Humanized management, fairness perception and health of merchant ecosystem: Driving mechanisms of the digital age

• Main Author: ZHUANG, Zeyong
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: humanized management; fairness perception; business ecology healthy; digitalization; shopping mall; Business Administration, Management, and Operations; Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/487; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/etd_coll/article/1484/viewcontent/GPBA_AY2017_CKGSB_SMU_DBA_Zhuang_Zeyong.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In the era of digital transformation, the competition among individual enterprises has evolved into competition of business ecosystems, and the merchants in shopping malls have evolved from atomistic competition to ecological competition. Therefore, merchants must ensure the health of business ecosystems to establish competitive advantages. This study uses the survey data of merchants in five shopping malls in Guangzhou to empirically test the mechanism of the effect of humanized management on the health of business ecosystems in the context of digital transformation. The empirical results show that: 1. Humanized management of shopping malls helps to build trust and loyalty, promote cooperation between merchants, and thus enhance the health of business ecosystems. 2. Humanized management of shopping malls means that merchants are treated fairly, thus enhancing their sense of fairness. 3. The sense of fairness of merchants plays a mediating role between humanized management and profitability, system connectivity, and relationship predictability, indicating that humanized management creates a good environment for merchants' development after enhancing fairness perception, and also helps to increase the predictability of partners' behavior, thus enhancing the health of business ecosystems. 4. Compared with the merchants in the low digitalization group, the humanized management cognition of merchants in the high digitalization group has a greater effect on enhancing fairness perception, and digitalization positively moderates the indirect relationship between humanized management and profitability, system connectivity, and relationship predictability through fairness perception. The empirical results also show that although the mediating effects of profitability, system connectivity, and relationship predictability and moderating mediating effects are significant, the diversity of partners is not significant, indicating that fairness perception cannot enhance the diversity of partners of merchants. This study discussed the driver mechanism of business ecosystem health from a micro perspective, and expanded the theory of business ecosystem system. From the perspective of practice, the conclusions of this study are also of great significance for the business practice of shopping malls: first, shopping malls should consider the merchants, monitor their sense of fairness, respect the merchants, and create a atmosphere of mutual trust to enhance their loyalty; second, for merchants, they should increase their investment in digitalization, actively embrace digital transformation, such as interacting with customers online, and publicizing and selling goods; for shopping malls, they can try to establish digital platforms to create an integrated shopping ecosystem beyond serving merchants and customers, in order to enhance competitiveness in the digital era.