Trust And Constraint Mechanism Of Food Supply Chain Collaboration

Food is an important strategic material,which is related to the overall situation of national economy,people’s livelihood,social stability and economic development.With the development of food trade,food gradually shows the attributes of finance and energy,and becomes a profitable investment product of global capital.As an important part of national security,food security is becoming more and more abundant,comprehensive and systematic,involving the whole food industry and presenting a multi-dimensional development trend of quantity,quality,ecology and sovereignty.In order to solve the problem of food security,all links of food industry should be planed and collaborated in an all-round way and a modern system should be built by building a collaboration mechanisms,so as to conform to the development trend of food industry and achieve systematic,deep,high-level and all-round food security.The study of food supply chain collaboration is based on the industry chain.The collaborative system and path are designed and the collaborative mechanisms are constructed on the bases of the theories of supply chain management,synergetics and networking approaches.Based on the theory research,the concept and connotation of food supply chain collaboration are defined firstly.Secondly,based on the analysis of the current research on food supply chain collaboration,the system and path of food supply chain collaboration are designed.Thirdly,the motivation and influencing factors of food supply chain collaboration are analyzed with synergetics theory,and the order parameters of supply chain collaboration are analyzed accordingly.Fourthly,on the basis of the theory of relationship management,partial correlation analysis method is used to identify the elements of supply chain collaboration and build the trust mechanism in food supply chain.Fifthly,the relationship between the constraint elements of food supply chain collaboration is analyzed and the collaborative constraints mechanism is constructed by the tools of structural equation model,SPSS and MPLUS.The conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Food supply chain collaboration is that the collaborative performances are created,through the sharing of information and revenue on the basis of partnership,to achieve higher overall revenue of the supply chain.It is emphasized that the goal of food supply chain collaboration is to improve the overall income;the basis is the relationship management among the food enterprises;the guarantee of food supply chain collaboration is information sharing and revenue sharing.(2)The food supply chain system can be divided into the supply-driven and the demand-driven.The supply-driven food supply chain takes the raw grain supply as the driving force,with significant policy characteristics.The demand-driven food supply chain takes the food demand as the driving force,highlighting the marketoriented characteristics.Based on the requirement of supply chain management on the market attribute of member enterprises,a three-level supply chain system is constructed which is composed of demand-driven food processors,producers and distributor.Among them,food processors are the core leading roles.(3)Inter-organizational elements are the order parameters to promote the collaboration of supply chain system,mainly including relationship elements and constraint elements.The exogenous variables that affect the food supply chain mainly include economic factors and institutional factors,and the endogenous variables include inter-organizational variables and intra-organizational variables.Because the ultimate goal of food supply chain evolution is to achieve the internal and external compatibility,balance and co-evolution.Therefore,exogenous variables can only have an indirect impact on the system,and endogenous variables are the direct cause of the system evolution.Because the flow of various resources in the supply chain is generated among different organizations,the production of the equilibrium state of the food supply chain system depends on the compatibility and balance between organizations,that is,the inter-organizational factors including relationship elements and constraint elements.(4)Trust incloudes relational trust and calculative trust.It is found that the trust decision logic between the food processor and the food producer takes the uncertainty of the market into consideration and the relational trust should be selected.The trust decision logic between the food processor and the food distributor focuses on the uncertainty of the behavior and the calculative trust should be selected accordingly.The decision logic of trust is that when the buyer’s asset specificity and supply market uncertainty are large,the role of relational trust is better than that of calculative trust;when the behavior uncertainty is high,calculative trust is better than relational trust.In the process of collaboration with food producers,food processors are mainly faced with natural risks,market risks and credit risks.Therefore,the trust logic of food processors and producers should be based on relational trust.The main influencing factor of the decision-making logic of the trust between the grain processors and the grain distributors is the uncertainty of behavior,which should be based on the calculative trust.(5)The constraints of food supply chain collaboration include collaborative revenue(financial performance and operational performance),revenue sharing,information sharing and contract spirit.The results of constraint mechanism show that revenue sharing is the source of supply chain collaboration.Information sharing can effectively enhance revenue sharing and improve collaboration.The spirit of contract has a direct impact on the operational performance of collaboration,but has no direct impact on financial performance.Based on this,some policy suggestions are put forward,such as to promoting the rationalization of income distribution in food supply chain through multi-channel information sharing,cultivating the spirit of contract to ensure the revenue sharing and information sharing in food supply chain collaboration.The innovation of this paper is mainly embodied in:(1)Innovation of research perspective.The coordination of food supply chain has been studied,but there are great differences between coordination and collaboration.Collaboration emphasizes the concept of symbiosis,value-added and win-win,which is a high-level coordination.The research on food supply chain from the perspective of collaboration is helpful to improve the collaboration efficiency of the supply chain,increase the overall income,and ensure the sustainable development of the food industry.(2)Trust mechanism of food supply chain collaboration.Based on the theory of relationship management,the relational elements that affact food supply chain collaboration are summarized,and the high correlation between trust and supply chain collaboration is proved through partial correlation analysis.Trust evaluation is made with cloud model.Combining the structure characteristics of food supply chain with the logic of trust decision-making,the trust mechanism of food supply chain collaboration is constructed.(3)Constraint mechanism of food supply chain collaboration.On the basis of synergetics theory,the order parameters of grain supply chain collaboration are identified.The collaborative constraints mechanism composed of four elements: information sharing,revenue sharing,contract spirit and collaborative revenue is constructed.The correlation,mediation and moderating effects of each element in the model are analyzed by using structural equation,SPSS and MPLUS.