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Clark University Logistics Project

Organizational Dynamics of the U.S. Logistics Industry:
The Impacts of Inter-firm Relations, Technologies, and Globalization
Welcome to Clark University Logistics Project Web site. This research project is funded by the National Science Foundation(BCS-0350697) and is directed by Professors Yuko Aoyama and Samuel J. Ratick at Clark University. Institutional support is provided by the George Perkins Marsh Research Institute.

PROJECT ABSTRACT

Although the logistics industry provides critical services to all sectors of the economy, few studies exist in Economic Geography that attempt to understand the organizational dynamics of this industry. The aim of this research is to understand the organizational dynamics of the logistics industry. We will focus on the following dimensions that are identified as particularly important: use of information technologies, intensifying global trade, and changing geographic requirements. We combine an in-depth empirical survey, comprised of a nationwide mail-in survey and semi-structured interviews of logistics users and providers in the Boston-Washington corridor, with an exploratory use of agent-based modeling. The model is designed to push the research beyond collection of anecdotal evidence and offer a structured and systematic understanding of organizational dynamics of the logistics industry.

The study will enrich understanding of the interaction between technology and space through examining the evolution of an industry that plays a central role in the contemporary economy. Research results will provide little known aspects of the logistics industry’s emerging organizational dynamics and inform academics and policy makers on the theoretical and practical understandings of the long-distance coordination of production.


INTERVIEWS

Purpose of the Interviews
The empirical research is designed to gather information on the agents’ properties, and on the forms of market governance in which firms operate. Our empirical study centers on the U.S. logistics industry, but also includes participation in international trade and provision of related logistics services by incorporating global connections that must be managed by the agents and also influence the forms of market governance.

We developed a geographically tiered sampling design that includes:
  1. a nationwide mail-in survey of logistics providers,
  2. telephone interviews of a sample of 50 logistics providers from the survey for additional details,
  3. in-person, semi-structured interviews of 30 logistics providers in the Boston-Washington corridor,
  4. in-person, semi-structured interviews of 20 logistics users which are subsidiaries of foreign firms in the Boston-Washington corridor, and
  5. in-person, semi-structured interviews of 30 logistics users in Massachusetts.
Interviews of Logisticsprovidersandusersin Boston-Washington Corridor
We plan to conduct semi-structured, in-person interviews of 50 logisticsusers, 30 domestic firms and 20 foreign firms in Boston-Washington corridor, which consists of the following nine Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSA) and Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA):
  • Boston-Worcester-Lawrence CMSA
  • Providence-Fall River-Warwick MSA
  • Springfield MSA Hartford MSA
  • New London-Norwich MSA
  • New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island CMSA
  • Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City CMSA
  • Dover MSA
  • Washington-Baltimore CMSA
The Boston-Washington metropolitan corridor has been chosen as an area of research for its significant concentration of manufacturing activities and its function as an important domestic as well as international logistics center.

We will conduct 30 interviews from a random sample of logisticsproviderslocated in Boston-Washington corridor, generated from a variety of industry lists from various firms, associations, and internet Web sites and stratified by firm type according to the taxonomy and agent properties. Questions will be asked on their
  • strategic decisions (e.g., entry/exit of new service, IT use/investment, sub-contractor selection/retention),
  • decision-making process and experience (e.g., criteria considered in recent strategic decisions, post-decision monitoring of objectives), and
  • industry trends (e.g., use of short-term vs. long term contracts, use of lowest-bidder vs. quality-trust subcontractors, competitive pressures, path-dependency, location-inertia).
An additional 20 foreign firms will be selected in the Boston-Washington corridor to address the impact of increased global trade in the logistics industry and address the complexities of cross-border logistics operation. We will focus on firms from Germany and Japan to exploit expertise and linguistic backgrounds of our research team. In spite of the recent economic downturns, both Japanese and German economies are strong global manufacturers and important trading partners to the U.S. economy, competitive in the 3 chosen industrial sectors (electronics, computers and medical devices), and operate under different market governance principles, thus serve as comparable parallels to our U.S. sample examples and provide insights to the complexities of cross-border logistics.

Interview questions for both domestic and foreign logistics users will be based on agent properties, and includes
  • firm characteristics (location, location of customers, location of vendors, participation in international trade, date of establishment, employment, annual revenue),
  • logistics characteristics (location of providers, transportation mode used, cost of outsourcing, types/duration of contracts, IT use and investments), and
  • strategic decisions characteristics (e.g., bidding vs. other forms of provider selection, criteria considered in recent decisions, outcomes).
Last updated on September 15, 2004