Supply chain ethics and transparency: An agent-based model approach with Q-learning agents

This study examines suppliers' decision making regarding supply chain ethics and transparency using an agent-based model with Q-learning agents. A supplier may not accurately identify the demand for its product because the impact of supply chain ethics on the market is opaque. Thus, we define each supplier as a Q-learning agent that learns via an iterative game process. Our simulation results show that suppliers maintain low levels of ethics and transparency, which is a collusion behavior. Several suppliers deviate from collusion, but most of the suppliers collude to manage the supply chain unethically and opaquely.