ABSTRACT Lightweight, time‐sensitive shipments represent a narrow mid‐mile logistics segment in which cargo drones may complement, rather than replace, road freight. This study develops a scenario‐based analytical framework to compare cargo‐drone, dedicated‐road, consolidated‐road, and hybrid services under common shipment, route, return/repositioning, and service assumptions. Technical feasibility is screened before cost, operational emissions, and reliability are evaluated. Five scenarios examine baseline operation, higher utilization, lower electricity‐grid carbon intensity, weather‐constrained operation, and elevated diesel price. The results show that drone service can reduce operational emissions and cost relative to a dedicated urgent road movement when the mission is technically feasible. However, consolidated road service remains the lowest‐cost option, and road transport retains higher standalone reliability. Hybrid allocation is favored in four feasible scenarios because road backups improve reliability, whereas the weather‐constrained scenario is truck‐favorable due to drone infeasibility. The framework supports selective corridor screening and modal allocation, not general freight substitution.
ABSTRACT The global container shipping industry underwent significant transformations from 2016 to 2023, shaped by post‐Hanjin bankruptcy consolidation, COVID‐19 disruptions, and the onset of mandatory decarbonization. Throughout these phases, container shipping lines (CSLs) had to maintain high efficiency while striving to improve their environmental footprint. To understand how these targets intertwined, this study employs Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Window to evaluate operational efficiency evolution (RQ1) and Gray Relational Analysis (GRA) treating CO 2 as an undesirable output to assess environmental trade‐offs (RQ2) among nine major CSLs. The findings reveal upward efficiency trends in the post‐Hanjin phase (2016–2019) driven by alliances, followed by significant volatility with widened performance gaps during COVID‐19 (2020–2021). Efficiency stabilized but diverged during the decarbonization phase (2022–2023). While the trade‐off between efficiency and emissions intensified during disruptions, it diminished as the industry transitioned toward greener standards. Notably, comparison between GRA and DEA results indicates that GRA penalizes high‐DEA performers with elevated CO 2 levels, exposing hidden environmental costs. The study concludes with managerial strategies for green investments, policy recommendations for equitable regulations, and theoretical advancements in multi‐method efficiency assessments. This research underscores the industry's shift toward sustainable resilience, offering critical insights for stakeholders navigating future uncertainties.
ABSTRACT Freight forwarders are key intermediaries coordinating logistics operations in maritime container transportation, which is itself vital to global supply chains. Freight forwarders face diverse operational challenges to service quality, efficiency, and financial sustainability. Despite the importance of freight forwarders, research has predominantly focused on ports and shipping lines, while risks specific to freight forwarders remain insufficiently understood. To address this gap, our study draws on expert interviews and a MAXQDA‐based thematic analysis to categorize these risks. The findings show that these challenges are exacerbated by unreliable schedules, geopolitical disruptions, and heightened cybersecurity exposures due to accelerating digitalization. The study contributes toward developing a freight‐forwarder‐focused risk assessment framework, suggests theoretically grounded directions for future mitigation research, and offers practice‐oriented implications to contextualize the findings.
ABSTRACT E‐commerce is a rapidly growing and evolving sector. Its negative impact on sustainability has also increased, with the last mile being a key contributor. The sector is however struggling to tackle this impact, even though previous studies have tried to measure it. These studies have focused on one or two of the three pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental and social), using independent metrics and lacking real‐world implementations. This has prevented easy quantification and comparison of the overall sustainability of last‐mile strategies. In this research, we establish a method to determine the cost of the negative impact of the last mile in e‐commerce on sustainability. To tackle the problems of previous literature, we evaluate the three pillars of sustainability through a single value (cost of sustainability), facilitating the comparison between pillars and strategies. Furthermore, the usability of the model is confirmed through its application to a case study and a real‐world dataset (more than 48,500 orders). This implementation highlights the capacity of the model to identify elements that influence the sustainability of the last mile (e.g., demand density and operational capabilities), underline the importance of the economic pillar or compare different strategies.
As supply chain topics like tariffs have become increasingly prominent in public and political discourse, the influence of potential biases from politics has also grown. This study investigates how differences in political ideology influence supply chain management decisions. We use a between-subjects vignette experiment with a final sample of 216 supply chain professionals who evaluated a new sourcing plan proposed by a manager in response to tariffs. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions where the proposal by the manager included statements that were conservative (pro-Trump), liberal (anti-Trump), or politically neutral. These statements influenced participants' view of the manager's political ideology and resulted in different levels of support for a tariff-related plan and the manager. Our findings include three key insights. First, conservatives were more likely to support a tariff-related sourcing plan. Second, a manager including a political statement did not significantly impact employee support for the plan, but it did decrease employee support of that manager. Third, ideological dissimilarity between an employee and their manager strongly decreased the support of both the plan and manager-even in the neutral condition. Overall, political ideology biases supply chain decision making, suggesting an important new stream of research.
