Game theoretical analysis and decision models in sustainable supply chain management

本文旨在运用博弈论分析和决策模型来探讨可持续供应链管理中几个具有挑战性的操作问题。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的产品来减少他们的环境足迹。因此，可持续供应链管理的概念在学术界和商业从业者中越来越受欢迎。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。正确地描述这些经济上不合理的标准并设计适当的合同来协调供应链运作是一个挑战。公司在可持续发展方面的投资通常代表着一个重要的成本中心，供应链中的其他成员也将从中受益。其次，建立公平的分配机制，在成员企业之间分担成本，使持续投资致力于促进可持续供应链管理。从不同的供应链利益相关者的角度来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。

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.