Search Results (11)

Purpose & Research Gap: While Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is widely studied, there is a lack of empirical research analyzing its specific impact on competitiveness within the logistics sector of emerging markets. This study addresses the gap regarding how BPO transitions from a cost-saving tool to a strategic expertise-driven model. Methodology: Data were collected from 132 logistics companies in Croatia. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied to test the hypotheses and mediation effects, as it allows for a robust analysis of complex causal relationships between latent constructs. Key Findings: SEM results reveal that BPO engagement alone does not guarantee competitiveness. The primary finding indicates that the expertise of BPO providers and strategic partnerships exert a significantly stronger positive effect on operational efficiency and market differentiation than simple cost reduction. Contribution: The paper contributes to the literature by redefining BPO as a strategic driver of innovation rather than a mere cost-cutting measure, providing logistics managers with evidence-based insights for knowledge-oriented outsourcing. Full article

Tourism today represents a strategic engine of economic growth, contributing substantially to GDP, employment, and export revenues. Accounting for approximately 10% of global GDP, the sector plays a significant role in tourism-intensive countries. Tourism has shown remarkable resilience and recovery capacity in the post-COVID era, reaffirming its status not only as an economic sector but also as a spatial phenomenon. Due to its inherent place-based nature, tourism cannot be outsourced: it relies on the unique cultural, environmental, and territorial assets of specific locations. While this makes tourism a powerful driver of local development, it also presents challenges related to environmental stress, cultural commodification, and social tensions, especially in over-visited destinations such as Venice, Barcelona, or Lisbon. This paper introduces the concept of “anti-gravity tourism”, a novel framework inspired by physics, to describe planning strategies aimed at counteracting the gravitational pull exerted by mass tourism hotspots. Using the STESY model, the study applies spatial analysis to four case study areas, identifying Destination Areas (DAs) through clustering techniques and developing spatial design proposals aligned with the principles of the New Urban Agenda (NUA). The results highlight how “anti-gravity” strategies can be operationalized through context-sensitive planning tools to mitigate overtourism, support territorial equity, and maximize positive externalities. Ultimately, the paper argues for a paradigm shift towards tourism policies that ensure long-term sustainability by balancing economic growth with social inclusion and environmental stewardship. Full article

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is an important part of the modern intelligent transportation system, which can provide vehicle communication at a certain distance. More importantly, VANET can provide route planning and autonomous driving for drivers by analyzing data. However, VANET’s data privacy and security are a huge challenge when serving drivers. In this paper, we propose a VANET data-sharing model (DSVN) that combines ciphertext-based attribute encryption (CP-ABE), blockchain, and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). DSVN uses an outsourced and revocable ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (ORCP-ABE) scheme, which is improved based on CP-ABE. ORCP-ABE uses key encryption key (KEK) trees to manage user attribute groups and revoke user-level attributes. It eliminates redundant attributes in the access policy by attribute-weighted access trees. Moreover, DSVN has no single point of failure. We demonstrate the indistinguishability under the chosen-plaintext attack (IND-CPA) security of DSVN by a game based on the computational Diffie–Hellman (CDH) assumption. Experimental results show that DSVN can store and share data with low overhead. Additionally, it can revoke attributes of users safely. Full article

In this work, we study a flexible compensation scheme for last-mile delivery where a company outsources part of the activity of delivering products to its customers to occasional drivers (ODs), under a scheme named crowdshipping. All deliveries are completed at the minimum total cost incurred with their vehicles and drivers plus the compensation paid to the ODs. The company decides on the best compensation scheme to offer to the ODs at the planning stage. We model our problem based on a stochastic and dynamic environment where delivery orders and ODs volunteering to make deliveries present themselves randomly within fixed time windows. The uncertainty is endogenous in the sense that the compensation paid to ODs influences their availability. We develop a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm that can deal with large instances while focusing on the quality of the solution: we combine the combinatorial structure of the action space with the neural network of the approximated value function, involving techniques from machine learning and integer optimization. The results show the effectiveness of the DRL approach by examining out-of-sample performance and that it is suitable to process large samples of uncertain data, which induces better solutions. Full article

