Investigating decision-making in logistics management in the era of disruptive technologies: editorial contribution
Introduction
During the past century, logistics as an industry and academic discipline has been experiencing revolutionary growth and development (Liao-Troth et al., 2012). The literature in the domain of decision-making in logistics management has been focussing on understanding the role logistics and logistics managers play in creating value for the customer and other associated stakeholders (Walters, 1999). To achieve the desired objectives, logistics managers are often seen to undertake mainly three strategic decisions at the firm level (Wanke and Zinn, 2004). The first stream of decision-making involves resolving the dilemma between make to order vs make to stock decisions. Process technology, obsolescence, lead-time ratio, delivery time and perishability are some of the key variables affecting this decision-making (Soman et al., 2004; Van Donk, 2001). The second stream of decision-making is whether the manager would deploy push or pull inventory logic as a strategic decision. The push decision is based on the basic of demand planning and forecasting, whereas the pull decision is based on the demand itself (Davis et al., 2014). Different studies have tried to explain the factors behind the logic and its possible implications to strategic decision-making in logistics management (Abad, 2003). The third strategic decision is whether to adopt a centralised inventory system or a decentralised one. Freight considerations, transportations costs, location node issues and inventory turnover are some of the relevant variables that may affect inventory decentralisation decisions (Abdul-Jalbar et al., 2003; Zinn et al., 1989). Based on these strategic decisions, logistics system across the supply chain gets configured. This configuration of logistics systems makes a critical contribution towards managing disruptions such as COVID-19 and recovery of supply chains post such disruptions (Singh et al., 2020; Choi, 2020).
Scholars have stressed the importance of investigating and understanding the evolution of logistics with digital revolution that is being currently experienced due to the emergence of disruptive technologies (Daduna, 2019; Liu et al., 2020). Christensen (1997) first termed disruptive technology and explained it as a type of technology to replace the existing mainstream technology in unexpected ways (Liu et al., 2020). These disruptive technologies have often been simpler and usually easier to use and handle (Dhillon et al., 2001), making them economically and operationally appealing to managers. Big data (Nagendra et al., 2020a, b), artificial intelligence (Rodriguez-Espindola et al., 2020), blockchain (Wamba et al., 2020), 3D printing (Mohr and Khan, 2015), Internet of Things (IoTs) and smart robots for automation (Goldsby and Zinn, 2016) are different examples of the disruptive technologies. These disruptive technologies are expected to dominate the industries and transform the value delivery process with their new and exciting features at affordable prices (Aryal et al., 2018).
Disruptive technology constitutes one of the most important developments applied in the logistics sector, as it significantly disrupts and shifts established operating models and decision-making systems (Wamba et al., 2020). Disruptive technologies are influencing the way logistics managers are making the three strategic decisions discussed above along with several other new decisions which are crucial in this new normal era (Forbes Insights, 2018; Singh et al., 2020; Choi, 2020). For instance, disruptive technologies enable real-time sharing of information across the supply chain (Gammelgaard, 2019) and thereby question the applicability of earlier adopted processes in logistics management including the traditional demand forecasting techniques and inventory management approaches. The volume of data that is available at the disposal of logistics managers for decision-making is growing exponentially, especially with integration of digital production technologies and IT-enabled management processes. The processing capacity to conduct advance analytics on the large datasets for making intelligent decisions are also becoming available to logistics managers. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are being deployed to automate decisions that were earlier made by logistic managers based on their limited past experience. Blockchain introduces decentralised digital ledger that increases the certainty and security of data available for decision-making in logistics management. These disruptive technologies are completely changing the nature of competitive advantage that a supply chain can attain by working on its logistics and the associated decisions. Further, addressing multiple strategic decisions in logistics-related problems involve multiple rules, which require an integrated and smart approach to achieve better results (Petrović et al., 2018). Therefore, the transformation introduced by these disruptive technologies to decision-making in logistics management has to be researched for achieving the following three objectives:
Falsify previous results that are not applicable after the introduction of disruptive technologies in logistics management,
Confirm the validity of already existing results in this disruptive technologies context and
Develop new approaches/frameworks for decision-making in logistics management by incorporating the features offered by disruptive technologies
To encourage research focussing on these objectives, we announced in early 2019 a call for papers for the special issue to be published in International Journal of Logistics Management (IJLM), focussing at the intersection of logistics management and disruptive technologies for making intelligent decisions. Through the call for papers titled ‘Decision-Making in Logistics Management in the Era of Disruptive Technologies’, we invited conceptual and empirical papers that were using a variety of methods to answer research related to one of the indicative themes listed below:
What are the drivers and barriers of adopting disruptive technologies in logistics management for decision-making?
What are the prerequisites that the logistics function in a supply chain should satisfy before embracing disruptive technologies for efficient and effective decision-making?
What are the quantitative and qualitative inputs that disruptive technologies for decision-making in logistics management can offer? How can they improve the decisions made?
How is the decision-making in logistics management impacted by implementation of disruptive technologies?
What are the risks and uncertainties in relying on disruptive technologies for decision-making in logistics management?
How should the existing decision-making frameworks in logistics management be adapted to capture the changes and transformations introduced by disruptive technologies?
What can these disruptive technologies offer for decision-making in inventory management between the point of origin and the point of consumption?
What can these disruptive technologies offer for improving the decision-making in reverse logistics?
