A Model on Information Sharing by Social Responsibility in Supply Chain

This paper constructs a two-level supply chain decision model involving one manufacturer, one retailer and consumers. The manufacturer owns private information about product quality, and signals it by corporate social responsibility (CSR) behavior. The retailer undertakes CSR with the manufacturer. In order to investigate the role of CSR on signaling quality, and the influence of the retailer’s CSR-sharing behavior, this paper builds an information sharing model. The results show that under certain conditions, the retailer’s CSR-sharing behavior does not have the impact on the manufacturer signals its quality information, and the manufacturer’s CSR level helps to promote the retailer’s investment in CSR. The results provide manufactures’ managers with an implication on choosing an indirect way to share quality information, and disclosing quality information as much as possible.