Marzena KRAMARZ and Edyta PRZYBYLSKA
Silesian University of Technology, Faculty of Organization and Management, Gliwice, Poland
Sustainable development constitutes an idea based on three main perspectives: social, environmental and economic. Especially the first two have become more and more important in recent years. The reference of the sustainable development concept is also visible in the logistic processes implemented in distribution networks. However, fulfilment of the sustainable development idea in material flows is conditioned by its implementation by specific economic entities that are the main participants of the network. In relation to that, the authors of the paper considered the influence of cooperation established in distribution network on implementation of the sustainable development concept in the strategies of enterprises participating in the network. On this basis, the aim of the paper was formulated as showing the dependencies between the models of cooperation in distribution networks and maturity of the network in terms of implementation of the sustainable development concept. In the conducted research, the relationships in a chosen distribution network were mapped, two main models of cooperation occurring in the studied network were characterised, and the survey research in the nodes creating the network were performed. The survey research was focused on assessing the awareness of sustainable development and the level of incorporation of the sustainable development pillars in strategies of the entities creating the analysed distribution network. Conducted research allowed to obtain an answer to the question: does the maturity in terms of the concept of sustainable development of distribution network with participation of the logistic operator depend on the type of the model of cooperation in the network? The dependencies indicated by the authors became the reason for developing the network maturity model concept in terms of the concept of sustainable development of enterprises that includes specific stages of cooperation in the network.