Research On Supply Chain Coordination Under Asymmetric Information

With the global economy developing,the market competition is increasingly fierce, competition among enterprises gradually evolve to competition among the supply chain where the enterprises are.Enterprises in the supply chain is on the basis of good cooperation and coordination among them,it is possible for all enterprises to benefit that the enterprises have synchronized and coordinated operations.Although members of the supply chain acquire useful information resources through information network technology to guarantee the exchange of information,but it may still exist that the members conceal private information for individual interests, the asymmetric information problem is thorny issue of the supply chain coordination theory.Studying the supply chain coordination strategies and methods under asymmetric information can make the supply chain improve performance under asymmetric information,also make enterprises in the supply chain achieve mutual benefit and win-win.Principal-agent theory has become a standard framework to study the problem of asymmetric information, how to effectively solve the principal-agent problem in the supply chain is an important factor to ensure coordination running of the supply chain.In this paper a model structure including a manufacturer and a distributor is firstly constructed based on a parameterized principal-agent model,to start from the principal maximizing personal utilities the manufacturer designs contract,on this basis,a incentive factor is selected to make the entire supply chain system achieve optimal situation.Based on the assumption that distributor,s sales volume is logarithmic function of the level of effort, from two points of the symmetric and asymmetric information an incentive mechanisms model of the supply chain is constructed, binding the level of effort,the degree of risk aversion, the cost factor of distributor and random factors such as market, by designing reasonable incentive coefficient, it is coordinated between distributors and manufacturers to make overall interests of the supply chain optimal allowing members to maximize their own interests at the same time.Then a supply chain consisting of a single manufacturer and a single distributor, a single-product supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and two distributors is respectively constructed, supply chain members achieve the optimal level of income distribution by negotiations.The incentive model of supply chain coordination based on static transfer utility is used to make it to achieve the overall income optimization,considering that distributor,s sales volume is affected by the inherent market conditions where the distributor are,besides the level of effort of distributor and random factors such as market. By model analysis and numerical tests it is obtained that certain incentive mechanism is adopted on condition that the level of effort of distributor can not be observed or difficult to observed, not only the expectations of all member companies, interests is greater than the expectations when no incentive mechanism is adopted,but also the expectations of the total benefits of the supply chain has increased to achieve the coordination of the supply chain.