ABSTRACT This conceptual paper examines interplanetary logistics as an extreme analytical case for transportation and supply chain theory—one that exposes a largely unexamined assumption embedded in most resilience research: that when disruption occurs, recovery is eventually possible. In space operations, that assumption is not available. Removing it does not merely stress‐test existing theory; it reveals which parts were resting on borrowed ground. The paper integrates insights from transportation resilience, closed‐loop logistics, autonomous operations, and hub‐based network design into a conceptual framework organized around four interdependent design drivers: redundancy, closed‐loop sustainability, autonomous and adaptive operations, and hub‐based network architecture. It also argues that framing circularity as a “sustainability” objective may obscure what closed‐loop capability actually is in any resource‐constrained system—not an environmental aspiration, but operational competence. Four propositions clarify how transportation and supply chain systems must be structured when resupply is uncertain, failure is difficult to reverse, and continuity depends on self‐sufficiency not typically required in terrestrial networks. Implications for Earth‐based systems are treated as secondary, with relevance for humanitarian logistics, Arctic operations, and military supply environments.
Truck drivers play a central role in U.S. supply chains, yet many experience severe burnout. Changes in national policies affect how truck drivers conduct their work, and stress from such an extra-organizational demand may be a powerful driver of burnout. This study extends the Job-Demands Resource (JDR) model by considering the buffering effect of a job resource (organizational support for policy change) that directly targets that extra-organizational demand, on the relationship between the policy change stress and burnout. It further evaluates whether an additional job-based resource (job discretion), or even a job-based challenge demand (work pressure) if job-based resources are unavailable, are needed to enable that buffering effect. Analysis of cross-sectional surveys from 91 drayage carrier truck drivers reveals the relationship to be attenuated when either (or both) policy support or job discretion were high. Work pressure exhibited no enabling effect, indicating job-based challenge demands may not be substitutable for job-based resources. Half of the sample responded to a second survey 2 months later, which was used to evaluate method bias concerns.
Effective inventory management is critical for retail and wholesale (R&W) firms. Yet, little is understood regarding R&W firm-level inventory dynamics during supply chain disruptions. Such dynamics have implications for transportation providers tasked with hauling these goods. This research integrates the shock response framework with organizational theories regarding firms' motivations to reduce uncertainty to explore how macro-level supply chain disruptions affect the level and conditional variance of R&W inventories. We assemble a panel dataset combining firm-level data from public R&W firms with Census Bureau data on logistics constraints and estimate mixed effect location scale models. Results corroborate our theoretical predictions.
Employee self-perceived competencies have been shown to affect numerous facets of employment, such as employee career mobility, willingness to learn, and job satisfaction, yet little is known about the contributors to these self-perceptions in logistics/supply chain management (L/SCM) employees. Using data from 339 employees who graduated within the last 5 years from L/SCM programs, we explore the impact of learning modality (online vs. face-to-face), academic performance, age, and gender on employee self-perceptions of functional logistics knowledge, logistics-related technology skills, and managerially relevant soft skills. Findings reveal that for employees in logistics management roles, face-to-face learning (vs. online learning) enhanced self-perceived soft skills but had no significant impact on logistics knowledge or technology skills. Conversely, employees in logistician roles reported higher self-perceived competencies across all areas when learning face-to-face. For employees in both roles, academic performance positively influenced knowledge and technology skills but not soft skills, while age differentially affected competencies across roles. The results underscore the need for L/SCM programs to optimize learning across modalities and integrate soft skills training to better prepare graduates for diverse professional challenges.
