Collaborative supply chain reconfigurations in the transforming Swedish retail context: Impacts on the transport system

This collaborative project addresses the changing retail context in Sweden and the need to reduce transport demand and increase efficiency in the transport system. The retail sector is undergoing considerable transformation, which creates challenges for retailers in terms of logistics and transport setups that are environmentally sustainable, efficient, and effective. These challenges require collaboration at many levels, among departments and functions within firms, vertically between firms in one supply chain, horizontally across supply chains, but also between actors from different sectors. The main problem addressed in the project is what characterizes successful collaborations in supply chain reconfiguration and under what circumstances such collaborations are more likely to succeed. Success refers specifically to criteria for joint performance, e.g. decreased transport demand and increased efficiency in the transport system. The project will be conducted as a multiple case study of current and retrospective collaborative supply chain transformation efforts aimed at creating more sustainable and efficient transport. The project outputs will be: (1) case descriptions of collaborative supply chain reconfigurations and their effects on transport, (2) analysis of actors’ goal conflicts and how these are managed, (3) what kind of collaborations (between what actors and collaboration on what) work and which do not, (4) how actors can increase the odds to make supply chain reconfigurations succeed by collaborating in ‘the right way’ with the ‘right partners’ and ‘on the right things’.