Design of Interorganizational Incentive Models for Sustainability Management of Logistics Service Providers

The research project aims at giving recommendations on the design of incentive models for sustainability management of logistics service providers (LSP). Against the background of increasing governmental regulations and requirements as well as societal debates on climate change, the interest of companies in sustainability management grows steadily. Whereas companies traditionally focus only on complying with national regulations, the need for proactive strategies integrating other supply chain members into sustainability management increases.

Central to our research are industrial relationships between manufacturing companies and LSP. We focus on the logistics industry due to its importance and close linkage to the worlds economy and globalization. We observed that transportation and logistics processes offer large potentials for innovative and sustainable activities, but are rarely considered in sustainability management of manufacturers. Key challenge is that the logistics industry has developed a strong opportunistic and resistant perspective on sustainability management, which is contrary to shippers strategic sustainability goals. Hence, these interorganizational collaborations bear behavioral uncertainties with regard to sustainability performance. Shippers demand for solutions to reduce behavioral uncertainties by the implementation of adequate incentive models. This leads us to the research question on the design of incentive models in order to enable and motivate LSP to behave in a way that sustainability performance goals of shippers are fulfilled.