Abstract
In an increasingly disruptive global environment, marked by the potential development of the Post-New World Economic Order, more innovative, effective, and efficient logistics solutions are demanded. It is necessary to offer radical improvements in logistics services through new models. It is considered necessary to define the new concept of disruptive logistics based on three fundamental pillars: globalization, digitization, and sustainability. This chapter aims to address the new concept, more effective and efficient, in a highly turbulent environment that has become disruptive, with unpredictable, substantial, and impactful changes. The most significant geoeconomics aspects that would condition a hypothetical Post-New World Economic Order are analyzed, the main factors of the global sustainable logistics are studied, and the development of the concepts of Logistics 4.0 and Supply Chain Management 4.0 is reviewed. Finally, as a result, the main aspects of the proposed new concept are analyzed.
TopIntroduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a global crisis that has completely disrupted the social, economic, and political spheres, showing the high vulnerability of most countries to this type of threat, as evidenced by their inability to respond effectively to these new crises generated by growing environmental uncertainty (Haarhaus & Liening, 2020). This crisis has altered traditional socio-economic systems, and the hypothesis that it will lead to restructuring towards a new world order, post-coronavirus, is beginning to gain strength. Furthermore, this increased risk associated with infectious diseases, resulting from a global change that is rapidly altering human relationships and the environment, could trigger other crises related to the imbalance of the environment, whose scope could be very harmful (McMichael et al., 2020). Phenomena such as the use and abuse of resource consumption generating significant imbalances in ecosystems, extensive migratory processes involving large population movements, population aging, the tendency to concentrate the population of many countries in large urban centers, or climate change and consequent increase in temperatures, seem to be driving forces for the contagion and spread of these diseases.
However, in the face of the potential spread of these diseases, governments’ response and crisis management capacities in many Western countries have proven improvised, late, ineffective, and insufficient. And these threatening triggers are also present in other equally devastating environmental phenomena, such as the water crisis, failures in action in favor of the climate, natural disasters, combating extreme weather, man-made environmental disasters, loss of biodiversity, or other increasingly present social phenomena, such as cyber-attacks, political corruption, failures in global governance, economic war, social instability, etc. It seems that humanity will be doomed over the next few years to have to live with a succession of severe crises that will give rise to an almost permanent emergency (World Economic Forum, 2020). It seems clear that this extraordinary situation is a new opportunity to promote an in-depth process review of the global socio-economic system and its structural transformation to explore a new economic order entirely focused on the principles of sustainability and sustainable economic development.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Post-New World Economic Order: A set of proposals for the reform of the New World Economic Order that supports political-economic models that are considered obsolete, given that they are totally incapable of providing solutions to the significant problems that arose against humanity: climate change, natural disasters, loss of biodiversity, terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime, food crises, infectious disease epidemics, cyber-attacks, political corruption, human rights violations, the extreme polarization of wealth, and private waste, unemployment, gender violence, etc.
ESG Criteria: Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are standards for a company’s operations. Environmental criteria consider how a company performs as a steward of nature. Social criteria examine how it manages relationships with employees, suppliers, customers, and the communities where it operates. Governance deals with a company’s leadership, executive pay, audits, internal controls, and shareholder rights.
New Logistics: This evolved concept of logistics is based on the conceptual transition from a push strategic supply perspective to a push demand perspective, developing logistics models that are more sustainable, efficient, agile, intelligent, adaptable, resilient, and scalable. The response to the new determinants of the global environment has also caused logistics changes in companies’ relationships with their suppliers and customers. Both groups are increasingly heterogeneous. They initially focused on reducing supply costs, storage, distribution, and waste. Now, they concentrate on consumers to be more flexible and adaptive, improve service levels systematically, and manage supply chains in an integrated manner.
Logistics 4.0: It is a strategic technological direction that integrates different types of technologies to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of the supply chain, shifting the focus of the organizations to value chains, maximizing the value delivered to the consumers as well as the customers, by raising the levels of competitiveness, transparency, and decentralization among the different parties through digitalization.
Disruptive Environment: It is considered one in which the changes are unforeseen, substantial, and impactful, or in which the appearance of a new technology or work method directly influences the entities.
Global Logistics: It is technically the process of managing goods through an international supply chain, from its production to other parts of the world through intermodal transport system, transport via ocean, air, rail, and truck. The effectiveness of global logistics is measured using international logistics performance indexes.
Supply Chain Management 4.0: Logistics approach that integrates and synchronizes the entire value chain extended through the participating companies, using digital technologies to build an interconnected, intelligent, and transparent system, with multidirectional communication in real-time that allows managing the flows and the automation itself, creating an autonomous network focused on the client, adaptable, intelligent, agile, and dynamic.
Digital Economy: An economic system that primarily employs digital technology, especially electronic transactions made using the internet.
Sustainable Logistics: It is a logistics strategy that combining the environmental, economic, and social objectives of the organization transparently, within the framework of the coordination system of business processes within the company, which tries to optimize the economic results of each company and long-term supply chains. The result wanted is to produce and distribute goods in a sustainable way, taking into account environmental, economic, and social factors.
Disruptive Technology: It is an innovation that significantly alters how consumers, industries, or businesses operate. A disruptive technology sweeps away the systems or habits it replaces because it has attributes that are recognizably very superior.
New World Economic Order: This is the name given to the world economic order that prevailed for many decades because of the world reorganization produced after the Second World War, with particular geopolitical and geoeconomics areas of influence two victorious great powers, the USA and the USSR. Despite the bipolar world of the cold war dominated by these superpowers, it was always possible to reach agreements with good cooperation and exchange between the least aligned countries.