Background: Customer orders are key in developing logistics processes and in strategic developments of customer orientation. This paper investigates the notion of customer orientation. In the literature, the concept of customer is underdeveloped in that it is seen as a single object rather than how it is enacted in multiple ways. The study examines a customer-oriented production process managed in the supply chain of an automotive manufacturer. Methods: Based on a longitudinal study we explain what constitutes customer knowledge and what processes are involved in constructing this knowledge. Results: The study shows that in a supply chain, multiple versions of customers coexist and overlap that have implications on how multiple-customer orientation is performed and aligned in the supply chain. Conclusions: We find that customer representations proliferate as a result of multiple objectives; we demonstrate what objects and assemblages bring particular customer representation to life and show that these are used to shape customer orientation.

Well-managed urbanization can be a transformative force towards socially and environmentally sustainable cities. The transformative change relies on knowledge and collaborative action, rather than disconnected knowledges from different scientific disciplines and of sectorial actors. A problem that hinders collaborative action is the complexity of sustainable urbanization. In this paper we aim to expand thinking on urban transformation from a multisectoral and tri-disciplinary research perspective. 

Methods in use are tri-disciplinary essays to identify multisectoral interests, logics and routines in urban transformation. Essayistic insights form and develop three analytical dialogues on a range of urban transformation specificities in the urban complexity and related to sustainable urbanization. The essays are collaboratively interpreted as a Saskia Sassen inspired de-theorising process to get hold of complexities in cities by social, self-reflective and introspective processes. 

There are multi-sectoral issues difficult to develop with current modes of thinking and independent logic of developments. A re-theorization is proposed with collective ways of understanding, interacting and developing urban sustainable solutions that aims to appropriately address the complexities of the urban environment. Two ways of thinking and acting is contrasted. Independent and interdependent logics of leadership cultures for sustainable development are considered as a new way to theorise around the sustainable city. 

Implications concern complexities in cities such as how to design and develop urban projects that embraces actors' concerns and knowledge for sustainable development. There appear many simultaneous action nets of urban transformation specificities. These are based on actors’ logics, routines, ambitions, and collaboration. Leadership for transformation is not the independent cultures with one or few actors in the action nets but the interdependent culture making room for and adapt specificities of the engaged actors.  

Road freight competition is playing out in deregulated markets. The EU single market is a market with abundant responses in terms of haulier strategic actions. This chapter situates the crucial role of road haulier strategies in the logistics service supply chain and industrial supply chain to achieve sustainability. Competitive and sustainable transport depends on effective transport services, vehicles and transport infrastructure, and conditions that foster the development of transport and logistics services. By examining how four case firms develop competences and make use of available resources we develop insights into road haulier competition and its implications. The chapter contributes to understanding how road hauliers are part of logistics service chains as well as industrial supply chains and how the many links and relationships increase the magnitude and implications of hauliers’ performances.

The building and construction sector accounted for 36 per cent of global energy consumption and 37 per cent of energy related CO2 emissions according to the Global Status report for Buildings and Construction 2021, and the transport sector accounted for 23 per cent of global energy consumption and 26 per cent of energy related CO2 emissions (United Nations Environment Programme, 2021). Hence the call for sustainability and sustainable development is significant for logistics properties and real estate business enact it in terms of sustainable change that ends in building-specific certifications. Certifications are multi-criteria credit systems, such as BREEAM or LEED certifications that are valuing credits within a prescribed range in multiple sustainability categories.  Logistics properties is a growing and profitable market segment that attract large investments and that pose an important societal challenge, for example, in terms of efficient e-business flows. As more logistics properties are being certified with the global certifications systems such as BREEAM and LEED it is timely to question how the certifications contribute to sustainability, and how real estate firms’ sustainability strategies can make logistics warehouse operations less harmful and actually contribute to diverse sustainability values and leverage sustainability performance.  

The purpose of this paper is to increase knowledge of sustainable logistics properties, by research questions concerning: what are the drivers, barriers, and opportunities for sustainability after certification?

