供應商關係風險於食品安全議題之研究

Abstract

While corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics gather concern in the past several years, researchers over the world have enriched the study and diversified it into various aspects and issues including finance, employee, and environment. Nonetheless, business ethics on food safety issues have not been under spotlight until several serious intentioned food scandals damaged the world in the recent years. For example, in 2007, the scaring melamine-contaminated pet food exported from China killed thousands of pets in the US, followed by poison milk scare with the same toxin which killed four children and made 53,000 get kidney illness caused by Chinese food manufacturers in 2008. Researchers have revealed that the major power for food safety assurance is shifting from the public governance to private control. The importance of food safety control in all sections of food supply chain is also proofed. Retailers, as the final deliverer of food products in the supply chain, definitely carry the incentives and obligations to be a food safety monitors and controllers for the purpose of CSR and protecting their brand. However, the prior research on supply chain food safety is mainly on regulation policies, operational control, and diffusion of assurance systems. The academic does not provide retailers comprehensive determinants which includes unethical aspect for evaluating their suppliers' about supplier-caused food safety risk. Consequently, the purpose of this research is to build a model from a supplier evaluation perspective to determinate the supply chain relational risk in terms of supplier-caused food safety risk. We gathered survey items by constructing different item categories with a systematic way including different network levels and perspectives of both unethical behavior and investing in food safety. Empirical survey was conducted in a Taiwanese middle-sized grocery retailer and its general food suppliers on the risk probability of overuse artificial additive. Supplier evaluation data and real risk records were combined for analysis. Four latent constructs are extracted as collaboration, professionalism, process control and reaction, compliance with formal or informal contracts. Regression test reported a fairly good significance of the predictive power of those four factors. Level of vertical integration has also tested as a moderator but showed no significance. The results of this research brought more understandings toward supplier-caused risk. Since the survey items are all designed to be observable by retailers, this research provided extra contribution to the practical world.