Double Marginalization Research Articles

Coordinated Supply Contracts for a Two-Echelon Supply Chain under Given Bargaining Powers

This paper addresses the supply contracts within a decentralized supply chain comprising an upstream component supplier and a downstream manufacturer. With the need to invest in production capacity before the sales season, suppliers often make conservative capacity decisions due to uncertain demand, which gives rise to the double marginalization problem. The distribution of supply chain profits is typically determined based on each member’s relative bargaining power, often exogenously provided in the market. While numerous studies have been conducted to design supply contracts for coordination in decentralized supply chains, most of them overlook the supplier’s capacity constraints and the existing bargaining power structure. To bridge this gap, this study proposes a supply contract scheme that achieves coordination under any given bargaining power structure. The key finding of this paper is that two contract types, namely capacity cost-sharing (CCS) and surplus capacity compensation (SCC), can address the entire spectrum of bargaining powers. This study demonstrates how to identify a specific threshold for a given bargaining power structure, from which the appropriate contract type is selected. Through numerical illustrations, we present how to select coordinated contracts for different bargaining power structures and examine the influence of contract parameters on the profit of each supply chain member. The primary contribution is that this study provides actionable insights for practitioners to effectively implement coordinated contracts by presenting a straightforward and practical methodology.

Optimal Decisions of Electric Vehicle Closed-Loop Supply Chain under Government Subsidy and Varied Consumers’ Green Awareness

The emerging operating mode of new automobile forces in the context of China brings up new problems for the development of the EV CLSC, which are the market position shift inside the loop and government policy and consumer awareness of changes outside it. Aiming at promoting the development of the EV CLSC, this study integrates the influence of internal and external factors, analyzes their joint impact on the performance of the EV CLSC, and explores the optimal CLSC structure. Specifically, this study develops five game theory models considering different CLSC structures and consumers’ green awareness under government subsidy and varied channel leaderships. Combining theoretical analysis with numerical simulation, the study reveals the performance of the EV CLSC and indicates the optimal CLSC decisions for different players. The result suggests that an EV manufacturer should develop an EV CLSC by itself considering the elimination of double marginalization. When a third-party player is incorporated, the EV manufacturer should undertake the collection effort by itself to optimize the benefit for both the EV manufacturer and the third-party player, especially considering the increasing green awareness of consumers. And a lift of each player’s channel power would always be a wise choice for each other. For the government which has the goals of promoting both the EV industry and the end-of-life treatment of obsolete EVs, a series of trade-offs including the CLSC structure and channel leadership should be considered prudently. This study contributes to the comprehensive understanding of the optimal decisions of the EV CLSC, and will benefit the development of the EV CLSC.

The Double Marginality of Romanian Feminist Poetry. Edginess, Theoretical Gap, and Neoliberal Absorbtion

This paper aims to outline the urgency of Romanian Feminist poetry in light of neoliberalism and the capitalist world-system which together have become an uncontrollable and increasingly unequal mechanism. Rooted in neoliberal ideology, a postfeminist fra

Managing Competition from Within and Outside: Using Strategic Inventory and Network Externality to Combat Copycats

Problem definition: Prior studies have identified the role of downstream retailers’ strategic inventory in mitigating double marginalization within decentralized supply chains. Our work adds to this literature by introducing two relevant features that naturally appear in a dynamic environment: network externality and copycatting. We demonstrate how strategic inventory and network externality can be used to manage competition from within and outside the supply chain. Methodology/results: We develop a game-theoretical model to capture the strategic interaction within a brand-name supply chain, which enjoys positive externalities from early-period sales but faces competition from copycats in later periods. We show that copycats, on the one hand, deter the retailer’s strategic inventory by exerting external competition and on the other hand, can amplify the benefit of the retailer’s strategic inventory in allaying internal double marginalization and enhancing the supply chain’s external competitiveness. We further show that network externality, on the one hand, brings immediate gains to the supply chain’s external battle with copycats and on the other hand, creates internal inefficiency in the form of cross-period double marginalization best exhibited under the supplier’s dynamic contract. When network externality and strategic inventory are optimized jointly, we find that they are always complementary in increasing the supplier’s payoff but can be substitutive to the retailer under a large inventory cost and weak network externality. Managerial implications: Our work provides firms ways of managing decentralized supply chains in the face of copycats. We propose strategic inventory and network externality to combat copycats and provide normative guidance on their operating mechanisms. Funding: C. Jin received financial support from the Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund [Tier 1 Grant 251RES2101]. Y.-J. Chen received financial support from Hong Kong RGC [Grants GRF 16500821 and HKUST C6020-21GF]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2021.0182 .

