Multisourcing and Miscoordination in Supply Chain Networks
研究多层级供应链中企业面临中断风险时的采购决策，发现生产过程的特征（如技术差异和财务约束）会导致不同层级企业激励不匹配，形成低效供应链，强调需从整体网络视角管理风险。
This paper studies sourcing decisions of firms in a multitier supply chain when procurement is subject to disruption risk. We argue that features of the production process that are commonly encountered in practice (including differential production technologies and financial constraints) may result in the formation of inefficient supply chains, owing to the misalignment of the sourcing incentives of firms at different tiers. We provide a characterization of the conditions under which upstream suppliers adopt sourcing strategies that are suboptimal from the perspective of firms further downstream. Our analysis highlights that a focus on optimizing procurement decisions in each tier of the supply chain in isolation may not be sufficient for mitigating risks at an aggregate level. Rather, we argue that a holistic view of the entire supply network is necessary to properly assess and secure against disruptive events. Importantly, the misalignment we identify does not originate from cost or reliability asymmetries. Rather, firms’ sourcing decisions are driven by the interplay of the firms’ risk considerations with nonconvexities in the production process. This implies that bilateral contracts that could involve under-delivery penalties may be insufficient to align incentives. The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2017.1708 .