76 challenges with the current regulations on urban freight in the city. A lack of enforcement of regulations around time windows and environmental standards for vehicles makes it difficult for those who do adhere to the rules to compete with those who do not. Additionally, the congestion caused from all companies being on the road at the same time combined with lack of parking and loading spots, make drivers spend more time in the city. This is contrary to the goals of both the authorities and the urban logistics service providers.
Thus, as for the business implications, mapping out who the stakeholders of urban freight transport are together with their objectives, barriers, and drivers, may create transparency around the issues that are common to the sector and potentially highlight the areas to focus on.
Chapter V
77 A qualitative multiple-case study was conducted in order to better understand the specific phenomenon of institutional pressures in urban freight transport in a new context. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to capture the experiences and examples of representatives from different organizations. The middle-range theory recently developed by Rose et al. (2016) as well as the premises of institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) served as foundation for the theoretical framework of the study. Propositions for strategic approaches available to companies in response to institutional pressures (Oliver, 1991) provided additional insights that were applied in the analysis.
The findings show that urban logistics service providers in Copenhagen experience a range of physical and social pressures from their environment. The sources of these pressures are either the physical space they operate in, such as constrained space, congested infrastructure, and poor access when loading and unloading.
The other source of pressures are social actors such as authorities, customers, competitors, and citizens, who impose a range of regulations, requirements, or expectations on the urban logistics service providers. The regulations and requirements are largely from authorities on local, national, and regional levels, creating restrictions for when deliveries can be made into the city, imposing environmental standards for vehicles and engines, and enforcing laws on health and work environment. Expectations for how urban logistics service providers should behave come from their customers – both shippers and receivers, who demand that the services are provided as efficient as possible at the lowest possible cost, and from citizens, who complain to the authorities if they are dissatisfied with conditions in their environment. Additionally, requirements and expectations for CSR initiatives and reporting come from both authorities and some customers. There is also extensive use of best practice in the sector, both from projects in other countries, and from logistics service providers’ own experiences. The pressures on urban logistics service providers in Copenhagen are mainly coercive and mimetic, whereas normative pressures coming from professional cognitions and norms were only briefly mentioned.
While the individual interviewees share different ways of adjusting to the requirements and expectations from their environment, the common approach to managing institutional pressures in Copenhagen is managing stakeholders, either through collaboration or more actively through influencing the other actors.
Collaboration is used to balance the different interests of the actors involved, accommodating some pressures and negotiating others. Influence is used in cases where the logistics service providers feel the need to actively try to shape the values of their environment and the criteria for legitimacy and survival.
78 The freight network is one arena where they do this, in addition to individual activities. For issues that require more negotiation power and leverage, the logistics service providers choose to go through their trade associations.
The study shows that the pressures experienced by urban logistics service providers in the US and in Copenhagen are quite similar, but their classifications in terms of institutional theory differ. Urban space imposes pressures such as constrained space and congested infrastructure, whereas governments, businesses, and the community impose pressures related to the operations, conduct, and legitimacy of the firms. Rose et al. (2016) see physical pressures as coercive and social pressures and mimetic, whereas only pressures that lead to imitation because of best practice or uncertainty are mimetic in this study. Although the experienced pressures are quite similar, the management approaches employed in the two contexts differ.
Urban logistics service providers in the US focus on managing space, resources, and legitimacy, whereas the main focus of the case participants in this study are managing stakeholders through collaboration or influence.
7.1 Further research
As a step towards better understanding the institutional pressures that urban logistics service providers experience as well as the strategic approaches they employ in managing such pressures, this study has provided specific insights on the topic in the specific context of Copenhagen. This adds to the insights from the US study by Rose et al. (2016), but as this was a case study, the aim has not been to generalize the findings to a larger population, rather to generalize the case findings to a specific theory. Thus, for the purpose of further extending the research on institutional pressures in urban freight transport, it is suggested that future research continues to explore the pressures that are experienced by urban logistics service providers in different contexts, as well as their strategies for managing these. The impact of less visible pressures of mimetic and normative nature are particularly interesting, as the way they influence strategies may be more subconscious than formal coercive pressures like regulations. Furthermore, in order to better understand the impact of institutional differences, a suggestion is to create a framework that aims at explaining the link between institutional pressures in certain institutional contexts and the strategic approaches that firms take. The author also supports Rose et al. (2016) in their suggestion to investigate the relationship between strategic choice and outcome, in order to determine whether adapting to the institutional environment leads to greater value, either in terms of efficiency or in terms of legitimacy in the community. It relation to that, it is also interesting to understand if certain strategies are better than others.
79 Another finding that the author suggests to research further is the aspect of stakeholder management. The study’s findings show that logistics service providers in Copenhagen actively manage their stakeholders in order to create better conditions for their business. As current research on urban freight transport and stakeholder involvement traditionally focuses on local authorities identifying, involving, and managing their stakeholders, looking into how other constituents behave in this regard would be of relevance to coming closer to a common solution. This could be done through doing a holistic investigation of the actors identified in this study as well as in the literature, understanding their interests and objectives for urban freight, and the barriers and drivers to finding a solution. Plotting this information in a framework would create more transparency around the complexity of the sector, and could potentially lead to a prioritization of issues and an action plan of how each actor can contribute, without compromising too much on their own goals. Continued work in these areas has the potential to contribute to findings solutions for an increasingly important and complex field.
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