior sharing practice is addressed from three perspectives: technical/technological, legal and ethical/moral with the aim to elaborate its sharing feasibility, value added, legal restrictions and moral considerations. Research results are synthetized to present an overview on business partners behavior sharing direct and indirect value added, costs and risks and proposing mitigation strategies. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

To evaluate technical feasibility, a real-life sharing experiment is conducted. Using a sharing agency data are collected, summarized and reported. For the purpose of legal evaluation, relevant legislation is analyzed. Ethicality/morality is assessed utilizing theoretical applied-ethics analysis. Two major normative moral theories – teleology and deontology – are selected for this purpose. The synthesis of the research results is represented in system dynamics model.

Findings

Results show no significant technical obstacles for the systematic business partner behavior sharing. Also, no major legal or ethical arguments against it are found, although some important conditions are identified that have to be met in order for the practice to be performed legally and to be qualified as ethical/moral.

Research limitations/implications

Analysis of legality is limited to the EU and legislation of the Republic of Slovenia. Ethicality of the practice is assessed from the utilitarian and rights perspectives.

Practical implications

Important technical, legal and ethical insights into business partner behavior sharing concepts and practices are provided.

Originality/value

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that the practice of business partner behavior sharing is addressed simultaneously from technical, legal and ethical perspectives using a real-life experiment. Therefore it is an important contribution to a more holistic account/insight of/into such a business practice.

Citation

Perko, I., Primec, A. and Horvat, R. (2015), "Sharing business partner behavior", Kybernetes, Vol. 44 No. 6/7, pp. 1030-1048. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-12-2014-0282