Research On Cooperation And Coordination Mechanisms Between Firms Considering Environmental And Social Responsibility

Globalization requires firms to reach beyond pure economic issues and concern environmental and social problems.Sustainable development,which emphasizes the harmonious development of the economy,environment,and society,came into being.Cooperation and coordination between firms can promote firms to carry out environmentally protective and socially responsible activities,which is essential to the sustainable development of firms.From the perspectives of two dimensions of sustainable development(i.e.,environmental protection and social responsibility),respectively,this thesis studies the cooperation and coordination mechanisms between firms.The current study uses the game-theoretic methods to derive the equilibrium results in different models,adopts the comparative static analysis to investigate the impacts of relevant factors on the equilibrium decisions and resulting profits,and further utilizes numerical examples to corroborate and supplement our findings.This thesis is divided into the following three sub-studies.Firstly,from the viewpoint of environmental protection,under the background of online platform selling,Study(Ⅰ)explores the licensing cooperation strategies of green technology between competing firms.This study considers an online platform acting as a marketplace and two competing firms selling substitute products on the platform,one of which is an innovator investing in green technology.The innovator has options to offer a license on the green technology to its competitor.With No licensing as a benchmark,this study examines two alternative licensing strategies for the innovator:Fixed-fee licensing versus Royalty licensing.This study finds that licensing enhances the optimal green technology level,and Royalty licensing strategy outperforms Fixedfee licensing strategy from the viewpoint of environmental performance and the innovator’s profitability.Interestingly,we find that product price declines with production cost when the cost coefficient of green investment is sufficiently small;Additionally,with a higher commission rate that the platform charges,the firms will choose a lower product price when the commission rate is sufficiently small.Furthermore,by numerical examples,we observe an increased commission rate may hurt the platform.Secondly,based on environmental protection,Study(Ⅱ)investigates the cooperation and coordination between firms in the green supply chain considering R&D uncertainty.Considering the uncertainty of environmental R&D,this study investigates a two-echelon supply chain consisting of a manufacturer who invests in green manufacturing effort to generate a success probability of the environmental R&D and a retailer who exerts green marketing effort to disclose information on the successful R&D outcome to consumers.This study explores two modes:Decentralized mode where the two firms do not cooperate in green operations,and Cartelization mode where the two firms cooperate as an integrated system to decide their individual green effort.Results show that compared with Decentralized mode,Cartelization mode improves each firm’s green effort level,and increases the profitability for the whole supply chain and the manufacturer but not the retailer.Furthermore,this study designs a revenue-sharing contract to coordinate the green supply chain under each mode,and finds the revenue-sharing contract has more flexibility when coordinating the cartelized supply chain.Thirdly,based on social responsibility,Study(Ⅲ)presents a study on the coordination between firms in a socially responsible supply chain considering cost learning effects.In a manufacturer-retailer supply chain where the manufacturer’s production cost will reduce due to cost learning effects,this study discusses two scenarios:the retailer is socially responsible in one and the manufacturer is in the other.Results show that the former scenario will outperform the latter regarding supply chain performance.Besides,this study utilizes two-part tariff contracts to coordinate socially responsible supply chains in these two scenarios,and finds that when coordinated,increasing intensity of cost learning effects might impair the financial profitability of the whole chain.The innovations of this thesis are summarized as follows:Firstly,from the perspective of environmental protection,Study(Ⅰ)explores the green technology licensing cooperation strategies under the background of platform selling for the first time and discusses the licensing strategy preference of firms and the platform through mathematical models and numerical examples,respectively.Secondly,the previous literature on green supply chain management did not consider the green innovation uncertainty that is common in practice.Nevertheless,Study(Ⅱ)takes the outcome uncertainty of environmental R&D into account,discusses the cooperation and coordination in the green supply chain,and derives different results from the previous literature.Thirdly,by incorporating cost learning effects into a socially responsible supply chain,Study(Ⅲ)analyzes socially responsible supply chain in a dynamic process,while most of the previous literature focused on a static process.