Cooperation and profit allocation in distribution chains

We study the coordination of actions and the allocation of profit in distribution chains under decentralized control. We consider distribution chains in which a single supplier supplies goods for replenishment of stocks of several retailers who, in turn, sell these goods to their own separate markets. The goal of the supplier and the retailers is to maximize their individual profits. Since the optimal joint profit under centralized control is larger than the sum of the individual optimal profits under decentralized control, cooperation among firms by means of coordination of actions may improve individual profits. The effects of cooperation are studied by means of cooperative games. For each distribution chain we define a corresponding cooperative game and study its properties. Among others we show that such games are balanced. Based on the nice core structure a stable solution concept for these games is proposed and its properties are interpreted in terms of the underlying distribution chain. \u

Supply chain collaboration

In the past, research in operations management focused on single-firm analysis. Its goal was to provide managers in practice with suitable tools to improve the performance of their firm by calculating optimal inventory quantities, among others. Nowadays, business decisions are dominated by the globalization of markets and increased competition among firms. Further, more and more products reach the customer through supply chains that are composed of independent firms. Following these trends, research in operations management has shifted its focus from single-firm analysis to multi-firm analysis, in particular to improving the efficiency and performance of supply chains under decentralized control. The main characteristics of such chains are that the firms in the chain are independent actors who try to optimize their individual objectives, and that the decisions taken by a firm do also affect the performance of the other parties in the supply chain. These interactions among firms’ decisions ask for alignment and coordination of actions. Therefore, game theory, the study of situations of cooperation or conflict among heterogenous actors, is very well suited to deal with these interactions. This has been recognized by researchers in the field, since there are an ever increasing number of papers that applies tools, methods and models from game theory to supply chain problems

Overview and classification of coordination contracts within forward and reverse supply chains

Among coordination mechanisms, contracts are valuable tools used in both theory and practice to coordinate various supply chains. The focus of this paper is to present an overview of contracts and a classification of coordination contracts and contracting literature in the form of classification schemes. The two criteria used for contract classification, as resulted from contracting literature, are transfer payment contractual incentives and inventory risk sharing. The overview classification of the existing literature has as criteria the level of detail used in designing the coordination models with applicability on the forward and reverse supply chains.Coordination contracts; forward supply chain; reverse supply chain

What's Behind the Increase in Inequality?

The focus of this paper is the increase in earnings inequality over the last 30-plus years. Economists have well-developed theories that explain differences in wage levels among different categories of workers. Differences in educational attainment and skills are a major source of these differences; large organizations typically employ workers with a wide range of skills and responsibilities and pay them accordingly. As a result, the level of wage inequality within organizations is quite large. This paper does not challenge these results. It argues, however, that these theories are not adequate to explain a relatively recent phenomenon: the increase in recent decades in wage inequality among workers with similar levels of education and similar demographic characteristics who are employed in similar occupations but in different firms or establishments. These differences in wages are how most people experience inequality. Yet much of the analysis by economists has focused on developments that have enabled leading firms in the U.S. to increase their ability to extract monopoly rents.This paper reviews a wide-ranging literature that examines the increased ability of leading firms to extract monopoly rents. It also reviews the more recent and still thin literature on the increase in inequality among workers with similar characteristics but different employers. The contribution of this paper is the identification of a mechanism that reconciles these two strains of economic research and explains how the increase in rent extraction is linked to the increasingly unequal pay of U.S. workers with similar characteristics. I draw on joint work with Rosemary Batt (2014) to identify new opportunities for rent seeking behavior, and on joint work with Annette Bernhardt, Rosemary Batt and Susan Houseman (2016, 2017) on domestic outsourcing, inter-firm contracting and the growing importance of production networks to establish a mechanism that connects the increase in rents with this new type of increase in wage inequality

Insinking: A Methodology to Exploit Synergy in Transportation

vehicle routing;cooperative games;retailing;insinking;Shapley Monotonic Path;Logistic Service Providers

Why Social Enterprises Are Asking to Be Multi-stakeholder and Deliberative: An Explanation around the Costs of Exclusion.

