Analysis of strategic behaviors within supply chains: complementarity between modeling and experimentation methodologies

Chapitre 6International audienceWhen using a modeling approach to study supply chain performance it is often considered easier to represent and formalize the economic and technological parameters of the logistics systems rather than focusing on more human-oriented factors. The fact that human behavior can have a strong impact on overall performance, however, tends to limit purely techno-economic models. With this in mind, the objective of this chapter is to analyse decision-making behaviors of supply chain managers in order to assess their potential impact on the local performance of each node of the logistic system, as well on the overall performance of the supply chain. The second objective of this chapter lies in its highlighting the strong complementarity between two distinct scientific approaches applied to analyze the performance of identical systems. The first part of this chapter introduces the two scientific approaches used : game theory and experimental economics methodology. The second part first precisely defines the decision situation of the inventory management considered in this research, before developing the results of the game theory and application of the experimental economics protocol. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the added value of the method and introduces further perspectives