Research On Dynamics Mechanism, Paradigm And Characteristics During The Process Of Supply Chain System Evolution

Supply chain is the main mode implementing the social division of labour and achieving cooperation between firms within the modern economic systems. In supply chain system, the multistage enterprises completes jointly a production and marketing process by well-organized division and cooperation, and builds the complex cooperation relations and various operation conditions within supply chain.During supply chain operation processes, cooperation and competition, conflict, even breakdown caused by the complexity of inner and outer environment environments takes place usually, so long-term win-win cooperation in the supply chain system can be hardly achieved, and the system always presents some evolution trends and the motives to different directions.From the perspective of system theory, this dissertation analysis and researches the operation process thoroughly based on the flow process of supply chain system, and discusses the key factors impacting the firms’and system’s status changes within supply chain system and the dynamics mechanism controlling the stability of the whole supply chain system, then puts forward the evolution mechanism based on the theory of the Firm Position Potential in supply chain. This dissertation points out that, in the supply chain system, the FPP (Firm Position Potential) levels of members would be determined by the factors of ability, information mechanism and contract environment together. And the unbalanced FPP between enterprises in supply chain eventually leads to an evolution behavior, and accumulates to become the main factors driving the system evolving, and the trend of evolution will causes the FPP of different agent in supply chain to converge on a narrow interval. This dissertation analyzes further the probability of existence of the steady-state points on evolution path of the firms in supply chain and points out that the supply chain system at different conditions can acquire some steady-state point, that is, supply chain system can reach a stable state under the conditions of balance flow. According to the entirety evolutional behavior of supply chain system, this dissertation also presents that it is flows scale that directly affects the organizational stock scale of supply chain system. To any single firm in supply chain, as well as the whole of system, there is some power laws distribution between the flow and the stock. That is to say, in supply chain system, the changes of flow and stock size interact and influence between each other, and to get a stable state means to arrive at the best matching interval for the flow and stock (not limited these two parameters). For the operation practice of supply chain management, the elementary and important measure for obtain stable state is to maintain a relative equilibrium of FPP of firms in supply chain, which requests that the firms at different stage in supply chain could receive enough flows (cash flow, logistics, etc.) to match their organization scales.This dissertation is divided into 8 chapters. The first chapter presents research background, literature review and technology mapping. The second chapter illustrates analytical paradigm, the related concepts and terms. The third chapter establishes the basic framework of analysis, and determines the research direction and main content. The fourth chapter put forward the basic motive mechanism of the supply chain system evolution by FPP theory, and builds a simple model for FPP of supply chain system. The fifth chapter analyzes the probability for attaining a stable state during evolutionary process for supply chain system, and analyzes several situations of stable state for the system’s evolution. The sixth chapter and seventh chapter discuss main characters of the supply chain system evolution. The sixth chapter describes the distribution law of firms’node linking degree by using the network evolution models in supply chain, and the seventh chapter analyses the flow’s boundary problem of system scale from an empirical perspectives; Chapter 8 analysis simply influences on supply chain system evolution resulted from the capital operation and risk controlling, and revises the evolution process of supply chain system.The following are the main innovation points of this dissertation:1. Creating the paradigm from systematic views on supply chain researching in this dissertation. The traditional perspective study focused usually on a certain segment of a supply chain, and did not aim to the complete system of supply chain. This study, from a view of flow, put all supply chain processes into a unified framework of flow, and realizes the effective integration of the supply chain process, with different operation unifying in some common styles of flow and facilitating to build a unified description model.2. Building the Firms Position Potential (FPP) theory of supply chain system. FPP is a synthetical index calculated from capability, division of labors in supply chain and contracts environments of respective firms in supply chain, which reflects relative positions and evolution direction of firms in system. In supply chain system, it is the disequilibrium of FPP among the different agents that cause the firm’s evolution behaviors, and there is a certain evolutional equilibrium points existing in evolution processes from the theoretical analysis, that is to say, it is impossible to gain the long-term cooperation for the supply chain system.3. This dissertation analyzes scale-free characteristics in supply chain network structure based on supply chain system network topology structure. The probability distribution of enterprise node linking degree follows some characters of scale-free with power laws index less than or equal to 2, which also would be affected by the changes of nodes in supply chain. And this dissertation creates a theory of value sheaf that takes the supply networks as a value sheaf which describes the relative relationships and value distribution in the process of value integration and transferring among the core and non-core agents of supply chain. In value sheaf, the agents with maximum (and the second maximum) linking degrees is the core enterprises, which determines the levels of value chain of whole network.4. Constructing a model determining the system stock/flow boundary of supply chain system. This study analyzes organization boundary problems of single agent and system from a perspective of flow and stock and figures out that a reasonable organization scale should be adapted by the supply chain system, in which the optimal stock levels would be adjusted by the flows size, between which the relationships meet scale-free character with a certain power index in accordance with it’s industry of the firms.Innovation of this dissertation is to rebuild an analytical framework from perspective of system theory, and then synthetically analyzes the multistage agents in supply chain by the tools of flow analysis and regarding the FPP as the start of analysis process, studies the evolution behaviors of supply chain system and explains the mechanism and path of supply chain system’s evolution. The conclusion of the study points out that it is necessary of evolution behavior of supply chain system for agents in it to attain some competitive advantage, which is some manifestation to show the competition and cooperation between firms. Since the scale of supply chain system will be constrainted by the value flow, as an enterprise in supply chain, how to achieve a profitable division of labor in system means to select its position matching their FPPs. And Unable to get maintaining themselves scale of flow is the primary motive causing firms’evolution, but also is the essential reason for supply chain system not to achieve the stable state,which is helpful for enterprises to recognize the cooperation within supply chain system and modify the supply chain strategies.