Spatial price discrimination in a mixed duopoly input market

We uniquely examine an upstream mixed duopoly engaging in spatial price discrimination across a continuum of downstream markets. The monopoly firms in those markets face elastic final demand creating double marginalization. The upstream public firm faces a cost disadvantage relative to its private rival that declines as it is partially privatized. We show that the fully public firm improves social welfare relative to a private duopoly when it is not overly inefficient and when differentiation is sufficiently large. We also show that whenever this is the case, there exists an optimal degree of partial privatization that better aligns the trade-off between production costs and pricing distortions.

The information value of logistics platforms in a freight matching market

The information asymmetry in the freight matching of the long-haul trucking industry usually pushes shippers to join a logistics platform that has better knowledge of truckers’ cost information. A logistics platform that is plugged into a freight transportation system helps shippers overcome their information disadvantage but produces the double marginalization effect. We investigate the equilibrium characteristics of a shipper and logistics platform in the freight matching market and find that the shipper prefers to cooperate with the logistics platform in a small-scale sales market but searches for truckers by himself in a large-scale sales market. We show that the information value of a logistics platform for the freight system consists of two aspects: (i) employ low-cost truckers for the shipper and avoid the shipper’s inefficient expansion of the selling quantity in a moderate-scale sales market with greatly heterogeneous truckers, and (ii) improve both the total profit and social welfare of the freight system in a small-scale sales market. We further find that the shipper’s private information may hurt the logistics platform and the logistics platform can mitigate her double marginalization disadvantage by improving value-added services or lowering the logistics price in a large-scale market. Our findings provide guidelines for the shipper and logistics platform on how to choose the appropriate transportation strategy and employment strategy in different logistics markets.

Dissonant intimacies: Coloniality and the failures of South–South collaboration

North–South research collaborations have come to include both an epistemic and ethical promise – of disrupting hierarchies, inequalities and asymmetries in global knowledge production. In practice, however, these have been ridden with limits, tension and failure. The ‘South–South’ has emerged as a worthy foil: an easy repository of positive affects and of decolonial futurity. This article turns to a feminist collaborative research initiative that seemed primed to fulfil these promises, but in fact, failed to do so. A partnership between African and Indian feminist scholars did not provide meaningful and reciprocal intellectual exchange. On the contrary, it powerfully revealed the coloniality of knowledge and power in higher education and how it manifested, differently, in two distinct locales in the Global South. This partnership constituted less of a shared ground, than one of complex and uneven relationships – a terrain of dissonant intimacies. It is not surprising that these were Southern scholars working in marginalised areas of research, like gender and sexuality. Such a double marginalisation produces specific sets of choices – and ambivalent desires – when it comes to being included in an unequal global epistemic order (and responding to neoliberal demands). This article contributes to larger debates on decolonising higher education, by shifting the scale from the North–South to the complexities of knowledge-making and power within and across the South.

‘It’s not a priority’: Australian generalist classroom teacher experiences of teaching the Health Education component of Health and Physical Education

The study purpose was to address a gap in the literature and gain a better understanding of Australian, specifically Tasmanian, primary school classroom teachers’ experiences of teaching health education (HE). By classroom teachers we mean generalist primary teachers, who in Australia typically teach all eight key learning areas (KLAs). In most Australian states and territories, HE exists within the health and physical education (HPE) mandated KLA, but often the delivery of HE is a responsibility assumed by classroom teachers as opposed to HPE specialists. Our study involved 53 primary classroom teacher participants in Tasmania and examined the state of play of HE. We used a mixed methods research design that included an online survey through which participants were subsequently invited to take part in semi-structured interviews. While participants tended to value HPE, we found HE was even more disenfranchised than physical education, within HPE as an already marginalised area, compared to “more academic” KLAs. This “double marginalisation” contributed to reports of inconsistent delivery of HE. Consistent with the health promoting schools agenda, we suggest a whole of school approach in addition to increased collaboration between teachers and increased HE professional learning opportunities for classroom teachers is required to facilitate change and increased prioritisation of HE in schools.

Retailers’ incentives for green investment in differentiated competition channels

With increasing public environmental awareness, green activities in retail and distribution processes have become crucial tools for retailers to boost demand and enhance competitiveness. This study develops an analytical model to study the green investment choices of two differentiated retailers dealing with a common green manufacturer. It also explores the impacts of these investment choices on the manufacturer's operational decisions, channel efficiency, consumer welfare, and the environment. We derive three main results. First, the powerful retailer always favors green investments, whereas the less powerful (inferior) retailer may either prefer or avoid green investments. The fiercer the inter-retailer competition, the lower the willingness of the inferior retailer to introduce green investments. Second, although all supply chain parties may disagree on their preferences for retailers' green investments, a bilateral green investment (i.e., both retailers make green investments) can reach an incentive alignment for all firms if the differentiation between retailers is low enough and the competition between them is not substantially fierce. Moreover, a bilateral green investment improves consumer welfare and channel efficiency because of the great demand expansion and double marginalization reduction. Third, the retailers' green investments can motivate the manufacturer to produce greener products, but they do not necessarily benefit the environment. We show that the supply chain's economic sustainability aligns with its environmental sustainability only if the environmental improvement efficiency of green investments is substantially high. We further examine the impact of retailers with differentiated green investment abilities and the manufacturer's green investment efficiency to verify the robustness of the main results.

