Journal of Business Logistics最新文献

The increasing trend toward digitalization in logistics poses a significant managerial challenge, particularly by fundamentally changing the traditional, manual workplaces in intralogistics. Although intralogistics processes have, in some cases, already been automated or are supported by smart technologies, humans remain an inevitable part of future intralogistics but with changing work characteristics. This study aims to examine the influences of the transition toward Intralogistics 4.0 on work characteristics of intralogistics employees. First, a systematic literature review on work characteristics and job satisfaction in a broader Logistics 4.0 context was conducted. Thereafter, a qualitative, explorative methodology was employed to examine the perception of work characteristics that impact job outcomes such as job satisfaction, motivation, and performance at different Intralogistics 4.0 maturity levels. The results of semi-structured interviews conducted across seven companies demonstrated the significant, heterogeneous changes of work characteristics related to the type of technology applied in Intralogistics 4.0. Our findings indicate that the development toward Intralogistics 4.0-implemented workplaces does not have a simple or predefined impact on humans; instead, the individual design is relevant and can improve the workplaces with more opportunities for satisfying and motivating jobs.

If you ignored the news, isolated yourself from the stock market, and were not a fan of musician Jack White, here is what else you may have missed in 2021: logistics and supply chain management matter to the point that the field is now under a microscope (McLain et al. 2021). While media pundits and politicians continue to incorrectly say “the” supply chain (Singman, 2021), it is refreshing that, for the first time ever, the public at large understands that getting products to retail shelves or to one's doorstep can actually be rather complicated.

At the time of this editorial, one of the most significant challenges for many companies around the globe is responding to pandemic pent-up demand and adjusting to the related supply chain constraints and bottlenecks (Pylas, 2021; Thorbecke, 2021). Globally, a shortage of hourly labor for essential supply chain roles has created a ripple effect that continues to interrupt business operations and exacerbate supply chain disruptions (Taylor, 2021). Likewise, companies are struggling to recruit and retain professional supply chain talent, especially as supply chain roles evolve to become more strategic—literally to those that help shape business strategy (Supply Chain Digital, 2020).

Looking back, the last two decades have seen major growth in the importance of logistics and supply chain management (L&SCM) as an invaluable career and as a major research discipline. Yet, most business schools have been unresponsive to market needs, with many displaying an unwillingness to be adaptable, flexible, agile, or improvisational enough to include L&SCM education within their degree offerings. More inexplicably, many business schools do not even have an L&SCM course in their core curriculum (Opatrny-Yazell & Nelson, 2021).

The reality is that operational efficiency will always be integral to L&SCM decisions, but when it consistently comes at the expense of developing L&SCM processes that adapt to market changes, the outcome can be disastrous. This is one of several reasons that as JBL editors, we emphasize research that underscores the strategic importance of L&SCM both within the firm and across the extended supply chain. We want to see the research reflected in JBL aligned with current business reality—because supply chain stuff is really tricky, even for Elon Musk.

After experiencing the recent global supply chain disruption—the largest since WW2—L&SCM strategy seems to be evolving. The lean manufacturing and inventory strategy once coveted by most companies is losing favor. For instance, the pioneer of the lean strategy, Toyota, has paused its Just-in-Time (JIT) approach (Trivedi, 2021). Disruptions in recent years have exposed vulnerabilities of sole sourcing strategies, while globally accessible e-commerce allows consumers to demand low prices, even

In globalized factor markets, firms face threats of resource scarcity, which challenge purchasing managers in interpreting signals about complex and uncertain factor-market conditions. When future resource supply is threatened, purchasing managers are affected not only by the expected scarcity but also by the uncertainty of the scarcity threat. We investigate how expected resource scarcity and scarcity uncertainty affect managerial attention to scarcity perceptions, which, in turn, impacts the likelihood to respond to the scarcity threat by collaborating with the major supplier. We collected data from 203 purchasing managers about their experience with a scarcity incident and developed new scales for assessing perceived scarcity. Our findings indicate that expected resource scarcity results in increased levels of managerial attention while scarcity uncertainty reduces managerial attention. Importantly, managerial attention mediates the effect of expected resource scarcity and scarcity uncertainty on purchasing managers’ propensity to collaborate. The results illustrate the contrary impact of expected resource scarcity and scarcity uncertainty on purchasing managers’ attention and highlight managerial attention as an important behavioral consideration to understand how purchasing managers mitigate environmental risk. Finally, we identify individual (responsibility, experience) and organizational (trust) factors that increase purchasing managers’ attention to scarcity threats and collaboration.

