Narrow Results

Carbon emissions reduction has become a frequently discussed topic in industry and academia. However, how can reduction effects be enhanced with dominant brand and downstream manufacturer? This paper incorporates emissions reduction into a green supply chain which considers consumers’ low-carbon preference behavior and government intensity regulations, in order to discuss the impacts of consumers’ environmental awareness and government constraints on optimal emissions reduction and profit, respectively. The paper first constructs three reduction models on the basis of reality: independent reduction by manufacturer, contractual reduction by brand and collaborative reduction by both. Then it concludes the optimal decisions and compare the models. The results show that both the profits and emissions reduction will be decreased with the strengthened carbon intensity constraint, but the cost-sharing contract can mitigate this negative effect on dominant brand and society. Meanwhile, the acceptable range of cost-sharing ratio will be smaller with a lower cost coefficient of emissions reduction and a higher consumers’ preference. Furthermore, government should design the incentive method or regulate the carbon market to improve the social welfare level. Lastly, a numerical study is conducted, the impact of several key factors on supply chain performance and model selection are presented for management decisions.

Unreliable suppliers may pose a substantial threat to supply chains, especially when they hold private information of their reliability. We consider a dyadic supply chain where the information of supplier reliability (in the form of random production yield) is asymmetric. We propose a new mechanism-design model and derive the buyer’s optimal procurement contract menu offered to suppliers with private information. We prove that the contract menu is as simple as offering two different inflated order amounts and setting the procuring price sufficiently low to let the suppliers earn zero reservation profits. These results are derived analytically under uniform distribution. We test them numerically under beta distribution and find them hold as well. However, the informational rent will become positive when the supplier’s reservation profit is positive. Positive informational rent is also found when we consider another structure of the supplier’s production cost. This paper provides some new insights into supply chain management under asymmetric information of uncertain supply.