Information sharing in the presence of retailer's risk aversion and altruism

AbstractIn highly uncertain times, firms are increasingly exhibiting risk aversion to uncertain demand and altruism to supply chain partners to reduce risk and maintain stability. To deal with high demand fluctuations, numerous firms are adopting information‐sharing strategies. We study how a retailer's risk aversion and altruism affect her demand information‐sharing decision by constructing game‐theoretic models. We first show that information sharing makes double marginalization (DM) stronger and hurts the retailer and generates an information‐sharing DM effect. The retailer's risk aversion strengthens this effect, while her altruism weakens the effect. Meanwhile, information sharing generates an uncertainty reduction effect on the risk‐averse retailer by reducing volatility and an altruism improvement effect on the altruistic retailer by increasing the manufacturer's profit. Whether information sharing benefits the retailer depends on her level of risk aversion and altruism. The retailer prefers voluntary sharing when both her risk aversion and altruism are high.

Price timing and financing strategies for a capital-constrained supply chain with price-dependent stochastic demand

We investigate the pricing timing strategy in the context of trade credit (TC), under which the capital-constrained retailer applies for deferred payments from its supplier. Based on the wholesale price offered by the supplier, the retailer determines the order volume before observing the random demand and the selling price after observing it (a.k.a., price postponement). We formulate the Stackelberg game to show how their equilibrium decisions and profits are affected by: the pricing timing, financing mode, the demand structure. In a multiplicative demand framework, the analytical and numerical results indicate that TC alleviates double marginalization problem, depending on price timing and demand structure. With the traditional bank finance (BF) as a benchmark, the supplier is reluctant to provide TC to the retailer without postponement when the market is extremely sensitive to price. Postponement not only benefits both members, but also enhances retailer’s repayment ability and thus participants’ preference for TC. They can reach an agreement on utilizing price postponement and trade credit as long as the supplier choose a suboptimal wholesale decision for deferred payment that is slightly lower the optimal one. We further extend our results to consider the additive demand structure.

Department of English, Govt College Women University, Faisalabad, Pakistan

The present research brings to light women’s subjugation and marginalization that has also been discussed and portrayed by fictional writers around the world. Their subjugation is not the product of individuals’ intended actions rather it is the result of cultural, social, economic and political structures within which human beings live. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini also portrays the plight of women under the oppressive patriarchal system. Women are shown as doubly marginalized due to patriarchy as well as social, cultural, economic and political conflicts in Afghanistan. The Marxist-feminist views of Rowbotham from Women’s Consciousness, Men’s World and Gilman’s Women and Economics are applied to A Thousand Splendid Suns to highlight the double marginalization of women in a society, who bear the tortures of patriarchy, economic inferiority and socio-political extremism. If they have to live in such patriarchal societies, they are destined to bear the violence in form of physical and psychological exploitations by the power structure of patriarchal system. This study also critically investigates the socio-political extremism, economic subjugation and patriarchy as an obstacle in the development of women in Afghanistan. Women’s socio-economic liberation can put an end to male hegemony and supremacy, patriarchy and gender discrimination. Keywords: Patriarchy, Women Oppression, Marginalization, Political system, Social injustice, Economic subjection

Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul

Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul

The coordination mechanism of a risk-averse green supply chain

PurposeThis study aims to establish a centralized decision-making game model and manufacturer-led Stackelberg game model based on factors of risk aversion of supply chain members and product greenness. The research aims to study whether the introduction of the “cost + risk sharing” contract affects coordination of this type of green supply by calculating the optimal decision of each mode.Design/methodology/approachThis research designs a supply chain model under centralized and decentralized decision-making. This model uses the Stackelberg game to calculate the optimal decision under decentralized decision-making to evaluate the effect of a green supply chain and then analyze the “cost + risk sharing” contract and the degree of coordination of the supply chain. A sensitivity analysis is conducted on the centralized mode for the impact of variables on the supply chain.FindingsThis research finds a double marginalization effect in decentralized decision-making, and the risk aversion coefficient plays a decisive role in the utility of supply chain members. The specific range of risk- and cost-sharing factors allows supply chain members to achieve Pareto improvements and provides decision-making based on the corresponding management strategies according to each other’s risk preference degree.Research limitations/implicationsThe influence of each variable on the green supply chain in the centralized mode is studied by MATLAB numerical simulation. It provides reference for green supply chain members to formulate corresponding management strategies according to each other's risk preference degree.Originality/valueThis research innovatively considers manufacturers and retailers to explore the market demand for product greenness. It introduces a novel “cost + risk sharing” contract to coordinate the green supply chain.

