Research on the cooperation model between railway company and express delivery company based on the transaction cost perspective

The cooperation between railway company and express delivery company in China is in its initial stage and the cooperation model is immature. This paper studied the key factors influencing the cooperation model between railway company and express delivery company based on the transaction cost perspective and analyzed the model decision among them under different circumstances through a choice model. In this paper, three factors are extracted in the end, including the specific asset, the organizational structure of railway industry and the quantity of business participants. When there is a requirement of specific assets investment, express delivery companies prefer to build the industrial alliance instead of the contract model to reduce the opportunism risk and increase the cooperation benefit. While express delivery company will adopt the quasi-integration strategy only when the savings of transaction cost or the extra benefit of this model is big enough, especially bigger than the sum of investment of transport facilities and the operating cost. When the organizational structure of railway industry is integration, the transaction cost of contract model is bigger. The equilibrium of the cooperation model between railway company and express delivery company is to adopt the industrial alliance model. (c) 2021 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University.

Automated summary

The cooperation model between railway company and express delivery company in China is still in its initial stage and the key factors influencing this model include specific asset investment requirements, organizational structure of the railway industry, and the number of business participants. Express delivery companies tend to prefer industrial alliances over contract models when specific assets investment is needed, and the transaction cost of the contract model is higher when the organizational structure of the railway industry is integrated.