Supply (chain) disruptions present considerable managerial challenges with potentially severe consequences. To protect their firms, managers often must decide whether or not to take proactive measures. Protection motivation theory suggests that individuals' intention to respond to a threat proactively results from their cognitive appraisal (situational interpretation) processes. These processes evaluate the characteristics of potential coping responses (e.g., its effectiveness in averting the threat) and the threat itself (e.g., its severity). Building on this framework, this study presents an analysis of what drives managers to, or deters them from, proactively responding to the threat of a disruption. The results from a discrete choice experiment suggest that decision makers have a strong subconscious focus on cost-related aspects of a specific proactive action, all the while consciously prioritizing the efficacy (effectiveness) of the action over its costs. Moreover, decision makers' perceptions of the relative importance of proactive action attributes deviate considerably from their actual choice behavior. This study investigates additional behavioral aspects of supply chain risk management such as a proactive personality, risk attitude, control appraisal, and experience, many of which have significant effects on the relative importance of certain proactive action attributes. The improved understanding has three relevant messages for managerial practice, which are related to the perception–action gap, the importance of self-assessment and self-awareness, and training.

To prevent customers from leaving stores empty-handed when encountering a stockout, retailers increasingly leverage their inventory visibility and order fulfillment capabilities to implement “save the sale” tactics. Retailers have several logistics service options available in designing “save the sale” stockout recovery initiatives: “buy at store—ship from (different) store” and the “buy at store—ship from DC,” leading to different order fulfillment speeds. In addition, there is the home delivery approach, which is generally more convenient to customers than the option of store delivery for customer pick-up. In this paper, we explore how customers evaluate and respond to varying elements of these “save the sale” stockout recovery services when experiencing an in-store stockout. Building on justice theory and literatures on service recovery and impression formation, we develop a series of four experiments. We explain and provide empirical evidence for (1) why and how customers assess specific stockout service recovery dimensions (i.e., order fulfillment speed and delivery location) as more just, (2) how customers appraise the justice of these bundled stockout recovery dimensions, (3) how purchase involvement and monetary offers impact these perceptions, and (4) how justice perceptions and stockout recoveries impact the likelihood of “saving the sale.”

As we introduce the final issue of 2021 and reflect on our first year as editors, it is encouraging to note that the content and rigor of the articles in Volume 42 reflect what we hope to see throughout the rest of our tenure. We cannot take credit for the 23 articles in the Journal for 2021, of course, so we would like to thank the previous JBL editors—Tom Goldsby and Walter Zinn—for their unwavering commitment to advance the field. We have been fortunate to usher in 2021 with articles from four special topic forums (STFs), and we appreciate the time and service of the four teams of STF editors.

As incoming editors, we encouraged the continued development of the Journal in several ways (Richey & Davis-Sramek, 2020), and Volume 42 illustrates future objectives. The first three issues include invited thought pieces from the STF editors (Ballot et al. 2021; Choi et al. 2021; Rao et al. 2021; Wieland & Durach, 2021), as well as peer-reviewed conceptual articles (Dong & Franklin, 2021; Novak et al. 2021). They all extend the boundaries of logistics and supply chain management (L&SCM), and they provide a depth of theoretical and practical insight to guide future research.

The papers published in 2021 also reflect a variety of data sources and the application of rigorous methodological approaches. Because of the novelty of many of the phenomena of interest, Volume 42 offered rich case studies that utilized both multiple cases (Ellram & Tate, 2021; Plasch et al. 2021) and single cases (Gligor et al. 2021; Sternberg et al. 2021). Rich qualitative data were also used in a thematic analysis (Nath et al. 2021). Further use of primary data was reflected in quantitative studies that employed the Delphi technique (Durach et al. 2021; Kurpjuweit et al. 2021), a traditional survey approach (Iyengar et al. 2021), a scenario-based role-playing experiment (Falcone et al. 2021), and a natural experiment (Wallenburg et al. 2021). Archival data were utilized to construct complex network structures (Wiedmer & Griffis, 2021), offer time series analysis (Miller et al. 2021a, 2021b), and examine outcomes using a difference-in-differences technique (Wiedmer et al. 2021). Finally, Volume 42 offered empirically grounded modeling approaches (Ambra et al. 2021; Li et al. 2021; Sternberg & Denizel, 2021). We hope that future submissions continue to reflect an array of diverse methods that will generate more insight and depth of understanding to L&SCM phenomena.

