Mechanism Design for a Sustainable Supply Chain Management

供应链管理(SCM)是全球化力量的核心，在过去十年里，全球化力量使世界变得平坦。话虽如此，以孤立的方式管理推动经济发展和增长的供应链系统，已将我们引向一条危险的道路，走向不可持续的繁荣。由于信息不对称程度的加剧、需求和供应风险以及代理成本的增加，这一问题尤其严重，所有这些都阻碍了供应链发挥其全部潜力。由于气候变化和过度开发自然资源等复杂问题的出现，我们正处于创造一个不适应自然资源和环境的需求和限制的社会的边缘。总而言之，目前的合同、政策和机制未能提供可持续供应链管理所需的平衡视角，不能再由单一的目标和单一的机制设计者来支配，而是由多个机制设计者之间的多个目标和复杂的相互作用来支配。因此，在这个研究项目中，我们打算开发和分析一个框架，该框架将供应链视为由多个利益相关者设计的契约的纽带，无论是更强调成本最小化或利润最大化的供应商和零售商，还是更强调运营可持续性并确保内部供应链成员遵守环境考虑的监管机构、政府机构和非政府组织。这项研究建议是一个为期5年的综合方案，用于模拟和发展多边机制，以指导未来对这些机制的政策和投资，以实现可持续繁荣的目标。基于申请人目前在供应链管理方面的工作，在信息不对称的情况下，结合多委托人和多代理系统激励理论的最新发展，该计划研究了供应链中从可持续性到信息和风险管理的完整路径。研究计划的短期目标是：-为可持续的供应链管理开发一个多主体、多主体的框架，其中主体(例如，监管者、买家和供应商等)对于最终的供应链系统可能具有相互冲突的设计目标，并且在代理(例如，上游和下游公司)具有不同的成本、风险和信息特征的情况下，设计可实现的高效和最佳的机制，即，其将考虑内部供应链参与者的利润最大化(或成本最小化)激励和外部参与者的可持续性目标，并且从长期来看：-通过关注结构化供应链合同(例如，风险、收入和成本分担激励)和监管机制(例如，最后，评估受信息不对称困扰的供应链的代理成本，并探讨信息共享在实现效率和(或)最优方面的作用。供应链系统是经济的命脉，那些正在改变它们的创新将在不久的将来继续存在。要想以可持续的方式利用这些系统的潜力，以便最有效地为社会服务，就必须采取综合办法，考虑到各种内部和外部行为者之间的相互依存关系。这项研究将是第一个开发这样一个集成框架来帮助研究人员分析可持续供应链管理的合同设计问题的研究之一。

Supply chain management (SCM) lies at the core of globalization forces that flattened the world over the last decade. That being said, siloed approach to managing supply chain systems that drive economic development and growth has led us down a dangerous path toward unsustainable prosperity. This problem is especially exacerbated due to the increasing degrees of information asymmetry, demand and supply risks and agency costs, all of which prevent the supply chains from reaching to their full potentials. Due to the emergence of complex problems such as climate change, and overexploitation of natural resources, we are on the verge of creating a society ill-suited to the needs and limits of both natural resources and environment. To summarize, current contracts, policies and mechanisms fail to provide a balanced perspective necessary for a sustainable SCM, which can no longer be ruled by a single objective and single mechanism-designer but by multiple objectives and complex interactions among multiple mechanism designers. Hence, in this research program, we intend to develop and analyze a framework that considers a supply chain as a nexus of contracts designed by multiple stakeholders, be they suppliers and retailers who put more emphasis on cost minimization or profit maximization and regulators, government agencies and NGOs which put more emphasis on operational sustainability and ensure the compliance of the internal supply chain members to the environmental considerations. This research proposal is for a 5-year integrative program for modeling and developing multi-lateral mechanisms so as to guide future policy and investments in these systems with the goal of attaining sustainable prosperity. Building upon the applicant's current work in SCM in the presence of asymmetric information combined with recent developments in the theory of incentives with multi-principal and multi-agent systems, the program examines the full path from sustainability to information and risk management in supply chains. The objectives of the research program are, in the short term: - To develop a multi-principal multi-agent framework for a sustainable SCM, where the principals (e.g., regulators, buyers and suppliers, etc.) may have conflicting design objectives for the ultimate supply chain system and where the agents (e.g., upstream and downstream firms) have varying cost, risk and informational characteristics, - To design efficient and optimal mechanisms that are implementable, i.e., that would take into account both profit-maximization (or cost-minimization) incentives of internal supply chain actors and sustainability objectives of external players, and in the long term: - To develop computationally tractable mechanisms by focusing on a combination of structured supply chain contracts (e.g., risk-, revenue- and cost-sharing incentives) and regulatory mechanisms (e.g., audit- and market-based incentives) and analyze their structural properties and performances in terms of efficiency and optimality, - Finally, to evaluate the agency costs for the supply chains plagued with asymmetric information and to explore the role of information-sharing in achieving efficiency and and/or optimality. Supply chain systems are the lifeblood of the economy and those innovations that are transforming them are here to stay in the near future. Success in sustainably harnessing the potential of these systems so as to serve the society most effectively would require a holistic approach that takes into account interdependencies between the various internal as well as external actors. This research will be among the first to develop such an integrated framework to help researchers analyze the contract design problem for a sustainable SCM.