Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7095-8674

Date of Award

Spring 5-3-2020

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Department

Business

First Advisor

Dr. Karen Loch

Second Advisor

Dr. Kofi Q. Dadzie

Third Advisor

Dr. G. Peter Zhang

Abstract

The cold chain third-party logistics (3PLs) industry is comprised of 250 companies in the United States, representing a $5.7 billion dollar market (G. C. C. Alliance, 2019). The cold chain 3PL industry manages the storage of the food products the manufacturers produce and the logistics activities on behalf of the shipper. Currently, it is reported that over 94 billion pounds of food are stored in cold chain 3PL warehouses, with a projected growth to $2 billion dollars of goods and services tracked annually by 2023 (G. C. C. Alliance, 2017). Given industry growth, regulatory pressures, and serious disintermediation in the chain due to changing business models and alternative channels of distribution, the need for innovation-driven value from traditionally conservative, slow-to-change 3PLs is urgent. Therefore, I addressed the following research questions with this study: (a) What is the state of Organizational Innovativeness in cold chain 3PL firms? and (b) What is the nature of the relationship between cold chain 3PL firms’ innovativeness and their capacity to innovate? I am embedded in a cold chain 3PL, and my firm has a vested interest in understanding where to focus its efforts to effect change and create high levels of innovation capacity. All levels of the organizations were represented in the 192 participants who responded to a survey. The tested model represents a five-dimensional second-order latent construct for organizational innovativeness and its influence on a firm’s capacity to innovate. I evaluated the model using WarpPLS™ 6.0 (Koch, 2017). The findings suggest that all five dimensions had a strong positive influence on organizational innovativeness, which validated prior research. In turn, organizational innovativeness, as a second-order construct, was a significant predictor of innovation capacity. Size was a control. Open-ended questions were asked to allow open commentary on innovation in the respective organization and for the industry at large.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/17563907

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