Journal of Business Logistics最新文献

Supply chain disruptions regularly interrupt the normal operations of organizations, impairing their financial, operational, and service performance. Therefore, organizations must develop capabilities to enhance their resilience–their ability to anticipate, overcome, and transform after disruptions. The literature proposes that agility, adaptability, and alignment (AAA capabilities) enhance long-term organizational success but does not explicitly link these AAA capabilities to resilience. Motivated by conversations with senior supply chain leaders, our research explores how organizations utilize practices, behaviors, and structures to build AAA capabilities in their pursuit of resilience over different phases of disruption. We use a grounded theory approach, conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews with supply chain executives. Our findings contribute to the supply chain resilience literature by (a) highlighting how distinct practices, behaviors, and structures support the development of distinct AAA capabilities, (b) demonstrating which AAA capabilities are most influential in enhancing resilience during specific phases of a disruption, and (c) illustrating how the AAA capabilities operate in a feedback loop to synergistically improve resilience over the lifecycle of a disruption.

This study investigates the impact of supply chain digitalization on agility through the lens of innovation within firms. Employing a resource-based view and dynamic capabilities approach, we analyze the relationship between supply chain digitalization and agility. This exploration is essential for fostering an agile supply chain capable of addressing challenges post COVID-19. The empirical data were gathered through a survey administered in the Emirates. Factor analysis was performed to validate the measurement models and structural equation modeling techniques were employed to test the hypotheses. Further, the study analyses the mediating role of firm innovation between digitalization and supply chain agility within companies. The findings suggest that firm innovation serves as a significant mediator. Moreover, a multigroup analysis was conducted to examine the moderating effects in the research models, revealing that firm innovation plays a pivotal role in elucidating the mechanism between supply chain digitalization and agility. This study offers valuable insights into supply chain agility and resilience post COVID-19 and makes a significant contribution to the literature on supply chain digitalization.

Hospitals are searching for ways to improve supply chain efficiency. Drawing on the success of supply chain digitization in other industries, hospitals have increased their efforts to digitize supply chain operations via investments in IT to address pain points associated with supply disruptions and rising costs, including supply costs that account for more than 40% of operating expenses. Prior research fails to consider how IT investment decisions are justified concerning their impact on supply chain performance when the decision-maker sits outside the supply chain function. We draw on the Practice-Based Theory to explain how IT investment decision practices affect hospital supply chain efficiency (SCE). We use matched survey responses from hospital CIOs and IT managers and secondary data to examine the direct and indirect effects of various IT investment justification practices on SCE. We also investigate the role of moderated mediation effects. Leveraging PBT, we establish a different type of organizational practice in the supply chain management and logistics literature: IT investment justification practices. We extend the PBT and empirically challenge the implicit assumption that supply chain performance is not sensitive to IT investment decisions. Further, we demonstrate which IT investment justification practice is more beneficial to supply chain efficiency.

Last-mile logistics firms are facing increasingly volatile environments in which they must constantly cope with demand fluctuations. This study provides insights into how last-mile logistics firms can effectively respond to sudden demand surges caused by unexpected events. Based on the literature review and practitioner interviews, we identify six popular last-mile logistics response strategies and compare their effectiveness. We first develop a theoretical framework that can assess the effectiveness of multiple response strategies systematically by utilizing a well-known transport economics theory, economies of scale. We then conduct a series of simulation experiments to (1) empirically evaluate the performance of the six strategies using our framework and (2) examine if the best-performing strategy(s) differs from one operating condition to another using the contingency theory perspective. Results suggest that many popular strategies used in practice are “non-viable” ones that can result in diseconomies of scale and reduce firms' competitiveness. Results also suggest that the set of “best” and “viable” strategies that can bring competitive advantages to firms varies from one firm to another depending on the firm's operating conditions.

Manufacturing firms face complex after-sales challenges, including spare part shortages. While additive manufacturing (AM) offers a solution by minimizing costs and complexity, not all firms adopt AM equally, and research on differences in AM adoption in the context of spare part shortages is surprisingly scarce. To close this knowledge gap, we apply the awareness-motivation-capability (AMC) perspective. Our comparative case study of AM applications in 17 firms identifies three approaches how firms adopt AM—the corrective, preventive, and anticipatory approach. We find that the specific configuration of contextual factors related to a spare part shortage determines the approach firms follow. Using the AMC perspective, we discover and explain why firms differ in adopting AM despite suitable spare part characteristics and similar contexts. Through uniquely analyzing spare part shortages, our study contributes to AM research by challenging the assumption that economic justification is the sole driver of AM adoption and instead revealing that it is a context-dependent process, with awareness and motivation serving as critical yet underexplored antecedents.