Sustainability created by certifications are part of the sustainability transformation. Certifications are important, but sustainable development calls for an integrated achievement with others for a better society that we don’t know about but that is created in coordination with others. Co-creation is key for the sustainability transformation and that process involves investors, cross-functional within the firm, customers and customer work force, municipal actors, academia, governance of sustainability at the firm, external evaluators and certifications, and overlapping standards. Each of these opportunities of cocreating is related to sustainability drivers and barriers.  

Theoretical implications are posed for literature on real estate business, and logistics and transport business regarding sustainable development, especially sustainable logistics properties. The abductive learning approach offers a temporary conclusion at a specific time in a flow of sustainable development, which is important to further the sustainability research frontier in these literatures.

Practical implications are related to the journey of sustainable development, including but not ending with the certification methodology. A focus on sustainability is a change through practice in which document production (certification and its network of evaluations) have both an ostensive meaning from principles of certifications and a performative meaning through the relations between the documents and the practices and processes they relate to. Resources such as land, financing, and talent tends to center around firms that distinguish themselves as contributing to sustainability hence sustainable development is a relational task.  

Background: The enacted sensemaking of third-party logistics (TPL) providers during the pandemic crisis may present an opportunity to explore their strategic operations.

Objectives: The aim is to understand the TPL strategic implications related to a crisis and specifically how TPL providers make sense of and respond to crises. The two research questions are as follows: How has the COVID-19 pandemic crisis affected the business operations of TPL providers? What have TPL providers learnt from enacting the crisis, and how has this experience affected their strategic development?

Method: We conduct an abductive study using combined data from interviews and a targeted archive search. The data are focused on the Swedish context and on a period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results: Three distinct groups of TPL providers have different sense and action processes impacting their business operations. This research shows how an understanding of servitisation is relevant for TPL theory. Finally, we develop the strategic perspective of TPL providers by defining TPL providers as value-cocreating relationships that can help manage the complexities of logistics services.

Conclusion: This research shows that TPL providers play an important role in crises, as they contribute to solving customer problems. This role appears to be strengthened during crises, but it imposes great demands on TPL providers.

Contribution: Third-party logistics providers work with their customers during crises. The sensemaking view emphasises the importance of personnel, organisational commitment, capacity and expectations during crises. This is an interplay that requires adaptation to short-term changes in operational processes and adaptability in long-term operations.

The political potential of unconventional and even transgressive forms of writing in management and organization studies has been invigorated in recent years through an explicit connection with feminist theories, ideas, and practices. The results have been a new wave of scholarship that brings together the personal, the political, and the theoretical as a means to intervene in masculine orthodoxy of organizational writing. This intervention seeks to change what and how we understand organizational phenomena, with an ultimate goal of transforming practice toward a more equal and egalitarian future. We introduce five papers that responded to a call to explore the intersections between change and academic writing, as well as an exploration of alternatives to dominant masculine academic writing styles. Such writing, we aver, might facilitate change not just in the academy, but also in organizations and by extension, society.

Service innovation is the nexus between the growing e-commerce in urban areas and the ongoing Corona pandemic and seasonal peaks like Christmas. The growing market of urban e-commerce logistics needs solution-driven freight and urban logistics, which is an assumption of this study. Consumer-oriented urban logistics services enable consumers in their everyday and enable a well-functioning urban logistics market are a co-operation between consumers and urban service providers. A service-logic perspective may offer service innovation and value co-creation for the urban logistics challenge that includes last mile logistics.

This conceptual paper aims to develop strategic logistics service provision literature and service innovation literature to facilitate collaborative development between consumers and service providers. Central aspects are consumer's everyday routines and available solutions in terms of urban deliveries and returns, available interaction points between consumers and service providers in daily practices, and knowledge and resources of urban service provider (related to e-commerce logistics) for innovative offerings. 

The everyday consumption practice and its logistics are key in co-created service innovations. In-depth understanding of consumption practices and production practices is the basis to align resources for a differentiated urban logistics solution. Such a process develops both urban service consumption practices and production practices. Urban service providers like logistics firms, commercial real estaters, and e-retailers have complementary types of competencies to facilitate urban service innovation. 

The study will generate implications to the urban e-commerce logistics research area and benefit both academia and business.