Research On The Governance Of Digital Logistics Platform

The development of the digital economy and digital platforms in the field of logistics have received widespread attention from both the industry and academia.Among such widespread attention is the high uncertainty and complexity of logistics activities which prompt logistics platform companies to use digital technologies to enhance cooperation and value creation among platform participants.While logistics platforms are beneficial in creating social,economic,and environmental value,they also bring a new set of challenges that require urgent governance between these platform companies.As a result,new governance schemes are developed due to the unique structure of logistics platforms and new business models.Although new governance schemes are being developed to foster cooperation,there still present some variety of tensions between platform enterprises and their participants which ought to be coordinated.Additionally,the impact and legitimacy of logistics platforms on governance are being diminished due to the unreasonable behavior of some logistics platform participants;as such government regulations need to be strengthened to revitalize it.In that regard,the study of digital logistics platform governance has important practical and theoretical implications.Based on the above background,business ecosystem theory,paradox theory,legitimacy theory,and governance theory were employed to address the core question;“How can platform companies implement effective governance in the context of digital logistics platforms?”.The study proposes a governance research framework for digital logistics platforms and sets up four substudies to discuss governance questions in platform construction,participant cooperation,and legitimacy building to explain the core questions.Sub-study 1,uses three logistics platform companies as the unit of analysis to explore platform companies’ process in implementing governance mechanisms during the construction of a logistics platform.Also,sub-study 2,uses the Cainiao network as a typical case to analyze the process of reconciling tension/conflict and cooperation between platform companies and its participant through governance models.Furthermore,to understand the legitimacy building in the platform,an evolutionary game approach was employed to ascertain the evolutionary governance strategy of players in the logistics platform.Finally,objective data from 427 questionnaires were collected from an online research survey and analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling(PLS-SEM)statistical tool to examine the impact of logistics platforms’ legitimacy and governance on cooperation performance.The analyzed results demonstrated that the implementation of governance mechanisms can enhance the value of logistics platforms.Thus,at the platform design level,our findings indicate that platform companies adopt control mechanisms to maintain an organized platform environment to keep the consistency of technical architecture and actual processes.Whiles,at the online trading level,it was observed that platform companies design coordination mechanisms to promote synergy among participants by rationally allocating resources to reduce participants’ perceived risk.On the level of value enhancement,the result shows that platform companies implement value mechanisms to enhance the collaborative performance of multiple participants.Thus,an effort to meet user needs,promote digital technologies usage and minimization of paradoxes in the platform.Secondly,the analyzed results show that the employment of a governance model helps facilitate the coordination of paradoxes identified among logistics platform participants from different levels.From the learning level,it was observed that platform enterprises coordinate the“utilization-development” paradox through top-down governance mode,forming the “utilization of development” synergy.At the organizational level,the finding indicates that platform companies can balance the “autonomy-control” paradox through a hierarchical governance model by creating a synergy of “controlled autonomy”.Outputs from the implementation level show that platform companies address the “cooperation-competition” paradox through the employment of a digital technology governance model to form a “cooperation of competition” synergy.Whiles from the belonging level,it was observed that platform companies coordinate the “collective-individual”paradox through bottom-up governance to form a “collective of individuals” synergy.Thirdly,the analyzed results report that legitimacy and governance strategies of multi-entities to interact with each other are influenced by many factors.Additionally,the study’s finding reports that the strategic choices of platform companies,logistics service providers,and governments are interdependent.High tax rates,penalties,and social reputation are drivers that prompt platform companies and logistics service providers to actively build legitimacy.More so,the finding shows that subsidies and penalties for platform firms do influence the choice of legitimacy strategies of logistics service providers.From the findings,the study posits that government can strengthen its oversight of platform firms,via the development and introduction of governance measures to manage logistics service providers.Furthermore,observation from the results indicates that logistics platform legitimacy and cooperative performance among participants was enhanced through the implementation of platform governance.Statistically,pragmatic,ethical,and cognitive legitimacy factors outputs showed that they positively affect cooperative performance.Additionally,it was also observed that the governance of platform firms factor positively mediates the relationship between legitimacy and cooperative performance.Concurrently,regulatory desirability of government was found to moderate positively between the relationship of pragmatic and cognitive legitimacy on cooperation performance.Outlining the innovation of this study,a proposed governance model of “platform design-online transaction-value enhancement” was developed.The model extends the theory of organizational governance of logistics platforms and proposes a value mechanism based on a control and coordination mechanism to expand the research scope of digital logistics platform governance.Additionally,this study breaks through the perspective of a single technology or market research and clarifies the inner mechanism of platform governance from the perspective of a logistics platform.More so,adding to the works of literature on logistics platform paradoxes,the study constructs a governance model implementation path of “paradox identification-paradox governance-paradox synergy”.The path reveals the formation process from conflict to a collaboration of logistics platform participants.Existing research focuses on post-event conflicts,this paper explores paradox identification and governance from an ex-ante perspective to further deepen the research on cooperation and governance of digital logistics platforms.Furthermore,an evolutionary game theory research approach of digital logistics platform governance was employed to understand the internal decision-making mechanism of legitimacy and governance among platform enterprises,logistics service providers,and the government.Lastly,using a large data sample,an empirical study was employed to expand the legitimacy theory scope to ascertain the impact of platform enterprise governance and government regulation on legitimacy and cooperation performance.Implications,limitations,and future research directions are also proposed.