Journal of Business Logistics最新文献

Academic scholars and US political leaders have called for a better understanding of the connection between public policy and supply chain resilience. In this structured literature review we analyze and synthesize literature published in high-quality public policy and business journals at this intersection. We leverage existing frameworks in public policy and supply chain resilience to help analyze the relationships studied to date, resulting in a conceptual framework that elucidates the connections between public policy and resilience and leads to the development of a platform for future research inquiries. We encourage and provide guidance for future work in the space from both supply chain management and public policy scholars that can drive actionable results for policymakers, firm decision-makers, and the welfare of society.

This article conducts an in-depth review of the existing literature on network evolution, with an emphasis on understanding how supply chain networks change and evolve. This review has identified a total of 1148 articles in the area of network evolution, comprising 120 articles from business literature and 1028 articles from non-business literature. Adopting a structured approach, we provide a roadmap for supply chain network evolution (SCNE) to systematically build a multidimensional understanding of SCNE and bridge the gap between theoretical underpinnings and research methods useful to investigate SCNE. We first broaden the scope to identify insights on dynamic network evolution from a wider array of disciplines. Next, we categorize the drivers of SCNE identified within the business literature into exogenous and endogenous factors. We then synthesize theoretical frameworks that lay the groundwork for future research directions proposed in the context of these frameworks. Finally, we outline contemporary methodologies for studying network evolution and evaluate their relevance and application to the supply chain management (SCM) field. Collectively, this roadmap paves the way for a deeper, interdisciplinary understanding of SCNE and outlines a future research agenda, providing a forward-looking path for supply chain researchers to explore SCNE.

Increasing labor cost levels and workforce shortages have caused retailers to pay increased attention to their order-fulfillment operations, which continue to largely depend on manual order picking systems. The operations and logistics management literature suggests that optimizing tertiary packaging, which groups products into full unit loads for storage and shipping, is an important way to improve order picking performance. While most retailers handle products at the level of secondary packaging when fulfilling orders, this packaging level remains largely unexplored. To address this gap, we analyze 3,380,596 picks performed by 185 order pickers of 4957 products in a grocery retail warehouse in Germany. Our findings indicate that secondary packaging characteristics directly affect order picking performance and that this effect is moderated by traditional product characteristics (e.g., product weight and volume), as well as elements of warehouse design (e.g., pick and stack levels). From a managerial perspective, our findings may help to bridge the gap between logistics managers and packaging engineers and provoke further research on the trade-off between operational and environmental performance.

In the face of supply chain disruptions, firms are expected to swiftly recover and resume operations. Traditional strategies focus on restoring operations to pre-disruption states while largely maintaining the existing supply network structure. Recent cases, however, highlight a different approach: supply chain plasticity, wherein firms undergo significant structural shifts in supply network design as a response to disruptions with the goal to improve performance. Drawing on the foundations of supply chain responsiveness and network theory, we investigate how (and if) firms redesign their supply chains against a backdrop of increased disruptions and the implications supply chain plasticity has on resilience. Rooted in network theory, this study not only theoretically compares, contrasts, and connects prior concepts with supply chain plasticity but also empirically investigates whether firms exhibit a plastic response by modifying their supply chain network structures—specifically focusing on structural holes, centrality, and clustering network dimensions. Furthermore, we hypothesize that network plasticity impacts firm performance in the form of time to recover from a disruption. The findings demonstrate that the existence and significance of network plasticity in shaping firm responses to disruptions are indeed present and can be beneficial. We also provide evidence that supply chain plasticity is an efficacious strategy to enhance resilience and recovery performance amidst heightened disruption frequency. As firms increasingly face dynamic and complex environments, understanding and leveraging network plasticity will be vital for sustaining competitive advantage and achieving long-term success.

The expansion of e-commerce has increased scholarly interest in Business-to-Customer (B2C) last-mile delivery (LMD). LMD occurs in a unique logistical context and presents many new, evolving challenges worthy of scholarly investigation. While most LMD studies emerged after 2018, existing literature reviews predate the “boom.” Current reviews have focused at the macro-level, considering LMD secondarily within broad topics like omni-channel or micro perspectives that address granular issues like transportation within LMD. The majority of studies have focused on analytical models that investigate different concerns compared to conceptual and empirical studies. Our study examines an up-to-date sample of 104 articles in LMD literature from a process, meso-level perspective. We develop a framework, classifying studies around pre-delivery, delivery, and post-delivery activities that produce valuable insights linking these activities. We synthesize the prior literature and offer a research agenda that incorporates different stakeholder perspectives and identifies methodological opportunities. The analysis reveals several areas of future research that were validated and enhanced by practitioner interviews.

The emergence of the supply chain management (SCM) discipline and its integration with other research fields, such as logistics, has sparked research that aims to combine scientific rigor with business utility. Calls for increased theory-building and practically relevant research have driven the discipline's development. This article advocates the wider use of grounded theory methodology, providing practical guidance to ensure reliable theoretical contributions. The study employs a multi-method approach (bibliometric analysis, mapping review, and state-of-the-art analysis) to quantitatively review existing grounded theory research on logistics and SCM issues, investigate its methodological attributes, and outline its strengths and weaknesses. Based on these findings, guidelines are proposed for methodologically sound grounded theory building in the discipline. Derived from empirically grounded theory studies, these guidelines address issues that hinder the effective use of the method, such as misunderstanding its fundamentals, improper use of literature, coding challenges, inadequate research design, and difficulties in transitioning from analysis to theorizing. By adding an empirical perspective to supplement existing guidelines, the study aims to enhance the quality of SCM research. While grounded theory is not the only solution for advancing the discipline, its judicious use is advocated to bring rigorous, theory-driven, and practice-oriented contributions to logistics and SCM research.