Critical Review of an Academic Article

Bibliographic citation of the article

Forslund. (2012). Performance managment in supply chains: logistics service providers' perspective. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 296-311.

Introduction

In the view of recognizing Logistic Service Providers (LSPs) as a partner who plays a vital role in modern Supply Chain, the author’s intention was to improve the knowledge in handling Performance Management (PM) and its obstacles from the perspective of LSPs.

Author was able to justify the selection of Logistic Service Providers out of many players in Supply Chain Operation after establishing the increasing use of the said sector in current Supply Chain process. And author was able to do this after the due consumption of already established knowledge in the area of concern on top of her being a top academic figure in the same field.

Author primarily used the literature published in supply chain process related to performance management and had consumed greater number of related publications including her own.

Author was able to evidently discovered the need gap in performance management after establishing the due importance of performance management in LSPs. It was identified that the performance capabilities are of special importance for LSPs to be competitive in the market and to win and sustain the customers. And also the need of having a border concept of performance management was empirically proven by the author which created an academic interest to proceed with the study.

Having credibly establishing the research gap, the author came up with following research questions:

RQ1. How are LSPs handling the performance management process?

RQ2. With what scope of the supply chain do LSPs handle the performance management process?

The due relevance of the research questions were factually established by the author.

In justifying the research questions the author was able to factually discussed the importance of having improved PM capabilities over it is competitors to obtain a competitive edge and due synchronization of performance management activities among LSPs and Customers would bring the synergies to the businesses. And also with the presence knowledge available, the scope which would bring the most benefits was remains un-answered. Hence above questions were well placed.

At the same time third question was added due to the fact that by nature the PM in Supply Chain is a complicated issue and as it was revealed by the author that there are obstacles such as conflicting objectives among the partners, poor IT support & lack of trust. Hence need of having a third question was also well justified in order to achieve the final