FAIRNESS: A CHALLENGE FOR THE DISTRIBUTIONOF COOPERATION GAINS IN VALUE CHAINS

Most scientific publications on the subject of value chain management only analyze which structures,processes and actions can contribute to the creation of cooperation gains. How the distribution of cooperationgains that were collectively achieved can influence the stability of such a cooperation is often disregarded.The distributive justice or the fair distribution of collectively created cooperation gains is oneof the most important ways to secure the stability of networks. This paper therefore presents a proposalfor an operationalization of the fairness term from an economic perspective. This proposal is specific tothe distribution of cooperation gains in networks of autonomously acting companies and takes a cooperativegame theory approach as its basis. With the aid of the t-value, it is shown how intuitive and vagueassociations of fairness can be substantiated to give a concrete distribution proposal that can be perceivedand communicated as fair by gradually establishing rational or at least plausible assumptions.<br<