Game theoretical analysis and decision models in sustainable supply chain management

本研究旨在运用博弈论分析与决策模式，探讨永续供应链管理中几个具挑战性的运作议题。在当前的商业环境中，来自政府、竞争对手和客户的压力使得企业必须提供环保和绿色产品以减少对环境的影响。因此，可持续供应链管理的概念在学术界和企业界越来越受欢迎。然而，在供应链中成功实施可持续运营存在许多障碍。例如，可持续经营通常涉及供应链成员的非经济考虑，如公平问题和社会偏好。这是一个挑战，以适当地描述这些经济上不合理的标准，并设计适当的合同，以协调供应链的运作。企业对可持续性的投资通常是一个重要的成本中心，供应链上的其他成员也将从中受益，因此，重要的是建立一个公平的分配机制，在成员企业之间分担成本，从而使持续的投资致力于促进可持续的供应链管理。从不同的供应链利益相关者的角度评估不同的可持续发展监管和政策选择的有效性和公平性是一个重要的挑战。 本文从以下四个方面探讨了供应链管理中具有挑战性的可持续经营问题：（1）在可持续供应链管理中，基于公平性、互惠性和社会偏好等非经济性准则，建立了供应链成员之间的博弈模型。(2)第二个组成部分是设计可持续供应链管理中的社会和环境责任分配方案。(3)第三部分是提出有效的框架，以评估不同法规和立法制度下的可持续供应链管理的经济和社会绩效。(4)第四部分是建立协调可持续供应链管理的合作博弈模型。拟议研究的成功执行将为更好地理解和实施供应链的可持续运营提供有用的工具。

This proposal aims to employ game theoretic analysis and decision models to investigate several challenging operational issues in sustainable supply chain management. In the current business environment, pressures from government, competitors, and customers make it essential for firms to provide environmentally-friendly and green product to reduce their environmental footprint. As a result, the concept of sustainable supply chain management has gained increasing popularity among academia and business practitioners. However, there exist many barriers to successful implementation of sustainable operations in a supply chain. For instance, sustainable operations generally involve non-economic considerations by supply chain members such as fairness concerns and social preference. It is a challenge to properly characterize these economically irrational criteria and design appropriate contracts to coordinate supply chain operations. A firm's investment in sustainability typically represents a significant cost centre and other members in the supply chain will also benefit from it. Then, it is important to establish a fair allocation mechanism to share the cost among the member firms so that sustained investment can be committed to promoting sustainable supply chain management. It is an important challenge to evaluate the effectiveness and fairness of different regulation and policy choices for sustainable development from different supply chain stakeholders' perspectives. This proposal aims to address challenging sustainable operations issues in supply chain management from the following four directions: (1) The first component is to develop game-theoretic models to characterize the interactions of supply chain members under non-economic criteria such as fairness concerns, reciprocity, and social preference in sustainable supply chain management. (2) The second component is to devise social and environmental responsibility allocation schemes in sustainable supply chain management. (3) The third component is to put forward effective frameworks to evaluate economic and social performance of sustainable supply chain management under different regulation and legislation regimes. (4) The fourth component is to establish cooperative game models for coordinating sustainable supply chain management. A successful execution of the proposed research will furnish useful tools to better understand and implement sustainable operations of supply chains.