Mechanism Design for a Sustainable Supply Chain Management

供应链管理（SCM）是全球化力量的核心，在过去的十年中，全球化力量使世界变得扁平化。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，已经使我们走上了一条通往不可持续繁荣的危险道路。由于信息不对称、供需风险和代理成本的加剧，这一问题尤为严重，所有这些都阻碍了供应链充分发挥其潜力。由于气候变化、自然资源过度开发等复杂问题的出现，我们正处于一个与自然资源和环境的需求和限制不相适应的社会的边缘。总而言之，当前的契约、政策和机制未能为可持续供应链提供必要的平衡视角，供应链不再由单一目标和单一机制设计者统治，而是由多个目标和多个机制设计者之间复杂的相互作用统治。因此，在本研究计划中，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合同的联系，这些利益相关者可能是更强调成本最小化或利润最大化的供应商和零售商，也可能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。本研究计划是一个为期5年的综合项目，旨在模拟和发展多边机制，以指导这些系统的未来政策和投资，以实现可持续繁荣。在信息不对称的情况下，申请人目前在供应链管理方面的工作，结合多主体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。在短期内，研究计划的目标是：-为可持续的供应链管理开发一个多主体多主体框架，其中主体（例如，监管机构，买家和供应商等）可能对最终供应链系统有相互冲突的设计目标，其中代理（例如，上游和下游公司）具有不同的成本，风险和信息特征；-设计可实施的高效和最佳机制，即：这将考虑到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，并在长期内：-通过注重结构化供应链合同（例如，风险、收入和成本分担激励）和监管机制(例如，审计和基于市场的激励)，并从效率和最优性的角度分析其结构特性和绩效。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/或最优性方面的作用。供应链系统是经济的命脉，在不久的将来，那些正在改变供应链系统的创新将继续存在。要成功地可持续地利用这些系统的潜力，以便最有效地为社会服务，就需要采取一种综合办法，考虑到各种内部和外部行动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综合框架来帮助研究人员分析可持续供应链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.