Perhaps what we are most pleased to see is the expanded geographic footprint in Volume 42. Most notably, the collection of authors in the articles published in 2

The emergence of logistics and supply chain management as a fully mature business discipline may depend on the development of foundational supply chain management perspectives embracing a focus on responsiveness. Hundreds of papers in our field conceptualize responsiveness and related concepts in disconnected ways ignoring this potentially valuable foundation for investigating supply chain strategic and logistical adjustments. Although these extant studies highlight many important issues related to responsiveness, their conceptualizations and nomological networks vary considerably. This diffuse focus seriously hinders efforts to create an overarching theoretical perspective in a dynamic field without one. The result is a masking of promising research directions that could help define the discipline. Drawing from the organizational economics, logistics, and supply chain management literatures, we begin the argument that responsiveness—realized through logistics and supply chain management—has strong potential as our defined foundational perspective. All roads to superior performance depend upon supply chain responsiveness to the environment, supply chain members, stakeholders, and the consumer. Our proposed Responsiveness View of supply chain management supports the exploration of how supply chains compete successfully amidst disruption and change, helping to define a young, theoretically distinct, research domain.

Global disruptions can cause unprecedented variability in demand and supply, necessitating rapid repurposing of supply chains. This research investigates supply chain plasticity and a corresponding unique strategy—operational repurposing. Resource dependence theory and social network theory are used to assess the effects of firms’ network positions on firm engagement in operational repurposing. Social network analysis and econometric models are utilized to analyze 426 995 supply chain contractual relationships and 64,750 CEO network relationships embedded in 136 firms. The results show that in both supply chain and CEO networks, entrepreneurial network position increases a firm's likelihood to repurpose existing operations, while prominent position reduces it. Furthermore, CEO entrepreneurial network position enhances the positive relationship between supply chain entrepreneurial network position and the likelihood of repurposing. This research provides a deeper understanding of how structural networks affect a firm's supply chain plasticity. It helps industry and policy leaders identify suitable firms to prepare their supply chains in the event repurposing is required.

While social media has become an integral part of modern-day life, it is a largely overlooked topic in supply chain business-to-business setting. This study utilizes dyadic survey data collected from both supplier account managers and their customers to explore social media's impacts in the digitalized supply chain context. Drawing upon the knowledge-based view of the firm, the study proposes and tests a conceptual model. Results indicate that supplier account manager's social media use can increase his or her product and competitor knowledge, which can positively influence customer outcome. Further, the moderation test suggests that when perceived customer demandingness is high, the relationship between social media use and knowledge will be stronger. This study draws much-needed attention to social media as an emerging digital supply chain management too.

Retail firms now offer same-day delivery via hybrid fleets that augment a privately owned delivery fleet with crowdsourced assets. As research on crowdsourced delivery continues to grow, it has implicitly assumed deliveries being conducted with an entirely crowdsourced fleet. In this study, we adopt a sociotechnical systems perspective to consider the phenomenon of combining privately owned delivery vehicles with crowdsourced assets into a hybrid fleet. In this exploratory effort, we examine how elements of the hybrid delivery system, namely, driver autonomy, compensation, fleet size, fleet mix, and demand intensity affect cost and service in last mile delivery. Using a multimethod simulation combining agent-based and discrete event techniques with home delivery data from a major US retail pharmacy, we show how the emergent outcomes of this hybrid delivery system are a consequence of the constituent elements’ interdependence. Our experiments suggest a convex relationship between crowdsourced driver compensation and cost performance, such that low and high compensation amounts may actually increase unit delivery costs relative to a median compensation level, and a nonlinear negative relationship between compensation and fulfillment time. We find that these effects are moderated by fleet design (in terms of size and vehicle type mix) and order arrival rate intensity.