Fair distribution of cooperation gains in supply chains: A justification program from an economic point of view

Abstract

The fair distribution of the gains from cooperation presents a challenge to economic research as well as to business practice. This is based, above all, on two reasons. First, fairness is a very vague term that can be interpreted in very different ways so that this term needs to be operationalized. Second, the term “fairness” cannot be derived from “objective” or “empirical” data, but needs a substantive justification based, ultimately, on subjective judgements about fairness or justice. This twofold challenge is elaborated on in this paper. On the one hand, the term “fairness” is operationalized from the perspective of cooperative game theory. On the other hand, a program for its justification is presented that aims at evaluating game theoretic solution concepts. As a result, we present a program for its justification which consists of six requirements.