第1个回答 2024-06-27
1. From the 1970s to the 1990s, conflicts deepened within the developed countries over international trade issues. Influenced by the oil crisis, the U.S. government reorganized its industrial layout. Driven by government demand, the Washington school, a significant force in corporate geography research, shifted its focus to location theory. Meanwhile, multinational corporations sought to optimize production factor allocation amidst international conflicts to maximize their own interests, leading to a divergence in research on global supply chains and corporate geography, as they began to explore their respective research paradigms.
2. During this period, the economics community generated several new theories that strongly supported global supply chain research, including significant contributions from the theory of international division of labor, transaction cost theory, and core competence theory. Multinational companies adjusted their operational strategies, transforming export products into export factories and export capital, seeking cost advantages worldwide. One of the key issues in global supply chain research was to重新plan the production and distribution networks of multinational corporations to maximize profits, known as the Global Logistics System (GLS) problem.
3. The global supply chain integrates critical business processes from raw material suppliers to end consumers across various countries, providing products, services, value-added, and information exchange to consumers and other stakeholders. The GLS problem is primarily addressed through the planning method (Mixed Integer Planning, MIP), accounting for approximately 50% of the research achievements. Decision variables, performance indicators, supply chain structure variables, and international factors can be used to summarize MIP models. In this era, scholars primarily focused on factory site selection as a decision variable, influenced by both U.S. government demands and multinational corporations' needs to adjust their global capacity布局.
4. scholars considered capacity and transportation volume as major factors in their decision-making. Balancing production capacity and transportation capacity became a focal point in decision-making. To accommodate this optimization, models also included重新选择 of suppliers (Hodder and Dincer, 1986). As for performance indicators, scholars generally agreed on three types of objective functions. The first type aimed to maximize post-tax expected profits (Hodder and Dincer, 1986), while the second sought to minimize operational costs (Haug, 1992). Introduced by stakeholder theory, the third type sought to maximize benefits for all stakeholders (Hadjinicola and Kumar, 2002).
5. Most scholars supported a two-tier supply chain structure, and the multi-plant multi-market (MFMM) model was universally chosen for supply chain cooperation decisions. Global supply chains must consider international factors, including tariffs, exchange rates, and consumption taxes, which are indispensable in models. Other factors such as worker skills and non-tariff barriers were also considered, though not universally agreed upon. As practical work progressed, new factors continuously entered the model, with over 30 international factors in the MIP model by 2008.
6. After 1980, the movement for corporate social responsibility (CSR) gradually gained momentum in developed countries in the West. Non-governmental organizations also continuously appealed for the integration of social responsibilities, such as peace, environmental protection, social responsibility, and human rights, into trade. Faced with increasing pressure and their own development needs, multinational corporations formulated social responsibility codes to meet necessary commitments or obtained environmental, occupational health, and social responsibility certifications to cater to different stakeholders' needs.
7. The 1990s to 2008 marked a transitional period in global supply chain research. The sole use of MIP tools lacked a balanced perspective, and theoretical models did not consider relevant groups. Multinational corporations urgently needed to solve the problem of balancing the interests of all stakeholders in the global supply chain and better fulfill their global social responsibilities, known as the GCSR issue.
8. To address this issue, theories of social responsibility and stakeholder theory were introduced into the global supply chain management theory system. Stakeholders in the global supply chain include shareholders, creditors, employees, consumers, suppliers, and other trading partners, as well as government departments, local residents, local communities, media, and environmentalists. These stakeholders are closely related to the survival and development of the global supply chain. Its business decisions must consider their interests or meet their demands. The survival and development of the global supply chain depend on the quality of responses to the interests of various stakeholders, rather than just shareholders.
9. For the CSR issue, case study methods were the dominant research paradigm, accounting for about 80% of the achievements. However, due to different industry backgrounds chosen by scholars, the focus of social responsibility varied. Research results can be summarized using social responsibility focus, performance indicators, case subjects, and suggested fulfillment methods. Due to different economic development levels and stakeholder demands in various countries, three main directions were formed. The environmental school, focusing on research into environmental harmlessness, responded to the appeals of environmental groups in developed countries, emphasizing corporate social obligations and advocating for the establishment of product recycling systems and environmental monitoring systems (Samir K. Srivastava, 2008).
10. The social welfare school, focusing on the overall improvement of social welfare, responded to the appeals of social groups in developing countries, emphasizing state social responsibility and calling for government intervention in the operation process of the global supply chain (Knut Bjørn Lindkvist, 2008). The labor rights school, focusing on the protection of labor rights, responded to the appeals of labor groups in developing countries, emphasizing the protection of labor rights and opposing unequal phenomena in global supply chain management, demanding the establishment of globally unified labor standards (Bin Jiang, 2007). Due to different starting points, these three groups of scholars often showed倾向性 in their case selection.
11. The research on global supply chain social responsibility in developing countries mainly concentrated on social welfare improvement and labor rights protection, while that in developed countries focused on environmental and resource use issues. As research deepened, in addition to labor groups and producers, consumers, governments, and academic circles also became important forces demanding social responsibility.
12. Contemporary research extends the set of participants in the global supply chain. It incorporates the corporate environment that was previously considered as the boundary of research. This is a significant advancement and also a major challenge. The mainstream tool of modern research, MIP, is not suitable for contemporary issues. Designing new tools is an urgent task for contemporary research. The service objects of contemporary research have become diversified, with multinational corporations concerned about social responsibility costs, local enterprises hoping to improve international trade relations, and local enterprises seeking long-term partnerships becoming the mainstream guiding research. Contemporary research is moving beyond pure economic goals. It intervenes in social activities, serving social groups and political parties, and providing ideas and solutions for governments to improve human rights and environmental records. This is a specific manifestation of the generalization and deepening of contemporary research.