Dynamic capabilities for managing logistics challenges of retailers

Sammanfattning: The increase in globalisation of trade, digitalisation and new technical advances in marketing, IT, and logistics have created new opportunities for retailers to expand and reshape their businesses. These changes have resulted in more complex logistics, and retailers are now facing several critical logistics challenges. To manage these challenges, retailers need to have dynamic capabilities (DCs) that enable them to continuously modify their logistics in order to create and maintain wellfunctioning logistics systems that are both cost-effective and service oriented. In addition, retailers need to have specific antecedents in place that enable them to develop and use such DCs. Despite the importance of DCs in retail, there is a limited understanding of these DCs and their antecedents, and how they enable retailers to adapt their logistics to manage logistics challenges. Hence, the purpose of this dissertation is to: Using a DC lens, explain how retailers can manage logistics challenges. This dissertation is based on two studies and includes six appended papers, which together cover the two logistics challenges of geographical expansion of retailers and transition to omni-channel retailing. The methodologies applied include a combination of literature studies and multiple case studies of large-sized Swedish retailers, in order to identify, describe, and explain DCs and their antecedents in a retail setting. A DC lens was used to study DCs and their antecedents from an intraorganisational and an interorganisational perspective, in which intraorganisational DCs were first studied in the geographical expansion of retailers, followed by interorganisational DCs (IDCs) in the transition to omni-channel retailing. The findings present accessing, integration, and utilisation as three important DCs to manage the geographical expansion of retailers. In addition, the findings present three receive-oriented IDCs: accessing, integration, and utilisation, as well as two transferoriented IDCs: identify knowledge-transfer opportunities and transfer of knowledge, which together are important for the transition to omni-channel retailing. In terms of antecedents, four antecedents of intraorganisational DCs: centralised logistics control, centralised logistics structure, standardisation of logistics operations, and learning orientation, were found to support the geographical expansion of retailers. In the transition to omni-channel retailing, two antecedents of IDCs: supply chain orientation and learning orientation, were found. This research provides in-depth insight into how retailers can manage two important logistics challenges in retail: the geographical expansion of retailers and the transition to omni-channel retailing. In addition, this research provides a refinement of DCs and their antecedents to increase our understanding of how such DCs and their antecedents enable retailers to manage different logistics challenges. Previous research has not identified, described, or explained how DCs enable retailers to systematically adapt their logistics to new conditions and issues related to different challenges. By studying DCs from both an intraorganisational and an interorganisational perspective, this research identifies a distinction between receive-oriented and transfer-oriented DCs, which are essential for accessing, integration, and utilisation of external resources, as well as for identifying and transferring internal resources, in order to facilitate new logistics solutions to manage different logistics challenges. For logistics practitioners, this research demonstrates the importance of retailers working systematically to manage different logistics challenges and provides several concrete examples of how retailers can take on such challenges, as well as summarising valuable learning and experiences from retail practitioners. In addition, the research reveals the importance of a shared logistics vision, a proactive role taken by the logistics function of retailers, and collaboration between retailers and LSPs, in order to better manage logistics challenges in retail.