Logistics Performance Measurement: A Comparison of Literature and Practice

Performance measurement plays a vital role in the management of any organization and is of particular value to logistics managers. Performance measurement is seen as an avenue for logistics managers to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage by providing timely, reliable indications of both performance successes and shortcomings. Logistics performance measurement research verifies that success in performance of logistics activities and capabilities is linked to improved organizational performance. The Global Research Team at MSU even went so far as to name performance measurement as one of four key competencies in an enterprise\u27s achievement of world class performance. This research effort compares logistics performance measurement research against ten years of industry-provided logistics performance measurement data in the hopes of garnering insights that will benefit logistics managers and guide future research efforts. The most recent fifteen years of logistics performance measurement literature were gathered from the top four logistics-focused publications as identified by Peterson and Autry (2014). Inter-coder reliability metrics were obtained to ensure relevance and proper categorization of returned articles. Findings from the returned body of literature were then compared against industry data obtained from the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC) annual metrics report. As logistics performance measurement is an important player in the realization of competitive advantage this paper represents two contributions to the field. First, it answers a recent call for papers by the Journal of Business Logistics for research on “Performance measurement in logistics and supply chain management.” This call further highlights the importance of logistics performance measurement to managers in the field and implies that extant literature has yet to adequately identify the measures managers need. The second contribution this paper aims to make is through identifying where academic research is leading or lagging industry practices through the adaptation of Abrahamson’s management fashion theory. While the management fashion theory has been extended into the area of information systems (Bakersfield and Myer, 2009), it has yet to be adopted within the field of logistics. It is the hope of this author that the sharing of this research effort will spur additional interest into the area of logistics performance measurement