Dark Side of Sharing Economy: Examining the Unethical Practices and Its Impact on Coopetition and Firm Performance

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the unethical practices that could take place in the sharing economy and their impact on B2B cooperation and competition among rival firms and their performance. Design/methodology/approach: 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. Findings: The study found that there is a significant negative impact of unethical practices in the sharing economy for B2B coopetition, which in turn negatively impacts firm performance. Research implications: The business model for the sharing economy is becoming popular in business-to-business (B2B) 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. Thus, this research investigated the unethical practices that may take place in the sharing economy and its consequences from B2B cooperation and competition perspectives. Originality/value: Only a limited number of research studies have investigated the unethical practices that could happen in the sharing economy. This study has investigated the issues of unethical practices in sharing economy from B2B perspective in relation to cooperation and competition among the rival firms which is a unique value proposition. Also, the proposed theoretical model is a unique model and with a high explanative power which is also another unique contribution of this study.