The study of multi-stakeholdership (and multi-stakeholder social enterprises in particular) is only at the start. Entrepreneurial choices which have emerged spontaneously, as well as the first legal frameworks approved in this direction, lack an adequate theoretical support. The debate itself is underdeveloped, as the existing understanding of organisations and their aims resist an inclusive, public interest view of enterprise. Our contribution aims at enriching the thin theoretical reflections on multi-stakeholdership, in a context where they are already established, i.e. that of social and personal services. The aim is to provide an economic justification on why the governance structure and decision-making praxis of the firm needs to account for multiple stakeholders. In particular with our analysis we want: a) to consider production and the role of firms in the context of the “public interest” which may or may not coincide with the non-profit objective; b) to ground the explanation of firm governance and processes upon the nature of production and the interconnections between demand and supply side; c) to explain that the costs associated with multi-stakeholder governance and deliberation in decision-making can increase internal efficiency and be “productive” since they lower internal costs and utilise resources that otherwise would go astray. The key insight of this work is that, differently from major interpretations, property costs should be compared with a more comprehensive range of costs, such as the social costs that emerge when the supply of social and personal services is insufficient or when the identification of aims and means is not shared amongst stakeholders. Our model highlights that when social costs derived from exclusion are high, even an enterprise with costly decisional processes, such as the multistakeholder, can be the most efficient solution amongst other possible alternatives

Buyback and return policies for a book publishing firm = Egy könyvkiadó vállalat visszavásárlási stratégiája

A dolgozat célja egy vállalati gyakorlatból származó eset elemzése. Egy könyvkiadót tekintünk. A kiadó kapcsolatban van kis- és nagykereskedőkkel, valamint a fogyasztók egy csoportjával is vannak kapcsolatai. A könyvkiadók projekt rendszerben működnek. A kiadó azzal a problémával szembesül, hogy hogyan ossza el egy frissen kiadott és nyomtatott könyv példányszámait a kis- és nagykereskedők között, valamint mekkora példányszámot tároljon maga a fogyasztók közvetlen kielégítésére. A kiadóról feltételezzük, hogy visszavásárlási szerződése van a kereskedőkkel. A könyv iránti kereslet nem ismert, de becsülhető. A kis- és nagykereskedők maximalizálják a nyereségüket. = The aim of the paper is to analyze a practical real world problem. A publishing house is given. The publishing firm has contacts to a number of wholesaler / retailer enterprises and direct contact to customers to satisfy the market demand. The book publishers work in a project industry. The publisher faces with the problem how to allocate the stocks of a given, newly published book to the wholesaler and retailer, and to hold some copies to satisfy the customers direct from the publisher. The publisher has a buyback option. The distribution of the demand is unknown, but it can be estimated. The wholesaler / retailer maximize the profits. The problem can be modeled as a one-warehouse and N-retailer supply chain with not identical demand distribution. The model can be transformed in a game theory problem. It is assumed that the demand distribution follows a Poisson distribution

Inclusive governance in non-profit organisations

The study of private non-profit enterprises that offer general interest services is only at the start. The understanding of existing organisations resists an inclusive, public interest view of governance. This contribution aims at providing a reflection on specific features that non-profit enterprises should have, and outlines four main justifications for including stakeholders in production governance: 1) access to knowledge and other resources, 2) trust creation, 3) internal efficiency, 4) external efficiency. Conclusions elaborate on Hansmann’s classic theory of the firm to suggest that governance solutions need to be assessed on the basis of total costs, considering also the lower level of social costs that is created when governance includes relevant stakeholders. Our model highlights that when social costs are high, even an enterprise with costly decisional processes, such as the multi-stakeholder, can be the most efficient solution amongst other possible alternatives