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Research on System Dynamic of Buying Work Safety Services in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

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Abstract

Buying work safety services from intermediaries is a new and important approach to improve the work safety in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The existing literature addresses the significance and effectiveness of the service model but it ignores the dynamic game relationship between relevant stakeholders when SMEs choose to purchase the services under bounded rationality. Therefore, this study aims to analyse this dynamic game relationship based on evolutionary game theory. Furthermore, dynamic simulations of the evolutionary game model are applied to determine the impact of major factors for three stakeholders (SMEs, governments, and safety service agents), examine stability strategies, and identify modes of equilibrium under different subsidy strategies. The results of simulation are as follows. First, the results explain that how the major factors (service price, the quality of service, government subsidy, etc.) affect the system dynamic force of buying work safety services. Second, when the subsidy strategy is static payment, the selection of the stakeholders fluctuates and is not optimal. Third, when the subsidy strategy is a dynamic payment, the evolutionary game process converges to a stable state, which indicates that an evolutionarily stable strategy exists under the dynamic subsidy strategy. Moreover, the stable state and equilibrium values are not affected by the different initial values. The results of this study offer a certain reference for the government to guide the implementation of the purchase of work safety or other services in SMEs

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 72074099, 71874072 and 72004081, the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences under Grant No.19YJAZH059, the Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province under Grant No.20GLB009, the Soft Science Project of Zhenjiang City under Grant No.RK2020013 and the Scientific Research Project Funds of Jiangsu University under Grant No.18C335. Also, the authors sincerely thank the referees for their much practical help to improve the quality of this paper.

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  1. School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China

    Suxia Liu, Hangfeng Li & Qiang Mei

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  1. Suxia Liu
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Correspondence to Suxia Liu.

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Suxia Liu is an associate professor of Management School of Jiangsu University. Her research main focuses on work safety management, safety regulation, safety behavior, safety service, the value of a statistical life, and economics of safety. She was awarded Outstanding Young Backbone Teacher of “Qinglan Project” in Jiangsu Universities.

Hangfeng Li is a master of Management School of Jiangsu University. His research interests include safety management, system modeling and simulation, and evolutionary game.

Qiang Mei is a professor of Management School of Jiangsu University. His research main focuses on safety management of small and medium-sized enterprises, credit guarantee of small and medium sized enterprises, and innovation and Entrepreneurship of small and medium sized enterprises. He is the chief expert of Jiangsu SME development research base, the executive vice president of China Enterprise Management Research Association, and the executive director of China Society of Management Science and Engineering. He was awarded expert obtaining the special allowance of State Council, and Young and Middle-aged Experts with outstanding contributions in Jiangsu Province.

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Liu, S., Li, H. & Mei, Q. Research on System Dynamic of Buying Work Safety Services in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. J. Syst. Sci. Syst. Eng. 30, 339–362 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11518-021-5488-2

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