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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing debate on the appropriate organizational design for the process management implementation. Using the lens of institutional theory, the paper discusses how organizations adapt to a required implementation of a process view alongside their organizational structures.

The study is designed as a single case study of a Norwegian shipping company. On the one hand, shipping companies are traditionally managed by functions due to the specifics of maritime operations and high safety-related risks of the work. On the other hand, the rising demands of regulatory bodies and customers within the offshore logistics are calling for implementation of a process view within the organizations, which implies management by processes.

The study analyses conflicting requirements of the institutional environment influencing organizational structure and how these conflicts are addressed by the company. Besides, it describes the decoupling mechanism the company uses to balance between such requirements and adapt to the changes of the institutional pressures.

The study introduces a situational-based organizational structure as an alternative for both process and vertical views implementation within the companies operating in the highly demanding institutional environments.

Logistics service performance measurement (PM) is a fundamental activity pertaining to the achievement of logistics goals and the improvement of services. The choice of logistics PM criteria depends on stakeholder goals and expectations, including logistics service providers, customers and government and regulatory institutions. PM is especially challenging in areas where high values are at stake, several actors are involved and uncertainty about cause-and-effect relations is high. This paper aims to examine the measurement of performance in offshore oil and gas logistics, which has unique characteristics such as a supply chain (SC) exposed to a harsh environment, the presence of several independent carriers and a highly specialised and costly set of vessels involved in long-distance transport legs.

The study is designed as a multiple case study of two Norwegian shipping companies and two international oil and gas companies. Data were collected from several parts of the offshore service SC in several Arctic oil and gas fields.

This paper sheds light on the performance of the SC and presents key performance indicators for logistics operations. It concludes that the measurement of SC performance must be context-specific and emphasis needs to be placed on the degree of uncertainty and inter-dependency related to the SC in question.

The study suggests a list of context-specific key performance indicators for offshore logistics with a special emphasis on the peculiarities of a harsh operational environment.