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Estimates the extent to which electronic data interchange (EDI) is currently used in the motor carrier industry and examines motor carrier EDI issues. The analysis is based on data collected from a survey of 266 Class I and II motor carriers. The major findings include: the use of EDI industry‐wide is fairly significant in terms of freight revenues coming from EDI shippers; smaller motor carriers lag behind in the use of EDI; the motor carrier decision to implement EDI appears to be customer‐service – or marketing‐driven; and EDI use by motor carriers is evolving towards standardization. Suggests that further research is needed to gain a better understanding of the degree to which the trucking industry is sharing in the benefits of EDI use and the role which the smaller carrier will have in the growth of EDI use.

The purpose is threefold: to assess International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management's (IJPDLM's) reputation for quality and impact; to identify leading articles and authors during the journal's 40‐year history; and to report on the international diversity of the journal's author base and the diversity of its subject matter over the last five years.

The paper uses the following: literature review of recent journal articles that assessed the quality of logistics and supply chain management (SCM) journals; IJPDLM article download counts and article counts per author over last 40 years; and assessment of subject matter content and geographical base of authors for articles published in IJPDLM over the last five years.

IJPDLM consistently ranks among the top logistics and supply chain journals on the basis of research quality and usefulness. IJPDLM is quite diverse both with respect to logistics subject matter and to the location of its authors. The most popular topics over the last five years are: purchasing and supply management; inter‐organizational relationships; customer service and demand management; and logistics outsourcing/3PL. A key emerging research area for logistics and SCM is the discipline's contributions to addressing important societal issues.

The findings pertaining to current and emerging research areas will be of interest and value to all logistics and SCM researchers.

The analysis of IJPDLM's reputation and the assessment of the subject matter it covers are both original and of interest to prospective authors.

U.S. Customs administration plays an important role in the structure and efficiency of international logistics. The Customs Modernization and Informed Compliance Act was passed in December 1993 with the objective of improving the efficiency of the U.S. customs process. The principle logistics benefits for the trade community and the means by which they are to be accomplished include faster clearance and lower transaction costs via increased automation and remote entry, and decreased congestion at ports of entry via a reduction in the number and complexity of formal entries. These gains are offset somewhat because some traditional Customs responsibilities have been shifted to importers of record. This will increase their compliance costs and penalty risk exposure. The key changes presented in the act and potential implications for the parties involved in the importing process are described.

To assess the role of leader‐member exchange (LMX) in affecting voluntary turnover in a high turnover work context.

Following consideration of traditional predictors of employee turnover, how LMX is related to voluntary turnover is examined among 207 over‐the‐road truck drivers using a telephone survey.

Leader member exchange is found to be nonlinearly related to turnover such that turnover is lowest when LMX is moderate (i.e. both “bad” and “good” LMX are associated with higher levels of turnover).

Findings indicate that LMX and other antecedents should be examined for nonlinear relationships to turnover. This research may help to bridge the gap between turnover research and that associated with supervision and leadership.

These study results suggest that unrealistic expectations should not be formed regarding the power of any single factor (e.g. LMX) to reduce turnover.

This paper suggests that nonlinear relationships between antecedents of turnover and turnover receive fuller consideration.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between aspects of a country’s institutional environment and entrepreneurial investors’ overall rate of return.

Specifically, monetary stability and property rights are tested against both entrepreneurs’ and angel investors’ expected financial returns and payback periods, respectively. Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey including years 2004 through 2006 and encompassing 50 countries are aggregated and examined using random coefficient multilevel modeling.

We find that strong property rights encourage both angel investors and entrepreneurs to invest in new ventures with longer payback periods and encourage angel investors to invest in ventures with lower expected financial returns.

This suggests that one key to increasing entrepreneurial investment in a country is to guarantee strong property rights. Therefore, both entrepreneurs seeking funding and countries seeking entrepreneurs should incorporate property rights issues into their decision-making.

This finding moves the “attracting entrepreneurs” conversation beyond the typical tax-abatement, infrastructure building, business cluster recommendations prevalent in academic and professional literature and points to one of the more fundamental reasons entrepreneurial “cultures” develop some places, but not others.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the institutional environment on firm birth and death rates. It is hypothesized that high taxation levels, large government size, high levels of unionization and high minimum wages will be associated with relatively low firm birth and death rates.

