With the strategic importance of discerning opportunities and threats from technological development to achieve sustainable competitiveness, exploring technological trends becomes critical for a successful technology strategy in logistics. Given the rapid pace of development and varying technological options, logistics also increasingly requires methodological support and appropriate data to reduce the complexity and burden of exploring technology trends. While previous research has largely relied on experts’ insights, the value of patent-based approaches for exploring technological trends has been underestimated in logistics. To address this gap, this study proposes a topic modeling-based approach using logistics-related patents registered at the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO). The core of the suggested approach is latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), allowing the identification of logistics-related technological topics behind patents. The topics identified by LDA are further investigated regarding both filed-level and firm-level trends. The suggested approach is expected to offer implications of the use of patents for the purpose of exploring the trends of technology development outside the organization in logistics. In addition, we believe that the information on the technological topics and their trends generated by the suggested approach can offer an enhanced understanding of the technological landscape in logistics.

Rapid growth in the e-commerce market, caused by COVID-19, has led to fierce competition. The intense competition in e-commerce market triggers firms to strengthen their competitiveness by providing logistics services. Furthermore, as sustainability becomes important in consumers’ choices of products or services, e-commerce companies’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activities are becoming important. Therefore, our purpose of study is to examine the attributes of e-commerce’s competitiveness in the perspective of ESG in the logistics service and to suggest differentiation strategies. We analyzed the importance of each ESG attribute in the logistics through a conjoint analysis. As a result, we found that e-commerce consumers value ESG activities in the order of distribution in the social (9.866%), partnership in the governance (9.637%), operation of distribution center in the social (8.570%), packaging in the environmental (8.320%), operation of distribution center in the environmental (8.262%), purchasing in the social (8.200%), and distribution in the environmental (7.153%). Accordingly, we suggested ESG strategies such as win-win cooperation, opening information on the working environment in delivery and distribution centers, development of a shared logistics platform, preventing COVID-19, and raising consumers’ awareness of eco-friendly delivery.

While firms understand that implementing green supply chain management (GSCM) is important, they seem uncertain about how to manage their green initiatives by looking beyond their own facilities. Building a green supply chain requires the participation of all partner firms across the supply chain. However, partner firms are different in size, situation, capabilities, and even industries. Thus, encouraging them to participate in green initiatives is difficult. Many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) hesitate to comply with green initiatives as they require a substantial amount of investment. This study empirically examines the causal relationship between the partnership governance mechanism and the success of GSCM. Based on transaction-cost economics theory (i.e., opportunism) and relational perspectives (i.e., trust) as the theoretical background, this study found that governance mechanisms between suppliers and manufacturers are positively related to GSCM performance. It showed that formal governance is important in the process-management side, while relational governance is critical for sharing knowledge in GSCM. The implications of the study results provide strategic insights on how the choice of governance mechanism affects GSCM performance and thus a firm’s competitiveness.

Eco friendly management has received attention from business as an important competitive source. Thus, an emerging body of studies is interested in the implementation of green supply chain management (GSCM). Previous research in this field has acknowledged the importance of GSCM. However, the capability that enables a firm to successfully adopt GSCM is not well researched. This study empirically examines dynamic capability as an antecedent of GSCM, with the aim of proposing a causal relationship between dynamic capability and GSCM. The result of this study shows that implementing GSCM with dynamic capability enables a firm to achieve successful GSCM practices, and that this in turn leads to enhanced organizational performance.

In Southeast Asian cities, it is common for logistic companies to operate a heterogeneous fleet of delivery vehicles with motorcycles being the preferred vehicle to handle the final phase of delivery. In such scenarios, heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem (HFVRP) is generally applied to plan an optimal delivery. However, in many downtown cores of large and rapidly developing Southeast Asian cities, HFVRP is neither viable nor reliable because of road usage restrictions. The purpose of this article is to develop and test a different approach that accurately takes these restrictions into account and provides viable and more sustainable results. Restrictions in this paper refer to situations of urban areas in Vietnam where (i) certain vehicle types are prohibited in specified areas or where narrow alleyways limit the utilization of vehicles that exceed the road capacity and (ii) certain roads are exclusive to certain vehicle types. In networks, limited access and exclusive lanes are represented as links, or arcs, exclusive to one or another. Taking these limitations into consideration, we have developed a unique model, which we have termed Vehicle Routing Problem with Exclusive Links (VRP-EL). The model was validated and tested for its performance on scenarios with varying ratios of exclusive links. Scenarios up to 500 customers were tested on a meta-heuristic algorithm, simulated annealing. VRP-EL produces realistic outcomes. Limiting certain links to be selected according to vehicle types increases overall travel distance. However, this increase outweighs the cost of re-planning and rerouting had they not been constrained initially. The reduction in traveling distance leads to fossil fuel reduction for the overall system. The estimation of reduced carbon emissions through applying the proposed model is presented. Considering the severe traffic congestion and carbon emissions caused by motorcycles in Vietnam, the proposed model leads to a sustainable road environment.