Electrification, autonomous driving, blockchain and in-home delivery: game-changers in today’s world of transportation and logistics

This article reviews the major agents of change that are currently trending in transportation and logistics.  Electrification is one of these trends as not only passenger vehicles, but also commercial vehicles seek both economic and sustainability objectives in its adoption.  Information technology is another agent of change that is enabling technologies such as autonomous driving, blockchain solutions, and in-home delivery. One surprising global trend is the rise of nationalism and the resulting slow-down in momentum in global trade barrier reductions. This geo-political turbulence and the uncertainty it brings will require future supply chains to consider greater elements of flexibility in supply chain design

Cultural and structural forces: A potentially symbiotic or dysfunctional relationship in the journey towards supply chain collaboration

Despite its promises to generate superior supply chain performance, supply chain collaboration remains an elusive goal for many organizations. While much research has explored various facets of successful management of supply chain relationships, the complexity of factors that can impact the quality of collaboration make implementation difficult to achieve. This paper uses a series of case studies of twelve exemplary European firms from a supply chain standpoint to explore potential frameworks that can better categorize those factors that lead to exemplary supply chain collaboration. Both barriers and initiatives to overcome those barriers are identified and categorized as either structural or cultural. The study reveals an interesting relationship between these categories and provides a series of propositions that can inform future confirmatory studies in supply chain collaboration