第三方物流：一个文献综述和研究议程外文翻译.doc

外文翻译 原文 Third party logistics: a literature review and research agenda Material Source: Department of Management Science Author:Konstantinos Selviaridis Introduction In recent years there has been a surge of academic interest and publications in the area of third party logistics (3PL). This can be partly explained by the growing trend of outsourcing logistics activities in a wide variety of industrial sectors. The continuing wave of consolidation within the 3PL industry has also resulted in the emergence of large companies that have the capabilities to offer sophisticated logistics solutions on a continental or even global scale. Such logistics service providers (LSPs) strive to assume a more strategic role within the supply chain of clients, expanding their scale and scope of operations. Despite the growing interest in 3PL, the literature on this area appears to be disjointed. Based on an extensive literature review, this paper aims to offer a taxonomy of 3PL studies and point out opportunities for further research. In a previous attempt, summarised the results of their literature survey which also included articles from practitioner journals and the trade press. For the sake of rigour, the present study concentrates only on refereed journal papers published during 1990-2005. Analysis of findings The analysis of literature is based on multiple dimensions. Both content- and method-oriented criteria are used. The papers were firstly classified according to their research purpose (descriptive vs normative) and nature (empirical vs conceptual). The results indicate that most 3PL studies (60 per cent) are empirical-descriptive in nature. 3PL studies are weakly theorised, with 69 per cent of the papers having no theoretical foundation and simply describing trends in the industry. This confirms others views that logistics research lacks a theoretical basis. Nonetheless, some work uses theories such as transaction cost economics (TCE) and the resource-based view (RBV) of