Firm-level innovation management at logistics service providers: an exploration

Executives at logistics service providers (LSPs), who would like to manage innovation, are faced with numerous challenges. Since little is known about LSPs’ innovation management and even less about its context dependency, this paper seeks to empirically investigate relevant context factors that influence firm-level innovation management of LSPs. An exploratory case study design was chosen, and numerous facets of LSPs’ innovation management are explored and described based on rich case data. Six important context factors are empirically identified: organisational size, level of dispersion, importance of technology, growth potential, customer dependency, and the innovation mentality of personnel. For each factor, a preliminary conceptualisation was developed and is presented in the paper. The paper is highly relevant to both managers and scholars since various fields of managerial decision-making are explored. Furthermore, comparisons between LSPs are facilitated by focusing on each LSP's specific context.