This study makes use of a set of custom tabulations from the US Census Bureau that contain data on county-level firm births and deaths. To account for differences in state policies, matched contiguous counties located on state borders are used to calculate matched birth and death ratios.

In the sample of eastern US state border counties, state taxation levels and minimum wages had no significant relationship with firm birth rates, but there was a negative relationship between state union densities and firm birth rates. Both state education and public welfare expenditures were marginally negatively related to firm birth rates. State public welfare expenditures were negatively related to firm death rates, while a marginally significant negative relationship between hospital/health expenditures and firm death rates was observed.

These results indicate that state government expenditures may have varying influences on firm birth and death rates, and that high union densities may deter new firm entry.

This paper makes use of a county matching technique to help control for confounding variables, allowing for differences in state policies to be better accounted for.

The aim of this paper is to present current trends and developments in humanitarian logistics (HL) practice, research, and education, and analyze the gaps between these. The article serves as an update on previous literature reviews in HL.

The paper is primarily conceptual and develops a framework for analyzing trends and gaps between HL research, education, and practice. Data are compiled through keyword searches, publicly available bibliographies, and web sites of educational institutions, as well as drawing on material from practitioner workshops, tutorials, conference presentations, and personal communication with practitioners and educators.

Gaps are revealed in HL practice, research, education, as well as between these. Few education programs to date consider the skill needs of humanitarian logisticians, but future trends in practice and research can be used to develop them further. More empirical and practice‐near research is called for at the same time as there is a need for comparative analyses, generic models, and theory building in HL.

Any attempt to grasp current trends in a field is delimited by a lack of overview of the activities of an abundance of HL and fragmented research communities. The article advocates a broader view and openness across organizations and disciplines.

The gap analysis indicates not only trends but also gaps in HL practice and highlights the need to consider new societal pressures such as climate change and urbanization.

HL is concerned with serving beneficiaries; thus, their welfare is at the core of the discipline.

Several articles have reviewed HL research before, but gaps between practice, research, and education have not yet been addressed.

The paper aims to provide an overview of the evolution of relationship‐related research in the areas of logistics and supply chain management.

Suggestions are offered for future research on logistics and supply chain relationships.

While the literature related to logistics and supply chain relationships have become increasingly sophisticated over the years, there still remain many opportunities for extending the literature base. Considering the significant implications for business practice, this should be a research priority.

Questions have been raised regarding the long‐term success of many partnership or alliance‐type relationships. Further research is warranted examining success to date, implications for future collaborative‐type relationships, and guidelines for establishing relationships. Other topics include managing relationships and power imbalances, developing appropriate metrics to monitor relationship performance, leveraging the synergy of cross‐firm relationships to develop innovative approaches, and examining the co‐creation of services.

The review of previous literature provided in this paper is intended to provide somewhat of a chronological ordering of research topics and to identify important areas that have contributed to our knowledge base.

An underlying principle of supply chain management is to establish control of the end‐to‐end process in order to create a seamless flow of goods. The basic idea is that variability is detrimental to performance as it causes cost in the form of stock‐outs, poor capacity utilisation, and costly buffers. This paper questions this approach and argues that in the light of increasing turbulence a different approach to supply chain management is needed.

The paper reports on the authors' work on a Supply Chain Volatility Index and shows how current supply chain practices may no longer fit the context most businesses now operate in – primarily because these practices were developed under assumptions of stability that no longer hold true. The paper illustrates the findings with case study evidence of firms that have had to adjust to various aspects of turbulence.

The paper is able to show that most current supply chain management models emanate from a period of relative stability, and second, that there is considerable evidence that we will experience increasing turbulence in the future. This calls into question whether current supply chain models that feature some dynamic flexibility, yet are built on the general premise of control, will be suitable to meet the challenge of increased turbulence.

It is argued that what is needed to master the era of turbulence is structural flexibility which builds flexible options into the design of supply chains. This marks a major departure from current thinking and will require revisiting the management accounting procedures that are used to evaluate different supply chain decisions. The paper presents guidelines on how to manage supply chains in the age of turbulence: by embracing volatility as an opportunity rather than viewing it as a risk, by understanding its nature and impact, and finally by shifting the exposure to risk by building hedges into the supply chain design.

The paper questions the fundamental premise upon which current supply chain models are built and proposes an alternative approach to build structural flexibility into supply chain decision making, which would create the level of adaptability needed to remain competitive in the face of turbulence.