Knight不确定环境下战略性外包的价格协商与合同选择研究

Firms in China are suffering from impacts of increasing cost of raw material and human resource and the appreciation of exchange rate risks. In such circumstances, the danger of a winner's curse from the vendor's side arises. How to negotiate the strategic outsourcing price and what outsourcing contract to select are key practical issues faced by managers under cost uncertainty in order to break the winner's curse and maintain a successful strategic outsourcing relationship. Most previous studies lay out a vision of operating costs precise enough to be captured in a probability distribution (risk uncertainty). But in reality, complicated economic environments and heightened concerns about uncertainty make clients and vendors generally not very confident about the likelihoods of operating costs' occurrences. This dimension of uncertainty, characterized by a set of probability measures for prediction, is frequently referred to as Knightian uncertainty or ambiguity in economics. Therefore, studying price negotiation and contract selection of strategic outsourcing under Knightian uncertainty can prove useful for theory and practice. The main contents in this project are summarized as follows:.1) This project proposes a dynamic α-maxmin expected utility framework that reflects the decision maker's utility under Knightian uncertainty. In particular, this utility function accounts for partial ignorance about probability distributions and displays the implied ambiguity aversion of clients and vendors towards incomplete information..2) This project derives the call option value for vendor and the put option value for client and builds a cooperative Nash bargaining game and a non-cooperative ultimatum game based on real options and dynamic α-maxmin expected utilities. These models offer a better understanding of price negotiation and provide robust outsourcing pricing strategies for the client and the vendor..3) This project considers asymmetric information and designs two contracts to provide incentives for the vendor to reveal private information truthfully. Under the first contract, the client gives a bonus-incentive that is contingent on outsourcing price and outsourcing timing. Besides the bonus-incentive part, the second contract allows the client, at a cost, to verify the state announced by the vendor and fine the vendor when false statement is detected. These contracts are also studied using real options and dynamic α-maxmin expected utilities..4) This project compares these contract outcomes and explores practical insights into contract selection of strategic outsourcing. .In summary, theories and methods in this project generalize prior risk uncertainty research on outsourcing, enrich and extend the theories and methods of bounded rationality behaviors under uncertainty and provide valuable decision-aids for designing and implementing outsourcing strategies.

在运营成本不确定的环境下，研究战略性外包的价格协商与合同选择问题对于我国的企业避免"胜者的诅咒"和建立长期互利的外包合作关系具有重要的科学价值和实践意义。已有研究多假设运营成本的概率测度唯一，而现实中它往往难以预料且无先例可循，表现为概率测度不唯一，即Knight不确定或含糊（ambiguity）。在Knight不确定视角下本课题的内容包括：1）构建动态α-maxmin期望效用函数以量化Knight不确定环境下决策者的效用，实现细腻刻画决策者的认知局限性和含糊规避偏好；2）将这一函数分别与实物期权、纳什讨价还价博弈和最后通牒博弈相结合，推导不同含糊规避偏好下的外包定价合同；3）研究Knight不确定和非对称信息条件下外包价格与时机选择的激励合同。4)建立决策情景，归纳外包价格合同的选择策略。以上研究将丰富和拓展不确定环境下有限理性行为决策理论与方法，为实施战略性外包提供科学有效的决策工具。

近年来，我国众多的承包商正面临着前所未有的不确定性与“胜者的诅咒”的挑战。如何在深度不确定的环境下协商外包价格以及选择合同已成为一个迫切需要解决的实践难题。. 不同于以往研究，本课题在Knight不确定或 ambiguity（含糊）的环境下，将决策者的含糊偏好、外包合同类型和期权价值纳入一个统一的框架中，建立了协商定价和合同选择模型并求解，试图解决以下四个问题：承包商的合同定价和比较、外包时机与价格的协商、外包数量与价格的协商、外包的激励合约及协商一致的主观概率。. 本课题利用实物期权、博弈论和四种效用函数对上述四个问题展开研究。研究发现：. （1）在α-maxmin多先验期望效用下，承包商的定价随乐观度的增加而降低。当承包商乐观度大于（小于）其阙值时，承包商的定价随着含糊度的增加而降低（增加）。当决策者的效用为Knight不确定因素的非线性幂函数时，这种关系不变。. （2）在Maxmin多先验期望效用下，含糊度的增大导致外包时机的提前和外包价格的下降，削弱了提议方的先动优势。. （3）在Choquet期望效用下，含糊偏好参数与外包价格存在非线性的关系。信任度对外包数量的影响取决于承包商和发包商的预测值之间的关系。. （4）本课题提出非极端Maxmin多先验期望效用，能够细腻刻画决策者的悲观度并满足动态一致性。在该效用下，外包协商一致的主观概率随着决策者悲观度的增加而降低，长期项目和短期项目的外包时机临界值和价格随着含糊度的增加而降低。. 围绕上述研究，本课题组在《Transportation Research Part B: Methodological》和《OR Spectrum》上各发表论文1篇，被SCI检索2次和SSCI检索1次。累计发表（含录用）中文核心期刊论文4篇，相关论文获奖2项。培养已毕业研究生5名和在读研究生6名。项目负责人高咏玲受国家留学基金委资助访问伦敦大学国王学院一年，入选北京市高等学校青年英才计划项目。. 本课题的科学意义在于：（1）开辟分析外包决策的新视角，推广了风险环境下的研究。（2）揭示了决策者的含糊偏好和含糊度对投资决策的影响，拓展和深化了不确定环境下投资决策的理论与应用。（3）研究结论为应对深度不确定环境下“胜者的诅咒”和成功实施外包合作提供参考。