物流服务商的竞争与合作外文文献.pdfVIP

THE ENTRENCHMENT STRATEGY OF LOGISTICS SERVICE PROVIDERS: TOWARDS A SEQUENTIAL COOPERATION-COMPETITION PROCESS? GILLES PACHÉ gilles.pache@univmed.fr Université de la Méditerranée (Aix-Marseille II), France PABLO MEDINA pablojaime.medina@ Cemex, Mexico ABSTRACT The logistics industry has been attracting the attention of researchers in management for several years. Their focus is increasingly on interorganisational relationships between logistics service providers and their customers, examining the modes of interaction occurring between them. An abundant literature emphasises the importance of cooperative strategies in the logistics industry, hinting that this is a dominant requirement, destined for inevitable development. This article presents a more qualified position and proposes that cooperative strategies are most likely a transition step between arm’s-length competition periods, and resorts to the entrenchment theory, imported from organisational finance, to propose a sequential cooperation-competition model. INTRODUCTION The phenomenon of logistics outsourcing is nowadays a major field of investigation in supply chain management, and also in strategic management and organisation theory. It is true that the inclusion of powerful logistics service providers (LSPs) has strengthened some existing models, but in some cases, it has also raised doubts about their efficacy. In its glossary of logistics terms published in October 2005, the French journal Logistiques Magazine gives a general but adequate definition of a LSP: “a firm ensuring the performance of logistics activities on behalf of a manufacturer or a large retailer”. How