Editorial

• Date: 29 April 2021
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-05-2021-487
• Pages: 305-319
• Published date: 29 April 2021
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics
• Author: Vijay Pereira,Gopalakrishnan Narayanamurthy,Alessio Ishizaka,Noura Yassine

Editorial

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 logisti cs 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.

Editorial

305

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.

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 32 No. 2, 2021

pp. 305-319

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-05-2021-487