COVID-19 has left some permanent effects on the Regional Agri-Supply Chain (RASC). It has single-handedly accelerated the RASC’s performance through the globalization of local products and increased e-agri-business, virtual retailing trends, and smart logistics and warehousing services. The post-COVID worldwide growing demand for regional agri-products has increased the competitiveness in logistics outsourcing. Motivated by these changing notions, this paper addresses two major questions—whether the competitiveness in logistics outsourcing allows the supply chain drivers (supplier, retailer, and 3PL) to form a sustainable B2B pricing supply chain model, and what will be 3PL firms’ strategic decisions to secure sustainable profit under this competitiveness? In the light of competitive literature, this paper proposes two decision-making approaches, optimistic and pessimistic, models them using the Stackelberg game theory, and solves them using the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. The result shows that, even after competitiveness in logistics outsourcing, the supply chain drivers agree to form a contractual supply chain. However, the competitive strategy-making of 3PL firms is a little tricky. Each focal 3PL firm must have perfect information about the peer firm’s strategic movement to choose its preferable strategy. Further, they can preferably constrain their core competencies (service price and quality level) to assure a sustainable profit. Full article

The main purpose of this study was to examine how personal and organizational drivers influence the utilization of management tools aimed at supporting organizational working in Industry 4.0 settings. We built our research upon the recognized importance of management tools for organizational working under Industry 4.0 settings and explored the key personal and organizational drivers of management tool usage. Calculations were performed based on the responses of 222 employees working in organizations across Europe. The results revealed that, among personal drivers, a higher level of education leads to significantly higher usage of six sigma, rapid prototyping, outsourcing, customer relationship management, knowledge management, core competencies, and strategic planning. More experienced employees use significantly more six sigma, total quality management, supply chain management, knowledge management, and core competences than their less experienced peers. The impact of organizational drivers is substantially weaker, where only industry shows significant influence, indicating that lean production, six sigma, and supply chain management are used more in manufacturing than in service organizations. Gender, one’s position in the organization, and the organization size do not play a substantial role in management tool usage. Managers should recognize the role of personal and organizational drivers of management tool usage in order to more quickly implement Industry 4.0 principles in organizations. Full article

The global pandemic has affected all sectors and disrupted not only supply chains but also had a particular impact on the range of services provided and the whole service sector. Outsourcing is used to adapt to business environment changes. However, in the scholarly literature, outsourcing of services is analysed as a complementary part of the manufacturing process—there is a lack of research on outsourcing in service companies. This article analyses the enablers of outsourcing in all service groups. The aim of the semi-structured interview was to determine not only the enablers, their significance in each WTO (World Trade Organisation) group of services but also the use of outsourcing in the provision of core and non-core services. The results of the empirical study revealed that outsourcing is increasingly used in the service sector; however, enablers vary depending on the provision of services, the nature of the service company’s activities, and the needs they meet, public or for-profit. Full article

On the heels of the online shopping boom during the Covid-19 pandemic, the electronic commerce (e-commerce) surge has many businesses facing an influx in product returns. Thus, relevant companies must implement robust reverse logistics strategies to reflect the increased importance of the capability. Reverse logistics also plays a radical role in any business’s sustainable development as a process of reusing, remanufacturing, and redistributing products. Within this context, outsourcing to a third-party reverse logistics provider (3PRLP) has been identified as one of the most important management strategies for today’s organizations, especially e-commerce players. The objective of this study is to develop a decision support system to assist businesses in the selection and evaluation of different 3PRLPs by a hybrid fuzzy multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach. Relevant criteria concerning the economic, environmental, social, and risk factors are incorporated and taken into the models. For obtaining more scientific and accurate ranking results, linguistic terms are adopted to reduce fuzziness and uncertainties of criteria weights in the natural decision-making process. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is applied to measure the criteria’s relative significance over the evaluation process. The fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (FTOPSIS) is then used to rank the alternatives. The prescribed method was adopted for solving a case study on the 3PRLP selection for an online merchant in Vietnam. As a result, the most compatible 3PRLP was determined. The study also indicated that “lead time,” “customer’s voice,” “cost,” “delivery and service,” and “quality” are the most dominant drivers when selecting 3PLRLs. This study aims to provide a more complete and robust evaluation process to e-commerce businesses and any organization that deals with supply chain management in determining the optimized reverse logistics partners. Full article