This study explores the differing characteristics of freight traffic at the largest U.S. airports specializing primarily in cargo shipments ("cargo-focused airports") against those that have diversified freight and passenger roles ("mixed-purpose airports"). Evaluating data from 2018 to 2024, the results show that during the 12 months ending in April 2024, traffic at cargo-focused airports modestly outperformed mixed-purpose airports. However, the traffic patterns at cargo-focused airports exposed them to more risk in three significant areas. First, cargo-focused airports experience higher year-over-year fluctuations due to their relatively small size and the diverse mix of carriers they serve. Second, cargo-focused airports are more heavily dependent on a single carrier group, in most cases, FedEx, UPS, or Amazon Air. Nine of the 15 largest cargo-focused airports derived at least 95% of their traffic from one group, compared to only four mixed-purpose airports. Finally, these airports face higher imbalances between inbound and outbound traffic, which makes them more vulnerable amid changing market conditions. Although we posit that cargo-focused airports are poised for growth, their strategic agendas must account for the additional risks they face. Federal agencies and trade associations should take steps to assist airports in addressing these challenges.
Supply chain management has traditionally focused on networks of decision-making nodes that manage the physical flow of goods. In recent years, attention has increased to service supply chains. One underexplored example is that of news media, which has undergone a profound transformation due to digitalization. News media is considered both a unique service supply chain in its own right and an enabler of operant resources of knowledge for supply chain managers across many industries. Paradoxical tensions in this supply chain can inhibit knowledge creation and effective decision-making. As such, this study employs paradox theory to catalogue critical, persistent tensions arising from the digitalization of news media. Leveraging a systematic literature review, we contextualize these tensions and further propose both/and solutions that reconcile persistent competing demands. The findings advance the discipline by establishing the news media service supply chain as distinct and extending paradox theory into this new context. In practice, we recommend various strategies (e.g., integrating digital-native workflows, strengthening verification processes, improving media literacy, and embedding transparent governance mechanisms) to help reestablish credibility. Doing so ensures stakeholders can facilitate more effective knowledge management and mitigate many of the impacts that news media have on broader physical/service supply chains.
With the expansion of international trade, railways play an increasingly pivotal role in supporting high-quality logistics development in China. This study employs the entropy-TOPSIS method and econometric regression to objectively evaluate the contribution of railway logistics. Indicator weights are determined via the entropy method, and provincial development levels are assessed using TOPSIS, followed by regression analysis to quantify impacts on logistics quality. Results demonstrate that railway logistics significantly enhance high-quality logistics development, with railway freight volume serving as a core driver of efficiency and service improvement. Control variables such as government fiscal expenditure exhibit limited effects, suggesting the dominance of railway logistics in shaping logistics outcomes. The findings highlight the necessity of increasing investment in railway infrastructure and optimizing freight network layouts to promote sustainable, innovative, and open logistics systems. This research provides both a novel methodological framework and empirical insights for advancing high-quality logistics in China.
Market opportunities fluctuate for Ultra Low-Cost Carriers (ULCCs) in US commercial aviation. This paper examines the industry growth of ULCCs through a taxonomy based on infrastructure, equipment, people, and technology. The focus then turns to estimates from a panel of market data to model the behavior of four carrier classes, including ULCCs and National Legacy Carriers (NLCs). The model helps investigate the evolution of the aviation market structure in the US via estimates of how ULCCs and NLCs respond to population, tourism, per capita income, and service levels. Through this growth phase, ULCCs matched NLCs in responding to some factors but differed significantly in others. The findings suggest that airlines examine their relationships with the system's basic elements and interdependence among carriers before determining developing responses. Further, airline managers and other managers in the industry, for example, airport directors, should consistently reexamine responses to market changes.
While the substantial growth of e-commerce has transformed air cargo from a peripheral service into a major revenue source in air transportation, airports, key nodes in this network, have increasingly benefited from this shift. The emergence of new players such as Amazon Air has significantly influenced the revenue growth trajectories of many airports. Despite this trend, the determinants guiding Amazon's airport selection strategy remain poorly understood. By analyzing data from 62 U.S. airports between 2010 and 2023, this study employs an Instrumental Variables Probit model to shed light on the key factors that influence Amazon's airport choices, thereby providing insights to help airports better align with the operational needs of major e-commerce carriers. The results reveal that Amazon prefers to choose airports that are non-hub, have good freight infrastructure, are far from urban centers, have low ground delays, and have a large scale of regional employment, while the per capita income has no significant level. These findings indicate the core logic of the “decentralized” layout of e-commerce logistics: by avoiding the high cost and congestion of traditional hubs, relying on professional facilities and flexible scheduling to achieve efficient performance, which confirms its high sensitivity to operational efficiency and scheduling freedom.