Legal Mobilisation by Women with Disabilities in Indonesia

Abstract Women with disabilities have experienced double marginalisation. As women, they remain marginalised by patriarchal culture and religious conservatism, and as persons with disabilities, their participation in social, political, economic, and cultural life has been constrained by the state and society’s barriers. Even though Indonesia has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the marginalisation of women with disabilities remains an important issue. In this context, by applying a qualitative method, this article addresses the question of how women with disabilities mobilise existing legal and institutional resources to pursue empowerment. It finds that in the process of legal mobilisation, they employ three different strategies: advocacy from above, advocacy from within, and advocacy from below, through which a better condition has been achieved but the challenges for further empowerment remain in place.

“Elista Is Our City”: Kalmykia’s 2019 Protests and Politics in Russia’s Republics

Abstract Russia’s republics – regions in the larger federation that are territorially defined and represent areas where non-Russian ethnic populations are concentrated – have been generally quiescent during the two decades of Vladimir Putin’s leadership. However, in 2019 Kalmykia was the site of protests against leadership changes in which locals had scant political voice. This paper focuses on the demonstrations in Kalmykia and provides a detailed account of the associated causes, motivations, and outcomes. The protests augur an increased awareness of the double marginalization of Russia’s minority groups, both politically and on the basis of nationality, in the country’s governance. This condition has notable implications given Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

Input price discrimination and strategic inventory

AbstractWe consider a two‐period model with strategic inventory and explore the welfare implications of banning input price discrimination. We find that inventory incentive is stronger under input price discrimination. Under uniform pricing, an increase in an inventory of a firm equally lowers the rival's wholesale price. It expands the rival's production, suppresses the firm's output, and weakens the incentive. We also find that the weak incentive leads to higher quantity‐weighted average wholesale and retail prices. Therefore, allowing input price discrimination alleviates double marginalization and leads to higher consumer surplus and social welfare.

Pricing Decision of Three-Level Agricultural Supply Chain Based on Blockchain Traceability and Altruistic Preference

The traceability of blockchain is crucial to the quality and safety of agricultural products, primarily when bacterial contamination occurs in the agricultural supply chain. To gain a deeper understanding of the impacts on the quality and safety of agricultural products, we built a three-level agricultural supply chain model comprising one retailer, one manufacturer, and one supplier. We aimed to explore the impact of blockchain traceability and retailers’ altruistic preference on pricing decisions and channel member profit, and to then examine the motivation of enterprises to participate in blockchain technology. Our study showed that: (1) blockchain technology has the potential to improve the prices and profits of supply chain members without considering the cost of blockchain; and (2) blockchain technology has the potential to improve the retailer’s price when the unit variable cost of blockchain is higher than a certain threshold. It can also reduce the manufacturer’s price and the supplier’s output. However, the excessive cost of blockchain can also aggravate the double marginalization effect of the supply chain. When both the unit variable cost and the fixed input cost of the blockchain are low, each enterprise has the incentive to participate in the blockchain. (3) In the scenario of the altruistically-preferred retailer, when the blockchain variable cost is lower than a certain threshold, the retailer’s altruistic preferences can improve the manufacturer’s and supplier’s profit, but it will reduce the retailer’s profit.

Non-Cooperative Corporate Social Responsibility, Bargaining and Double Marginalization in Bilateral Monopoly

Non-Cooperative Corporate Social Responsibility, Bargaining and Double Marginalization in Bilateral Monopoly

A Double Margin

Studying the share of women in the historical avant-garde movements, Susan Rubin Suleiman (1990) supported Marguerite Duras's assessment of the avant-garde women writers as being “doubly intolerable” – since they do not correspond to the usual revolutionary point of view or that of women. Suleiman introduced the concept of the double margin to refer to the problem of critical and historical reception of women’s avant-garde writing. Since the procedures of the double marginalisation of women’s avant-garde poetics can be observed in different cultural contexts and literary fields, in this paper we will analyse the critical and historical reception of women writers on the Croatian and Yugoslav literary scene who contributed to the literary magazine Krugovi (Circles, 1952–1958) in the 1950s. Although this generation of writers interprets the aspiration of poetry towards a “universal language” (A. Rimbaud) following the avant-garde usages of grammar, figures of speech, and a depoeticised vocabulary, the traditional readings of women's poetics are often based on the expression of women’s experience, the mind and body split, and the biographical interpretation. On the other hand, the oeuvres of women from the Krugovi generation call for a revaluation of the relation between their poetic strategies and the possible gender politics of their poetry. Therefore, we will demonstrate the possibilities of this revaluation by turning to poetical choices, treatment of the lyric subject and the genre in the texts of Vesna Krmpotić, Vesna Parun, and Irena Vrkljan.