Supply chain coordination mechanisms under flexible contracts

In supply chain management,an important research direction is to coordinate the supply chain through introducing flexible contracts.A supply chain contract is flexible if it can satisfy two conditions at the same time：the supply chain is coordinated,and the total profit of the supply chain can be arbitrarily divided between the supply chain members.This paper puts out two contracts,a flexible return contract and a flexible wholesale price discount contract.In contrast to many of literature,the supply chain contracts with an endogenous wholesale price is specifically considered,and a detailed sensitivity analysis of the contract parameters is given.The paper also discusses the application of the contract in vendor-managed inventory（VMI） mode.The results show that the supply chain＇s performance is improved after introducing above contracts.All the findings are illustrated by numerical examples.

Quantity Flexibility Contract Model for Emergency Procurement Considering Supply Disruption

Supply chain disruption risk usually poses a serious challenge to the management of emergency supplies procurement between the government and enterprises in cooperation.To research the impact of supply chain disruption on the supply and demand sides of emergency supplies for disaster relief,the emergency procurement model based on quantity flexibility contract is constructed.The model introduces a stockout disruption to measure the degree of supply chain disruption and uses per unit of material relief value to quantify government disaster relief benefits.Further,it analyzes the basic pricing strategy and the agreed order quantity between the government and enterprises,focusing on the negative impact of supply disruption on the government and enterprises.The model deduction and data analysis results show that supply disruption creates a“lose-lose”situation for governments and enterprises,reducing their benefits and willingness to cooperate.Finally,a sensitivity analysis is conducted on the case data to explain the decision-making changes in the contract price and flexibility parameters between the government and enterprises before and after the supply disruption.

Contraction flexibility, operating leverage, and financial leverage

This study investigates the impacts of contraction flexibility and operating leverage onfinancial leverage from the perspective of the agency conflict between shareholders and debtholders.In a continuous-time real option framework,we demonstrate that share-holders'contraction flexibility may have an adverse effect on financial leverage,and that the substitution relation between operating leverage andfinancial leverage is persistent or pronounced in the presence of contraction flexibility.The evidence from Chinese listedfirms not only supports our theoretical predictions well,but also offers a method to examine the agency conflict hypothesis.We suggest that the high proportion of bank loans or long-term debt in total liabilities can help levered firms alleviate the agency problem arising from contraction decisions.