The Effect of Sustainability Tension and Sustainability Synergy on Cooperative Performance

Abstract

Interacting with value chain partners on sustainability is a multi-faceted issue, as its implementation frequently results in the formation of different identity conflicts and synergies. Individuals performing multiple job roles are pulled between many personal and corporate aspirations, as a generic product adds to the sales and net income whereas a sustainability offering contributes to the environment and society. In Study 1, 321 SME employees were asked to identify with a sustainability and non-sustainability offering they sell to their channel partner to understand how multiple identities (sustainability tension and sustainability synergy) within employees’ impact channel cooperative performance. As the key cognitive and motivational process through which tension/synergy identities can enact channel member’s behavior, we also examined the role of self -efficacy and perspective-taking. With two experimental studies, the causal inference was supplemented to strengthen the findings from field investigation. The results found independent effects of sustainability conflict and sustainability synergy on self-efficacy, perspective-taking and cooperative performance. Perspective-taking does not act as a mediator, whereas self-efficacy does. We observed that the negative effect of sustainability tension is reduced when self-efficacy is high, and the positive effect of sustainability synergy is reduced with low self-efficacy. The research explains the impact of multiple (conflicting and synergizing) identities within individual employees on cooperative performance in channels during interpersonal interactions.