Urbanness and Its Implications for Logistics Strategy: A Revised Perspective

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2020-01-01
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Ralston, Peter
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Rose, William
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Supply Chain Management
Supply chain management is an integrated program of study concerned with the efficient flow of materials, products, and information within and among organizations. It involves the integration of business processes across organizations, from material sources and suppliers through manufacturing, and processing to the final customer. The program provides you with the core knowledge related to a wide variety of supply chain activities, including demand planning, purchasing, transportation management, warehouse management, inventory control, material handling, product and service support, information technology, and strategic supply chain management.
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Supply Chain Management
Abstract

Due to rapid urbanization, logistics providers are dealing with the conundrum of misaligned strategies for urban environments. Logistics providers often see the urbanness of an activity region as a constraint, while at the same time urban actors view logistics activities within their immediate environment as disruption. These attitudes obscure the value that logistics can provide for urban areas. The current research synchronizes the notions of urban and logistics by reconceptualizing urbanness (i.e., an area’s state of being urban) from the logistics service provider’s perspective. Utilizing a conceptual abstraction technique, the concept of urbanness is revised and differentiated to redefine urban areas as value clusters looking to balance supply and demand globally while also providing access to service at the local urban level. Further, logistics service providers are seen as offering value to urban areas through network logistics and localized logistics. Identifying these differentiated value propositions suggests that transportation providers should respond to urbanness not as a constraint, but as a context where ambidextrous strategies provide the greatest return. Our conceptual revision of urbanness offers promising future avenues of research dealing with urban complexity and logistics providers value appropriation.

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This accepted article is published as Rose, W.J., Ralston, P.M., Autry, C.W., "Urbanness and Its Implications for Logistics Strategy: A Revised Perspective." Transportation Journal, vol. 59 no. 2, 2020, p. 165-199. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/753993. Posted with permission.

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Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2020
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