تمایل برای به اشتراک گذاری اطلاعات در یک زنجیره تامین:دیدگاه فرایند - داده - مشارکت

To achieve an efficient and effective supply chain, information needs to be shared. Most current information-sharing studies address the benefits gained from shared data, but neglect the effect of willingness to share, in which the benefits of sharing data may be discounted. This study looks into the factors that affect the extent of the willingness of companies to share information from a partnership-data-process perspective. To distinguish the mode of sharing, we differentiate information sharing into template based and proactive. Our results suggest that when partnerships become closer, the willingness to share template-based information increases and consequently the willingness to proactively share additional information.

A supply chain is a network of material suppliers, production manufacturers, and logistics service providers that perform different value-added activities together, usually in a sequential manner, to produce value for consumers. Information sharing in a supply chain can occur in two ways. Internally, for the effective planning of purchases and company growth, leading to flexibility and coordination and a sense of ownership, and externally, sharing information with supply chain partners to enhance demand planning, physical flows, and financial work processes [20]. It can also prevent information distortion, resulting in problems such as the “bullwhip effect.” Information sharing has garnered greater research attention in recent years, but most studies have investigated the types of information shared and the gains from sharing [5]. Further, these studies make the assumption that the institutions sharing information are willing to do so, however, willingness to share information can be predetermined (where the data to be shared are specified in a contract, with templates used to describe the data format) or spontaneous (where the process is voluntary and non-predetermined). Willingness to share reflects the quality of the information shared, including its timeliness, accuracy, adequacy, completeness, and reliability. These dimensions, combined with the breadth of information shared and level of coordinated knowledge involved, affect the quality of the decisions made by the firm [9]. In the supply chain context, willingness to share information is a trade-off between efficiency and the responsiveness of the information resources. What information is shared depends on the economics and technology of, while the questions of with whom and when information is shared require that social involvement be taken into account. This suggests that adopting a partnership-data-process (PDP) perspective can increase the partner's willingness to share information. In the supply chain context, the partners can be suppliers, buyers, or other service providers, and the partnership can extend to different strategic levels, such as causal or long-term alliances. According to the PDP perspective, partnership and process are the main determinants of information sharing, chiefly because of the uncertainties associated with partnership relationships and collaborative processes. Successful supply chain collaboration involves partnership coordination, commitment, trust, high communication quality, participation, and joint problem solving, requiring a willingness to share information. Business process complexity is, of course, critically related to partnership success and the extent of information sharing. Various types of data may be shared to improve the effectiveness of a supply chain, including inventory level, demand forecasts, sales and order status, and production schedules. Such sharing takes place at different levels, including physical, abstract, operational, and strategic. A greater correlation or interdependence between working tasks increases the need for data sharing to facilitate cooperation [13]; hence, complex processes normally require more dynamic data and involve customers or partners that have a long-term relationship with the firm. We investigated the extent of information sharing in terms of the willingness of a company to share information with its collaborators. However, in contrast to most previous studies, we looked at the issue from a supply chain perspective, dividing information sharing into template based (when, how, what, and with whom shared) or proactive (sharing of non-predetermined information). We choose three collaborative partners in the supply chain – buyers, suppliers, and logistics service providers – as the targets and conducted an exploratory empirical study through a large-scale survey to investigate the partner's willingness to share information. More specifically, we attempted to answer three questions: 1. Can information sharing behavior be classified into template-based and proactive behavior? If so, how do these behavior types interact? 2. Does the extent of partnership development, data characteristics, and business processes affect the way that information is shared in a supply chain? If so, what are their effects on the sharing behavior? 3. Do suppliers, buyers, and logistics service providers differ in their information sharing behavior? If so, what are the causes of these behavioral differences?

Many studies of supply chain management have addressed information sharing by focusing on the issues and benefits of sharing. It is probable that most companies in a supply chain are willing to share information to enhance the conduct of their business. However, their collaboration may be constrained by several determinants that directly or indirectly affect the needs, tradeoffs, and consequences of their business operations. We proposed a partnership-data-process (PDP) model to investigate willingness to share information in the supply chain context. This was found to be useful in explaining the variation in the extent of willingness to share information, as indicated by the significance of the proposed determinants and relationships in the model. A number of implications for practitioners can be drawn from our results. First, supply chain managers should remember that information sharing may TIS or PIS. At a fundamental level, TIS is affected directly only by partnership extent. Only when supply chain companies have TIS agreements can they advance to a higher level of sharing. This suggests that a successful strategic partnership is needed before a strong will to share information arises. Hence, supply chain managers need to devise strategies to enhance commitment, trust, coordination, and interdependence with their partners. Supply chain managers must also recognize that a higher level of partnership is a necessary but not sufficient condition for PIS. Thus, to achieve more extensive PIS, managers need to establish a solid foundation through formal contracts in which the rules about information exchange are well specified and provision is made for the resolution of any failure to support information exchange through specified clauses in the contract. They also need to provide evidence of the timeliness and dynamism of the required data to justify PIS, provided that a strategic partnership has already been established. Supply chain managers should also investigate the reason for insignificance of data dynamism and process complexity in information sharing – is it managerial, architectural, or operational? Although these are complex issues, supply chain collaborators need to establish a consensus if TIS and PIS are to be further supported. Our study had, of course, some limitations. First, it was conducted in China using Chinese supply chain companies for our population, thus we are not able to generalize the findings to other geographical regions having different cultures. Second, our study focused on the extent of willingness to share information. This issue is somewhat technical, as it concerns the security, control, and standards of information sharing. In a supply chain, information sharing must consider access control issues and policies to reduce risks, especially for activities and resources that involve business processes within and across supply chain participants. Information sharing also requires a way to store and present information and knowledge in a standardized format; these issues have been explored previously (e.g., [6]), but need further investigation. Although we evaluated willingness to share information using a classification of TIS and PIS, we did not adopt a more sophisticated conceptualization or classification of partnership, data, and process in the PDP framework. For example, partnership could have been classified by type, which could affect information sharing differently in various social situations. Our study did not take a longitudinal approach when evaluating willingness to share information. Although our PDP model explained some of the variation in willingness to share, it says little about how or whether willingness to share will evolve over time.