Abstract
Organizations continuously look for ways to improve their performances in order to survive. This is why they generate strategies and try to strengthen their resources and capabilities. In this chapter, the effects of strategic orientation and reverse logistics capabilities on the organizational performance are aimed to reveal on a literature review basis. According to the evidence from literature, it is revealed that the more an organization is strategically oriented, the higher its economic, social, and environmental performance. Similarly, it is revealed in this chapter that gaining reverse logistics capabilities have positive effects on organizational performance by decreasing costs, increasing quality and customer satisfaction.
TopIntroduction
Creating competitive advantage is vital for an organization’s survival and its degree of attaining goals and objectives. In order to understand competitive advantage, basically an organization’s internal strengths and weakness must be taken into consideration (Barney, 1995; Peteraf, 1993). This approach is based on the resource-based view (Wernerfelt, 1984; Barney, 1991). Providing an important basis for strategic management (Barney, Wright and Ketchen, 2001), resource-based view proposes that in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage, organizations must have valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and not substitutable resources, capabilities and assets (Barney, 1991).
In this chapter it is primarily aimed to present the effects of strategic orientation and reverse logistics capabilities on organizational performance based on the resource-based view. Strategic orientation has been realized to have vital impacts on generating competitive advantage (Wright, Kroll, Pray and Lado, 1995) and increasing organizational performance (Kasemsap, 2017). When organizations adopt strategic approaches and conduct both internal and external environmental scanning they are more likely to reinforce their resources to catch the opportunities and avoid from threats in the market. This process will help them both generate competitive advantages (Kraja and Osmani, 2015) and increase organizational performance (George, Walker and Monster, 2019). For this reason, as a valuable resource to obtain the sustainable competitive advantage, one of the vital factors in logistics management which is reverse logistics capability has been included also in the scope of this chapter.
Although there is an increasing interest on reverse logistics, there is a need for examining the concept of reverse logistics capability from a strategic perspective. Moreover, reverse logistics has been mostly linked to innovation (e.g. De Paula, De Campos, Pagani, Guarnieri and Kaviani, 2019; Richey, Chen, Genchev and Daugherty, 2005) and sustainability (e.g. Lee and Lam, 2012; Narayana, Pati and Padhi, 2019) but its effects on organizational performance has been underemphasized so far. Hence in this chapter after giving brief explanations of the concepts of strategic orientation, reverse logistics capability and organizational performance; the relationships among these constructs will be put forward. This will be achieved by a literature scanning and from a conceptual perspective.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Strategic Management: Formulation, implementation, and control process for achieving long-term plans, goals, and objectives.
Reverse Logistics: The reverse flow of goods or parts of goods from customers to the final destination for recycling, reproduction, or disposal.
Organizational Performance: The degree to which organizations attain their goals and objectives.
Strategy: A broad and long-term plan for achieving organizational goals and objectives.
Strategic Orientation: An organizational action in which valuable resources are brought together and used for creating sustainable competitive advantage.
Logistics: The process of acquiring, warehousing, and transportation of materials from source to the user.