This study aimed to reveal the actual state of Japanese firms’ logistics outsourcing, and examine their relationship with LSPs. This study addressed the following issues by conducting a case study of six leading manufacturing firms. First, it clarified the characteristics of Japanese-style logistics outsourcing as: the outsourcing of the total activities, the consigning to a single LSP, and the development of advanced information systems. Moreover, it examined the logistics outsourcing performance from a sustainable perspective, and concluded that Japanese-style logistics management enables firms to achieve high performance in all the economic, environmental, and social dimensions. Second, this study confirms that the traditional Japanese business practice of long-term partnerships is still maintained in logistics outsourcing management. Third, this study also explored how long-term partnerships create sustainable competitive advantages. Finally, based on these findings, a theoretical framework illustrating the relationship between Japanese-style logistics outsourcing and firms’ sustainable competitive advantage is presented. Our findings may encourage companies to develop a long-term partnership with their logistics service providers, and to put environmental and social indicators into their KPI system to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage by balancing the economy, environment, and society.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.