Decision environments, organizational structure, and logistics performance: An exploratory study.

摘要

A primary and long-standing perspective of business logistics is that it is an organizational process relying on coordinated efforts among various sub-processes to achieve desired service levels at minimal costs. Despite the existence of the very clear and visible systems concept of logistics, there remains a gap between the concept and actually attaining it in practice. Various precursors for achieving such behavior within the business organization have been identified and suggested over the years by the research and consulting communities but the topic has yet to be adequately addressed through rigorous, empirical investigation.; This research attempts to bridge this gap by investigating how both an organization's structure and culture, as they face a particular decision making environment, impact logistics cost and service performance. The general research methodology for this endeavor involves theory conceptualization, drawing hypotheses, developing survey items, data collecting, formulating scales, and analyzing relationships.; The statistical outcomes of the research allowed for some strong inferences. The environmental factor, dynamism, has a very clear and strong negative influence on logistics cost management. This environmental volatility, however, was positively moderated by the organization's degree of solidarity, which is the degree to which an organization's members maintain a common vision and work holistically. Organizational solidarity, meanwhile, had a strong direct positive relationship with logistics service capabilities but was negatively moderated by environmental dynamism.; The strength and relationships among these variables provide new or, at least, refreshed insights into logistics and organizational behavior. Such findings contribute to a stronger theoretical framework important to the understanding of the nature of the organization and its relationship to logistics performance. The results are of interest to both scholars and practitioners who are involved in organization, implementation, and performance issues as they relate to logistics.