Logistics Concept Development in Multi-Actor Environments

Abstract

Logistics has become a field of growing interest for public policy making over recent decades. Logistics has a great impact on society. Due to these societal impacts there is a need for a more explicit intervention by governmental policies. This development demonstrates that the growing importance of transition and innovation in logistic concepts is shifting away from the traditional boundaries of these concepts. Logistics concepts nowadays have to serve multiple values (social, economic, environmental) related to the multiple interests of an increasing number of stakeholders. This introduces a challenge for the methodologies/analytical approaches, used to support multiple actor decision-making on new logistics concepts. This study is triggered by the observation that analytical approaches for design and evaluation do not sufficiently match the requirements of societal involvement in logistics. Our research has provided evidence that the involvement of public actors in logistics concepts has a serious influence on the development of new logistics concepts. In theory we found that analytical approaches for design and evaluation do not sufficiently match the requirements of societal involvement of public actors in logistics. Also in practice this lack of methodological innovation frequently results in frictions between policy makers working at different policy levels and the operating field of logistics companies. Based on our case research we have been able to develop an approach to support multiple actor decision making on new logistics concepts. The approach enables the stakeholders involved to make a choice in favour of a final logistics concept that is better tuned to perceptions and expectations of different stakeholders, is well understood and consequently can rely on sufficient support for successful implementation.