Logistics Revolution Research Articles

Book Review: Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor, and the Logistics Revolution

Book Review: Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor, and the Logistics Revolution

Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor, and the Logistics Revolution

Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor, and the Logistics Revolution

Book Review: Bonacich, E., & Wilson, J. B. (2008). Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor and the Logistics Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 273 pp. $29.95 (paper)

Book Review: Bonacich, E., & Wilson, J. B. (2008). Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor and the Logistics Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 273 pp. $29.95 (paper)

Getting the goods: ports, labor, and the logistics revolution

Getting the goods: ports, labor, and the logistics revolution

Infrastructural change and secular economic development

Long-term economic development is determined by changes to the infrastructure, especially material and non-material infrastructural networks that link agents in different locations. The infrastructure consists of the slowly changing, collective arena that supports production, exchange, and consumption, such as the built environment, transport networks, and institutions. In the short run the infrastructure can be regarded as fixed. Changes to the infrastructure are under normal conditions small enough to be disregarded by producers and consumers. With the creation of a critical link of a network, there will however be a revolutionary restructuring of the arena. Critical links are here defined as additions to infrastructural networks that create opportunities for new information and transport flows between previously unconnected regions. Such a revolutionary restructuring of infrastructural networks has been called a logistical revolution. Certain institutional pre-conditions are necessary for a logistical revolution, while the creation of a critical link is both a necessary and a sufficient condition. This paper discusses the three logistical revolutions that occurred in the 13th century, around 1600, and in the 19th century, which each had crucial similarities with the current “information revolution.”

The Next Global Stage: Challenges and Opportunities in Our Borderless World

Introduction. The Plot. I. THE STAGE. 1. The World Tour. The Curtain Rises. The World as a Stage. A Speedy Global Tour. Meanwhile in Ireland. Finland: In from the Cold. What Is the Global Economy? Borderless. Invisible. Cyber-Connected. Measured in Multiples. 2. Opening Night. The World AG. Leading the Dinosaur. The View From the Hotel: Detroit. Busting the Budget. Gates to the Future. 14 AG: China. Putting an e in Christmas. 3. The End of Economics. Reinventing Economics. Economic Theories That Once Fitted the Times. New Fundamentals Require New Thinking. Turning the Taps On and Off. Deflation and the GDP Deflator. Interests Rates and Nest Eggs. Can Physics Help? A Complex World. The Curve Ball. Oscillating Wildly. Paradigm II. The Power of Politics. The Difficulty of Changing Habits. Uncle Sam Goes Global. The New Economic Paradigm. II. STAGE DIRECTIONS. 4. Playmakers. Finding Your Bearings on the Global Stage. How Nation-States Retard Economic Development. The Nation-State Fetish. Strong States. The Rise of the Region. Defining the Region-State. Indian Summers. Carried Away in China. Not All Regions Are Created Equal. Surprising China. Microregions. Flexibility. Size and Scale Matter, But Not in a Traditional Way. Regions Are Gaining Their Deserved Recognition. Practical Considerations. What a Successful Region Has to Do. Branding Places. The Will to Succeed. Organizing Regions. Other Unions. Free Trade Area or Fortress? 5. Platforms for Progress. Relentlessly Forward. Developing Technology Platforms. Language as Platform. English Inc. The Platform Profusion. Other Platforms. 6. Out and About. Border Crossings. Technology: The Fairy Godmother. BPO: India as a Launch Pad. Dormant India. More Than a One-Country Wonder. BPO as a Platform. Home Sweet Home. Myths and Half-Truths. The View from India. Reaping the Benefits. BPO in a Borderless World. 7. Breaking the Chains. The Portal Revolution. The Search. Have You Been Googled Recently? Paying the Bill: The Payment Revolution. On the Rails. Delivery: The Logistics Revolution. The Arrival of the Micro Tag. Cool Chains and Fresh Food. Deliverance. Using Logistics to Solve Bigger Problems. For Dinner. III. THE SCRIPT. 8. Reinventing Government. Disappearing Power. Beyond Distribution. Size Matters. Downsizing and Resizing. A Vision for Change. The Japanese Vision. Mapping the Future. Visions Versus Mirages. Government Vision. Getting Noticed. Only Educate. Closing Down Distance. A New Role for Government. China: Governing the Ungovernable. Malaysia's Corridors of Power. Singapore's Appetite for Reinvention. Swedish Rhapsody. The Craic of the Irish. 9. The Futures Market. All Change. The Technological Future. Technological Progress Means Death Is a Fact of Business Life. The Rise of VoIP and Its Impact on Telecoms. Join the March Early. The Personal Future. Embrace Leadership. Value Information and Innovation. Embrace Flexibility. The Corporate Future. The Homeless Corporation. Innovation, Inc. The Adaptive Corporation. Beyond Hierarchy. 10. The Next Stage. The Regional Future. Hainan Island. Petropavlosk-Kamchatsily, Russia. Vancouver and British Columbia. Estonia. The Baltic Corner. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Khabarovsk, Maritime (Primorye) Province and Sakhalin Island, Russia. Sao Paulo, Brazil. Kyushu, Japan. 11. Postscript. Reopening the Mind of the Strategist. Beyond the Daydream. Index.

