Building environmental sustainability: empirical evidence from Logistics Service Providers

Environmental sustainability has recently become more and more of a concern among both academics and practitioners. In particular logistics services operations can play a significant role in reducing the environmental burden of the supply chain. Although studies on these issues have been progressively increasing in the extant literature, still little investigation has been performed among Logistics Service Providers (LSPs). The present paper aims to fill this gap and provides the results of an empirical study on the adoption of environmental initiatives in the contract logistics industry, along with the metrics used for environmental performance measurement and the barriers and drivers that may hinder or facilitate the adoption of these initiatives. After a careful literature review, a framework was developed to identify the initiatives towards environmental sustainability with a focus on companies involved in logistics and transportation processes. The framework was applied to a set of ten LSPs by examining their environmental reporting and a sub-set of three companies was finally selected for in-depth interviews. An analysis of the environmental sustainability initiatives of primary multinational LSPs and their adoption level is presented. The present paper contributes to the knowledge of environmental sustainability for logistics and transportation and offers new insights in theory, paving the way for further research on these topics.