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The best word to describe supply chain performance in the past two years is turbulent. Supply chain operators and customers alike continue to dream of days past when goods were available, and bottlenecking was at a minimum. As there is seemingly no end in sight to the current supply chain woes, LSU Department of Marketing Assistant Professor Kris Lindsey Hall, Ph.D. student Ripinka Koli Patil, and co-authors explored the many factors that impact a firm's logistics performance. Their recent article, "Collaboration, Feedback, and Performance: Supply Chain Insights from Service-Dominant Logic," details the findings in the Journal of Business Research.

To understand how supply chain performance might be enhanced when firms invest resources and collaborate with their supply chain partners, the authors used a Service-Dominant (S-D) logic approach. This approach suggests that companies focus on relational rather than transactional interactions with their supply chain partners to achieve mutually beneficial strategic advantages.

The authors surveyed full-time employees who held managerial positions in supply chain management and logistics (SCML) departments and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling. The research found that when firms make physical, financial, human, and technology investments in SCML partners and exchange regular, constructive feedback with partners, it increased the quality of their inter-firm collaborations. This is critical as they demonstrated that these inter-firm collaborations led to increased logistics performance. Importantly, performance is enhanced further for firms that are committed to learning, given that they can integrate this knowledge to improve their offerings.

This research offers timely insights to SCML organizations to understand how collaboration and resource investment can positively benefit a firm's logistics performance. The insights are especially beneficial now, given numerous supply chain disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the need for resilient and collaborative SCML networks.

These results can help organizations better understand how to overcome disruptions and increase overall logistics performance by (1) making resource investments in partners, (2) developing systems for obtaining and sharing critical feedback, (3) collaborating with partner firms in planning and training, and (4) promoting a learning culture. Finally, this work brings an important service lens to investigating the SCML domain, expanding theory, and providing ample opportunities for future research.