Today, more firms are outsourcing logistics functions by establishing logistics alliance relationships with third parties such as warehousing, transportation, and logistics firms, yet little is known about these relationships. This research provides new insights in logistics alliance relationships by examining the roles of trust and commitment in such relationships. A model of logistics alliances from a buying firm's perspective is first proposed and then empirically tested with a sample of 339 buying firms with various types of logistics alliance relationships. The results indicate that both trust and relationship commitment are important elements in alliance relationships. A third party's equity behavior appears to be an important factor affecting the development of trust in a relationship while conflict significantly hinders the development of relationship commitment. The results also indicate that relationship commitment and effectiveness are influenced more by negative outcomes associated with conflict than by positive outcomes associated with trust, suggesting that logistics alliances are partly based on suspicion where conflict avoidance is a significant predictor of alliance success.
展开▼