How are these disruptive technologies enabling the shift from linear way of thinking about supply chains to complex adaptive ecosystems and networks consisting of nodes and links?
How can disruptive technology driven decision-making in logistics management contribute towards achieving sustainability dimensions?
Call for papers also clarified that the above themes/questions were only indicative and not exhaustive in any manner. We expected the submissions received in response to call for papers to develop or challenge the existing literature or theories, so that it adds new knowledge on this topic and fall in line with the IJLM's focus. In this editorial, we capture the review process adopted and summarize the final set of papers that were accepted for publication as part of this special issue.
Review of related literature
Until recently, logistics decision-makers heavily relied on businesses' past internal and external data as well as managers' tacit knowledge for making predictions. Due to the intense global competition and the uncertainty, logistics sector has started deploying a variety of disruptive technologies and mechanisms, aiming to become more efficient and effective (Hofmann and Rusch, 2017). Experts claim that disruptive and data-driven technologies are implemented faster in transport and logistics rather than other sectors (Deloitte, 2015a, b; Balan, 2018), forcing significant changes and improvements by transforming them into digital forms. Hence, the logistics sector and their corresponding supply chain have altered their operations in ways never predicted, to deal with the variety of complexities of the contemporary business environment (Özemre and Kabadurmus, 2020).
To understand the adaptations that logistics management and its associated decision-making has undergone due to the intervention of disruptive technologies, we reviewed the relevant literature published in operations management, production management, supply chain management, logistics management, technology management and information management-related journals. The relevant articles were identified by searching for keywords “logistics, logistics management” and “disruptive technology/ies, big data, big data analytics, Internet of Things, IoT, blockchain, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0” and “decision or decision-making”. After the initial screening, articles that were purely focussing on logistics management, decision-making and disruptive technologies, and those discussing decision-making in logistics management without the integration of a disruptive technology were excluded from the review. Table 1 summarizes the shortlisted 21 articles by presenting their objectives, disruptive technologies considered, decision-making context in logistics and their findings.
Articles in the special issue
We received 19 full paper submissions and evaluated the individual submissions for their fit to the scope of the special issue by specifically checking if their contribution were at the intersection of three literature sets – logistics management, decision-making and disruptive technologies. One submission was desk rejected by the guest editors, as it was not fitting to the scope of the special issue. Each of the remaining 18 submissions was sent out to at least two reviewers for evaluation. After receiving the review reports from the reviewers, the guest editors carefully read the individual submissions in the light of review reports and made a decision to reject five submissions and invite the remaining 13 submissions to incorporate the suggestions made by the reviewers. Out of these 13 submissions, seven were accepted for publication in this special issue. We believe that these seven accepted articles, with their varying research objectives and methods, advance the field of research at the intersection of logistics management, decision-making and disruptive technologies. We also feel that they open up several interesting new avenues for future research in this exciting domain. We have summarized the keywords, research objective, method and contribution of all the accepted articles in Table 2.
Final remarks and avenues for future research
The articles in this special issue address multi-faceted decision-making challenges and presents solution approaches for logistics management in the era of disruptive technologies. We believe this to be one of the initial special issues linking disruptive technologies to the domain of operations, logistics and supply chain management. The special issue offers new insights on the impact disruptive technologies can have on decision-making in logistics management that opens up interesting avenues for future research, as listed below:
Disruptive technology related
What are the values/capabilities offered by different types of disruptive technologies to decision-making in logistics management (i.e. mapping the value to decisions)?
How and when can the capabilities offered by different disruptive technologies enable the implementation of transparency in making decisions related to logistics management across the supply chain?
What can be the impact of enhanced tracking and monitoring of shipments using disruptive technologies on decision-making related to logistics management?
Logistics/transportation related
How can disruptive technologies be used to decide between optimal modes of logistics across the supply chain?
What role can disruptive technologies play in decision-making associated with last-mile logistics?
Logistics manager related
What are the behavioural attitudes of logistics managers that restrict the adoption of different types of disruptive technologies?
Why are certain specific disruptive technologies less adopted by logistics managers in comparison to others?
Green logistics related
What and how much impact disruptive technologies can have on decision-making associated with the reduction of logistics carbon footprint?
How can disruptive technologies contribute towards sustainable performance measurement/management of logistics?
Context related
How does the preference towards the adoption of different types of disruptive technologies for decision-making in logistics management change between industries, countries, mode of logistics, product characteristics and businesses (B2B to B2C)?
How can global logistics and its associated supply chain benefit by adopting disruptive technologies, especially when the countries involved in the supply chain are at different levels of maturity in infrastructure and institutions?
These avenues for future research are indicative and we believe answering such important questions by anchoring to disruptive technologies will contribute towards making logistics and its associated management decisions more intelligent.
This paper forms part of a special section “Decision Making in Logistics Management in the Era of Disruptive Technologies”, guest edited by Vijay Pereira, Gopalakrishnan Narayanamurthy, Alessio Ishizaka and Noura Yassine.
The authors thank all the reviewers who spent their invaluable time to review the articles on time, which enabled us to complete this special issue successfully. Authors would also like to thank Dr. Tuhin Sengupta and Ms. Elena Koumi for sharing feedback on the initial call for papers and offering support on the literature review, respectively. Finally, the authors thank the editor-in-chief of International Journal of Logistics Management, Prof. Britta Gammelgaard and journal's senior associate editors and associate editors for accepting our special issue proposal and offering clear guidance in the review and publication process.