The interplay among actors in European global value chains (GVC) is evolving due to increased interactions with logistics service providers (LSP). This research explores the characteristics of the emerging business relationships between logistics and manufacturing companies in Europe. Qualitative insights from 16 automotive logistics experts reveal transformations in GVC dynamics, manufacturer dependency, and driving factors. The analysis shows a growing influence of LSP, marked by extended contracts, tariff setting, facility locations, and operational design. This shift reduces traditional power asymmetries, enhancing logistics firms' strategic leverage, as workforce and logistics resource shortages empower logistics providers in the automotive sector GVCs.
Global supply chain managers continue to be confronted with major supply chain disruptions that have increased container shipping lead times. Because increased lead times can further propagate these disruptions, the literature suggests that supply chain managers can leverage logistics flexibility by switching to air freight in times of uncertainty and volatility. However, these examinations have largely assumed that supply chain managers will leverage this capability in times of uncertainty. This study contributes to this literature by examining the manifestation of the logistics-flexible response at the operational level when containerized shipping lead times increase. Building on theory concerning how firms respond to supply shocks, this study develops a middle-range theory that posits that supply chain managers will switch to air freight to maintain coordination in their supply chain as containerized shipping lead times increase. We posit that this effect will be positively moderated by dependency on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and value density. To test these predictions, we use detailed US import data on a sample of products that, prior to the pandemic, used a relatively equal split of containerized and air freight. The study finds support for the predictions.
With rapid increases in automobile ownership, the disposal of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) is an important factor for the automobile industry's sustainable development. As an institutional concept related to circular economy development, extended producer responsibility (EPR) is increasingly emphasized in ELV management. This study aims to identify barriers to EPR implementation in China's automotive industry and make recommendations for future EPR development. Based on policy analysis, we examine the historical development of China's EPR system and its implementation in the automotive industry. By examining the current state of ELV recycling, we identify barriers to EPR implementation in policy, regulation, technology, and producer engagement. We suggest that by learning from international experience, China can create supporting systems to ensure effective EPR implementation, which requires collaboration among multiple actors.
Military supply chain logistics (MSCL) managers have pioneered innovation and thought in supply chain management (SCM). Given the ongoing conflicts and escalating international tensions of our world today, understanding the unique attributes and capabilities that shape MSCL management is imperative for navigating the broader international trade landscape. MSCL managers develop and employ unique capabilities that allow them to dynamically balance efficiency, responsiveness, and agile deployment while handling sudden surges during conflict-driven disruptions. This literature review and synthesis offer insights into the evolution of MSCL and highlight its exceptional relevance to navigating the current global trade environment by integrating the findings with relevant business theories. The synthesis of MSCL's distinctive capabilities not only clarifies its importance in military operations but also provides valuable insights for business logistics and other sectors within broader SCM environments.
The last mile in urban logistics is a persistent challenge due to congestion, pollution, and inefficiencies. The Physical Internet (PI) concept offers a transformative approach by standardizing and interconnecting logistics operations, akin to data packet transfer in digital networks. This paper investigates the awareness and perceptions of the PI among researchers and business professionals, highlighting its potential in urban goods distribution through collaboration, technology integration, and standardization. Utilizing a qualitative survey methodology, the study gathers insights from European researchers and American business professionals. Findings reveal a strong consensus on the positive impact of PI on efficiency and sustainability in urban logistics. Key factors for successful implementation include collaboration, technology, and infrastructure. The study provides valuable insights for policymakers and stakeholders, identifying critical elements and challenges, and setting a foundation for future research and practical applications in the field of urban logistics.
This study explores the relationship between transportation infrastructure investments and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows across 39 OECD countries over 15 years. While previous literature has primarily focused on transportation infrastructure quality, our research shifts the focus to transportation infrastructure investments and their temporal dynamics, grounded in signaling theory. We argue that both the scale and year-over-year (YoY) growth of investments in road and rail infrastructure act as credible signals to foreign investors, reflecting a country's commitment to long-term economic development. Utilizing mixed-effects modeling on panel data, we find that a 1% increase in road infrastructure investment results in a 0.31% increase in FDI inflows, while a similar rise in rail investment corresponds to a 0.29% increase. Notably, a 1% YoY growth in road investment generates a 5.27% rise in FDI, whereas rail investment shows no significant YoY effect unless moderated by country size-larger nations benefit more from incremental rail investment. These findings highlight the importance of sustained and mode-specific infrastructure investment strategies. Our research provides both theoretical contributions by applying signaling theory in a macroeconomic context and practical implications for policymakers aiming to attract FDI. By distinguishing between the effects of road and rail investments and incorporating dynamic investment trends, this study offers new insights into the role of infrastructure investment as a strategic economic signal.
