An Information Sharing Framework for Supply Chain Networks: What, When, and How to Share

Abstract

In decentralized supply chains, firms often deal with asymmetric information. One company's private information can be relevant for the other company to make better decisions. Therefore, what to share, when to reveal, and how to share the information are of interest. There has been an increasing interest in supply chain coordination issues under asymmetric information in the past two decades. However, few of them consider strategic information sharing among the supply chain members. Thus, this paper aims to review the development of information sharing in supply chain management. We classify the existing literature into three categories, namely (i) supply chain coordination under information asymmetry, (ii) information sharing technologies, and (iii) a strategic information sharing framework regarding what, when, and how to share. The related supply chain literature is reviewed based on the different focuses when dealing with information asymmetry. We report the research development and gaps of each category. Further, we propose some future research directions based on the findings from the literature review.