Understanding and Measuring Macro‐institutional Complexity of Logistics Systems Environment

Abstract

We explore the concept of macro‐institutional environmental complexity surrounding logistics systems. Macro‐institutional environmental complexity is formulated as the complexity posed by the diversity of macro‐institutions and infrastructural capabilities of external environments involved in global supply chain logistics operations. This concept is then translated into a simple Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model evaluating the macro‐institutional logistics systems environmental complexity of the four Nordic countries.

The effect of institutional factors on public–private partnership success in ports

“…In the supply chain era, port development would also mean enhancement of the logistics capabilities of the host nation, seen as a key determinant for investment of foreign multinationals in developing countries. The results of our paper are clearly in line with the empirical growth literature that has stressed the importance of institutions for logistics systems (Kinra and Kotzab, 2008) and economic growth (e.g. see Acemoglu et al, 2001;Hall and Jones, 1999).…”

Strategic global supply chain network design – how decision analysis combining MILP and AHP on a Pareto front can improve decision-making

“…Interestingly, managers considered the 'environment' criterion significantly more important than the other two main criteria, 'capabilities' and 'past performance'. This confirms the importance of environmental complexity for the company's decision problem and the use of AHP as part of the solution, as it can provide structure to an ill-structured problem and process qualitative data, both which are important for design problems characterised by high environmental complexity (Kinra and Kotzab 2008b).…”

“…It must accommodate all relevant quantitative information, such as demand, capacity, freight cost, processing cost, and delivery times. However, it was crucial to the case company that it also includes qualitative data about operational quality within the facilities as well as the surrounding environmental complexity (Kinra and Kotzab 2008b). To emphasise, one manager specifically explained their negative experience of a prior centralisation project, where decisions were based on quantitative information alone, while regional environmental differences and complexities were ignored.…”

Sustainability and supply chain infrastructure development

“…Research trends do suggest, however, a growing interest in socio‐environmental performance and inter‐organisational activities related to the supply chain (Korhonen and Luptacik, 2004; Akbostanci et al , 2004; Bergh et al , 2011), particularly in examining specific logistics infrastructure, trade, the environment and social equity factors, with the country level serving as the unit of analysis (Kinra and Kotzab, 2008), and in increasing social variables for improving quality of life and the optimisation of resources allocated to social improvement (Ghosh, 2011).…”