Ahmed Dabees, Andrej Lisec, Sahar Elbarky and Mahmoud Barakat
Reverse logistics (RL) activities are becoming crucial in today’s business environment because of their ability to enhance organizational capabilities to manage waste and…
Abstract
Purpose
Reverse logistics (RL) activities are becoming crucial in today’s business environment because of their ability to enhance organizational capabilities to manage waste and resources effectively and efficiently as an approach for achieving sustainability. These capabilities can eventually create sustainable competitive advantage (SCA). Drawing on resource-based view (RBV), this study posits RL as a tool to develop capabilities gained from high performance (financial and nonfinancial) to enhance SCA.
Design/methodology/approach
Covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze 1,207 responses collected from manufacturing organizations operating in Egypt. Data were gathered through an online survey sent via email to manufacturing organizations operating in Egypt, particularly Cairo, Giza and Alexandria, as these governorates contain most business activities in Egypt and hence high a percentage of waste.
Findings
Results indicated that RL activities (recycling, remanufacturing, repair, recondition and disposal) can fully mediate the relationship between organizational performance (financial and nonfinancial) and SCA. However, the remanufacturing and recycling mediating roles between financial performance and SCA were not significant.
Research limitations/implications
Applying this research in a developing country (Egypt) will help extend RBV and incentivize organizations to apply RL activities, which can potentially solve several environmental issues such as decreasing waste.
Originality/value
Using the research variables in combination will help in filling the literature gap as previous research focused on RL and only organizational operational performance, where RL was used as an independent variable with no illustration of how its dimensions affect performance or its mediating role between performance and SCA.
Details
Keywords
Britta Gammelgaard, Satish Kumar, Debidutta Pattnaik and Rohit Joshi
International Journal of Logistics Management (IJLM) celebrated 30 years of its publication in 2019. This study provides a retrospective overview of the IJLM articles between 1990…
Abstract
Purpose
International Journal of Logistics Management (IJLM) celebrated 30 years of its publication in 2019. This study provides a retrospective overview of the IJLM articles between 1990 and 2019.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors applied bibliometrics to study and present a retrospective summary of the publication trends, citations, pattern of authorship, productivity, popularity depicting influence, and the impact of the IJLM, its contributors, their affiliations, and discusses the conceptual layout of IJLM's prolific themes.
Findings
With 23 yearly articles, IJLM contributed 689 specialized research papers on Supply Chain Management (SCM) by 2019. Authorship grew by 42 new contributors adding up to 1,256 unique IJLM authors by 2019. Each of its lead contributors associated with 1.55 other authors to contribute an article in the journal among which 93% are cited at least once. Survey-based research dominated in last 30 years. The h-index of the journal is 73 while its g-index suggests that 133 IJLM articles were cited at least 17,689 times in Scopus. IJLM authors affiliated to the Cranfield University and the US contributed the highest count of articles. Bibliographic coupling analysis groups IJLM articles into eight bibliographic clusters while network analysis exposes the thematic layout of IJLM articles.
Research limitations/implications
The literature selection is confined to the Scopus database starting from 1990, a year before the inception of the IJLM, thereby limiting its scope.
Originality/value
This study is the first retrospective bibliometric analysis of the IJLM, which is useful for aspiring contributors.