Traditional wisdom suggests that the interchangeable design in process system engineering, such as modularity or commonality design, can lower the manufacturing cost and act as a revenue driver. Moreover, the interchangeable design will be efficient in both assembling for new production and disassembling for remanufacturing. As such, interchangeable design confronted remanufacturing processing often involves a balance of revenue from cost drivers and cannibalization effects from remanufacturing. Therefore, this paper studies how the original equipment manufacturers’ (OEMs’) interchangeable design impacts the remanufacturing decisions, as well as the economy and environment. Specifically, we develop two theoretical models, in which an OEM makes a strategic choice relating to design interchangeability when the remanufacturing operations are undertaken by itself (Model O) or outsourced to third-party remanufacturers (Model T). This study finds that, although the optimal level of interchangeability related to the product design in Model T is lower than that in Model O, the optimal quantity of remanufactured products in the latter scenario is always higher. This suggests that remanufacturing outsourcing deters the OEM’s strategic choice on design interchangeability, which may be consistent with the fact that Lexmark makes its products less interchangeable to avoid remanufacturing from third-party remanufacturers (TPRs). Conversely, although the OEM is always less likely to outsource its remanufacturing operations to independent remanufacturers, remanufacturing outsourcing may be more beneficial for the environment, industry, and society. These key insights on the environmental groups or agencies suggest that remanufacturing outsourcing may be more beneficial for the environment, industry, and society and depends on the OEMs’ attitudes towards its profitability loss. Furthermore, to eliminate the above contrasting effects between the OEMs’ profitability and other issues, two possible remedies, including a revenue-sharing contract and subsidy-incentive mechanism, are provided to achieve a “win-win” situation. Full article

Cities are regarded as the main areas for conducting strategies for energy sustainability and climate adaptation, specifically in the world’s top energy consumer—China. To uncover dynamic features and main drivers for the city-level energy consumption, a comprehensive and systematic city-level total energy consumption accounting approach was established and applied in China’s megacity, which has the highest industrial electricity consumption. Compared with previous studies, this study systematically analyzes drivers for energy consumption based on industrial and residential perspectives. Additionally, this study analyzes not only the mechanisms by which population size, economic growth, and energy intensity affect energy consumption but also the effects of population and industry structural factors. According to the extended Logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method, the main conclusions drawn from this research are as follows: (1) The total energy consumption of Suzhou presented an overall increasing trend, with 2006–2012 as a rapid growth stage and 2013–2016 as a moderate growth stage. (2) The energy consumption structure was mainly dominated by coal, which was followed by outsourced electricity and natural gas. (3) Scale-related factors have dominated changes in energy consumption, and structural and technological factors have had profound effects on energy consumption in different development periods. (4) Population size and economic output were the main drivers for increments in industrial energy consumption, whereas energy intensity and economic structure performed the important curbing effects. The income effect of urban residents was the biggest driver behind the increase in residential energy consumption, whereas energy intensity was the main limiter. These findings provide a scientific basis for an in-depth understanding of the determinants of the evolution of urban energy consumption in China’s megacity, including similar cities or urban areas in the developing world. Full article

The management problems of Facilities Management (FM) outsourcing relationships occur because of provision of low quality analytical, managerial, cooperative, and professional services. On selection, the ideal service providers for specific FM outsourcing contractual procurement needs is of paramount importance to achieve high quality FM services. This paper aims at reviewing the concept of outsourcing in relation to facilities management and dealing with the importance of outsourcing success. Factors of outsourcing strategies from the perspectives of clients and service providers are examined and analysed through the Delphi technique in Hong Kong. The results reveal four main drivers of FM practice through evaluation of thirty-five outsourcing critical success factors identified by clients and service providers. Evaluation of the critical success factors from FM drivers shows that there is an inclination towards FM competence, measurement of performance, cost effectiveness, etc. from clients, whilst there is an inclination to the core skills, measurement of performance, allocation of human resources, cost effectiveness, customers’ satisfaction, etc. from service providers. The result of the study reveals an interesting understanding that the impact of outsourcing critical success factors can be strategically implemented into the outsourcing strategies in Hong Kong’s FM practice. Full article