New Issues in Supply Chain Management: Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility and Cognitive Bias

随着市场的全球化，企业有机会在全球范围内寻找质量更好、成本更低的商品，但同时也面临着更长和更复杂的供应链。利用运筹学/管理学和经济学的工具，本研究的目的是探索供应链管理中在可持续性、环境和社会责任以及决策偏差方面出现的问题。*第一个研究主题涉及政府环境管制对供应链运营的影响。全球变暖、水污染和垃圾填埋正在造成严重的环境恶化，促使行业和政府立即采取行动。许多国家已经实施或正在讨论实施各种法规，以重塑公司/供应链的生产和运营。我们研究了不同的环境政策如何影响供应链的运营决策，以及什么样的环境政策可以带来更好的环境效率和供应链绩效，从而产生整体的社会效益。这项研究的第二个目的是受到最近有关全球供应链因不安全生产做法而发生灾难性后果的新闻报道的推动。在倡导负责任采购的全球非营利组织Sedex进行的一项案例研究中，据报道，在供应链的较高级别，违反社会和环境责任的风险在规模和严重程度上都有所增加。由于全球供应链的复杂性，终端企业往往无法获得和核实上层供应商的真实信息/活动。因此，对于多层不可核查的供应链，提出的问题是如何不仅协调直接供应商，而且也协调上层供应商的激励，以维持环境和社会监管标准。这项研究的目的是研究机制设计，以协调供应链成员的激励，以实现在盈利能力和环境和社会影响方面的最佳绩效。第三个研究主题是考虑决策偏差对供应链决策的影响。来自不同地区的全球供应链经理可能具有不同的信息处理和决策能力，许多人存在认知偏差。我们研究决策偏差是如何影响运营决策的，以及这又是如何影响供应链协调和合同的。*研究结果将为可持续供应链的生产和运营提供新的见解，更好地协调供应链成员对可持续社会的激励，并在考虑决策偏差的情况下推进供应链管理理论和实践。

With globalization of the markets, firms have the opportunity to seek out better quality and lower cost goods worldwide, but at the same time face extended and more complex supply chains. Utilizing the tools from operations research/management science and economics, the objective of this research is to explore emerging issues in supply chain management in the areas of sustainability, environmental and social responsibilities, and decision bias.***The first research topic concerns the impact of government environmental regulations on supply chain operations. Global warming, water pollution, and landfill waste are causing serious environmental deterioration, prompting industries and governments to take immediate actions. Many countries have implemented, or are debating the implementation of, various regulations to reshape firms/supply chains' productions and operations. We investigate how different environmental policies affect the operational decisions of supply chains, and what type of environmental policy induces better environmental efficiency and supply chain performance, resulting in an overall benefit to society. The second purpose of the research is motivated by the recent news reports about disastrous outcome occurred in global supply chains due to unsafe production practices. In a case study conducted by Sedex, a global non-profit organization that advocates responsible sourcing, it is reported that the risk of social and environmental responsibility violations increases in the higher tiers of the supply chain in both scale and severity. Due to the complexity of global supply chains, the end firms are often not able to obtain and verify upper-tier suppliers' true information/activities. Thus, for multi-tier non-verifiable supply chains, the question posed is how to align the incentive of not only the immediate supplier, but also the upper-tier suppliers to sustain environmental and social regulatory standards. The purpose of this research is to investigate mechanism design to align the incentives of supply chain members to achieve the best possible performance in terms of both profitability and environmental and social impacts. The third research topic is to consider the impact of decision bias on supply chain decisions. Global supply chain managers from different regions might have differing levels of information-processing and decision-making abilities, and many suffer from cognitive bias. We investigate how decision bias affects the operations decisions, and how this in turn affects supply chain coordination and contracts. ******The results of this research will provide new insights on the sustainable supply chain productions and operations, better align the incentives of supply chain members for a sustainable society, and advance supply chain management theory and practice with the consideration of decision bias.