Sustainability and the Competitive Advantage: The Perspective of the Logistics Industry

Abstract

This research aims to fill the void that relates to sustaining competitive advantage in the academic world. Some research has shown that sustainable actions improve consumers’ trust and reputation that will help companies sustain their competitive advantage. Unfortunately, sustainability research in sustaining competitive advantage only received limited attention. The authors hope that this paper could fill the gap in that matter. Thus, the research question of this paper would be how does sustainability matter in the logistics industry to sustain competitive advantage? Two theories will be used to discuss this matter, which is Research-Based View (RBV) and Dynamic Capabilities (DC) theory. Data and literature, which include government report, company report, and research papers, were collected through several search engines, such as SmartCat Rug, Google Scholar, LibGuides University of Groningen, EBSCO, Science Direct, and Emerald Insight. The inductive approach is used in this paper. The result showed that companies who adopt sustainable practices within their operations could sustain their competitive advantage due to the improvement of their customers satisfaction and the companys Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors ratings. Also, the use of DC theory complements the RBV in the sense that resources should be maintained and developed rather than taken for granted. It is relevant to discuss this issue since the demand for logistics is increasing over time, and the activities will impact the environment to a greater extent.