Perspectives of regional development around the Baltic Sea*

This paper, written in honor of Ake Andersson, supports his view that we have now arrived at a time of logistical revolution, wherein information processing and communication capacity as well as the growth of the knowledge base are quintessential to the socioeconomic development of society. This paradigm underlies an analysis of the development perspectives of the countries along the southern rim of the Baltic Sea. The core elements of the transition to a market economy and the legacy of the past are considered. Furthermore, the question is asked whether a Baltic Sea Region may arise in future. A theoretical discussion of those elements that promote the formation of economic spaces in market economies and a cluster analysis of actual international trade leads us to the conclusion that a Baltic Sea Region comprising all regions bordering the Baltic Sea will not come into existence. However, a Scandinavian-Baltic economic space could arise, representing an enlargement of the already existing Scandinavian core.

The Logistics Revolution and Transportation

A third of a century ago, management guru Peter Drucker called logistics the last great unexplored continent of business. This is no longer true. While transportation is the largest component of logistics, ordering costs, carrying costs, warehousing costs, and administrative costs are nontrivial. Corporations and academics now have departments to handle the logistics functions. Transportation has been subsumed, in many cases, by these broader departments. Managing the supply chain—from raw material assembly, to work in progress, to the physical distribution of the final product or service—is the essence of business logistics. The field has its quantitative side, with many models that minimize costs and maximize profits. A growing area is the qualitative side, which emphasizes management awareness of the logistics chain.

The Fourth Logistical Revolution Implications for Australian Cities

In recent years, sudden and unexpected discontinuities have become more central concepts in the literature on regional development If we look back into European history for a moment, it is instructive to consider the evolution of Europe's cities as an international family. One illuminating example is the pathbreaking analysis by the Cambridge mathematician, Alistair Mees (1975). He took the hypothesis of the historians Henri Pirenne (1925) and Fernand Braudel as the starting point for an analysis of sudden changes in the specialization pattern of trading regions. Simply stated, Pirenne' hypothesis asserted that the central cause of the revival of Medieval towns and cities in the late middle ages was the emergence of free trade and associated improvements to the transportation system. This means that the backbone of today' European network economy was established as far back as the 11th century.

Logistics Performance in Europe: The Challenge of 1992

The market for logistics services in Europe is undergoing unprecedented change. Not only is it being affected by world‐ scale developments, such as the globalization of manufacturing industry and the genesis of internationalisation in retailing, but there are major impacts within Europe itself. Numbered amongst these are; the effects of 1992 and the Single European Market on logistics users (e.g. manufacturers and retailers); deregulation of international road haulage within the European Community (EC) deregulation of domestic road haulage within many EC countries: increased specialisation of service for road freight companies; and the adoption of logistics concepts to give a unified view of the flow of goods from input sources to the delivery of final products to customers. To speak of a coming revolution in European logistics would not be overstating the case.