Converting knowledge into sustainability performance of freight villages

Abstract

Along with the globalization of industry and trade, the importance of freight villages (FVs) greatly grows due to the substantial benefits they can generate, such as supply chain management efficiency, intensive provision of logistics services, modal shift, regional economic growth and employment, lower energy consumption, and environmental consequences. Hence, the sustainability performance tends to become a strategic goal that FVs’ operators and decision makers (e.g., transport agents, warehouse providers and freight forwarders, logistics operators, and FV management company) endeavor to achieve. However, due to the lack of a systematic approach toward FVs sustainable development, existing literature has not yet clearly defined what strategic direction should be followed to pursue such a goal. This article proposes a knowledge-related approach to promote sustainability performance of FVs. This article highlights sustainability as a strategic goal of FVs rooting in the evidences from academia and practical cases. In addition, it explains the principle of ensuring sustainability by FVs with twofold meanings. Meanwhile, it summarizes the sustainability dimensions in the context of FVs. After introducing the significances of knowledge assets and knowledge management (KM) approach to the sustainability drawing on the implications from sustainability balanced scorecard (SBSC), it analyses KM characteristics in logistics and FVs area. Then, how the general KM process (knowledge acquisition, sharing, and application) act on FVs sustainable development is clarified. In which, the sustainability-related stakeholders of FVs are identified. Finally, it proposes a roadmap of organizing KM for sustainability-oriented FVs considering the distinct features of KM in FVs context. To support the success of this roadmap, this article recognizes two key elements including human ability and stakeholders’ involvement. Furthermore, a checklist for building FVs sustainability capability based on SBSC is provided, which is hopefully being a referring guidance for FVs’ operators and decision makers.