Integration as a Driver of Enterprise Sustainability: The Russian Experience

Abstract

The current geopolitical map, facing challenges and disruptions to industrial-technological relations, requires transformation the processes of interaction between economic agents and the building of collaborative links through the implementation of ecosystem models. The aim of the article is to assess the resilience of industrial ecosystems by determining the collaborative maturity, resource stability and technological resilience of actors. The article presents a typology of integration forms between industrial enterprises based on symbiotic relationships. The concept of ecosystem symbiosis is introduced. The authors propose a methodology for assessing industrial ecosystem sustainability, distinguished by the approach to the formation of an integral indicator consisting of three components: stability (invulnerability), resilience (reliability) and ecosystem (coherence). The composite index method, fuzzy sets method, preference ordering by similarity to the ideal solution, rank sum method, fuzzy k-means clustering method, least squares method, Gaussian method, and variance and multiple regression analyses were used in developing the methodology for stability assessment. The approach is demonstrated by the example of three industrial ecosystems in the Voronezh, Belgorod and Lipetsk regions of the Russian Federation. As a result of the analysis, it was found that ecosystem’s sustainability was achieved, primarily due to the factors of resilience and reliability, which had the maximum impact on the integrated sustainability indicator. The propositions arising from this analysis provide information on the industrial integrations with the highest and the lowest sustainability, to provide academics, policymakers and industrial enterprises with a more adequate understanding of the practical mechanisms that help trigger sustainable development.