Achieving sustainable development goals through identifying and analyzing barriers to industrial sharing economy: A framework development

Various sustainable development goals (SDG's) that have been achieved with current economic business models initiated the new socioeconomic system known as the “sharing economy.” This collaborative economy system shares resources among communities and further assists to reduce both negative environmental and societal impacts and to reduce costs. The importance of this endeavor urges researchers to investigate the sharing economy more fully through different applications, primarily including transportation and customer service. However, these studies fail to attempt to explore the perspectives of the sharing economy through industrial applications. Industrial sectors are more prone towards negative sustainability; hence, it is necessary to address strategies to promote and to implement the sharing economy with an industrial perspective. Hence, this study seeks to identify the barriers of sharing economy implementation in industries, particularly with small and medium scale enterprises (SME) located in India. Common barriers are identified through the combined assistance of literature review and experts' opinions. These common barriers are shortlisted through Best Worst Method (BWM) and further analyzed through proposed solution methodology, DEMATEL, with the support of case industrial managers. Among 15 shortlisted barriers of sharing economy, “Lack of trust” was identified as the most influential and “Capital cost” was identified as the least influential barriers. This study contributes to both academic and practitioner levels by identifying the most common barriers of the industrial sharing economy. Further, we present strategies so practitioners can evade such barriers through customized practices instead of providing a generic treatment. In addition, this study provides a new approach to the literature; insight into the ‘industrial sharing economy’ could be a scientific breakthrough for upcoming studies. Finally, the study concludes with various useful recommendations and suggestions on the implementation of sharing economy in industries, particularly with SMEs. These recommendations shed light into various key research areas, which can be examined more fully in future studies.