1. Aguezzoul, A. (2014).

Third-party logistics selection problem: A literature review on criteria

and methods. Omega (Oxford), 49, 69–78.

In today's business world, it becomes very difficult for a company to be competitive without working
in close collaboration with external partners

The 3PL has been widely promoted by the phenomenon of outsourcing, on which companies
increasingly rely. Logistics outsourcing growth is mainly attributed to the benefits it brings in terms
of reducing costs, improving performance, focusing on their core business and building virtual
enterprises through strategic alliances

2. Methodology (пример как написать методологию)

The literature review analyzed in this paper was based on 87 articles published within the 1994–
2013 period in international journals in logistics/supply chain, transport/distribution and purchasing
domains, collected from ScienceDirect, Emerald, and Business Source Complete Databases.

For the literature research, “3PL selection”, “Third-Party logistics selection”, “logistics outsourcing”,
“3PL evaluation”, “3PL/ customers relationships”, and other relevant descriptors were used

The full text of each article was reviewed in order to eliminate those that are not related to 3PL
selection problem. As a result, 87 articles were identified; 67 of them are specific to 3PL selection
problem in the sense that they deal with criteria, methods, and also factors for the success of
3PL/customers relationships. The other 16 articles are related to logistics outsourcing decision,
modeling, planning, and evaluation of the logistics network for 3PL. Their analysis helps to
understand the phenomenon of logistics outsourcing, the role of 3PL in a supply chain and services
they offer.

Four indicators are suggested to measure 3PL performance which are: improved service levels,
reduced cycle time, efficient handling of exceptions, and improved end-customer satisfaction
2. Developing the WH2 framework for environmental sustainability in logistics service
providers: A taxonomy of green initiatives Piera Centobelli a, * , Roberto Cerchione b ,
Emilio Esposito
Introduction
Due to increasingly stringent environmental requirements established by the five main
climate change agreements (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
1992; the Kyoto Protocol, 1998; the Copenhagen Accord, 2009; the Doha Amendment, 2012;
the Paris Agreement, 2015) that have impacted on the manufacturing, transportation and
logistics industries, there is a growing interest in adopting environmental strategies along the
entire supply chain (Seuring and Müller, 2008).
Even if the environmental impact of service industries may be considered marginal compared
to the manufacturing industries, from the perspective of the logistics service industries, the
use of green initiatives by logistics service providers (LSPs) is becoming strategic to support
manufacturers and customers pursuing environmental sustainability (ES) strategies (Zailani et
al., 2011; Maas et al., 2012; Sutton, 2004). Therefore, the investigation of green initiatives
among LSPs has been gaining greater relevance in the literature, where this topic has been
analysed from different perspectives
A first group of authors aims to identify a classification of green initiatives, and their papers
categorise green initiatives according to different criteria (Lieb and Lieb, 2010a; Pieters et al.,
2012; Colicchia et al., 2013), namely financial, managerial, operational, organisational, and
transport-related.
A second set of papers investigates the relationship between green initiatives and LSP
performance, i.e. environmental performance (Liimatainen et al., 2012; Liimatainen et al.,
2014), economic performance (Perotti et al., 2012), and operational performance (Bai and
Sarkis, 2013; Min and Ko, 2008).
A fourth group of authors examines the main forms of collaboration in green initiatives
adoption (Bjorklund, 2011; Facanha and € Horvath, 2005; Large et al., 2013; Martinsen and
Bjorklund, 2012 € ).
Lastly, other contributions analyse the role of technologies in green initiatives adoption
(Iacob et al., 2013; Kang et al., 2013)

Maas et al. (2012) and Zhu and Sarkis (2006) seem to identify green initiatives with green
aims (such as reducing energy consumption, reducing the use of physical resources and
polluting chemicals, and redesigning production and distribution processes to reduce toxic
materials). Perotti et al. (2012) and Pieters et al. (2012), however, tend to associate green
initiatives with the individual green practices adopted (i.e. eco-driving, empty running, full
vehicle loading, and routing techniques to minimise travel distances). Lastly, Iacob et al.
(2013) and Kang et al. (2013) stress the role of technological tools (such as emissions control
systems, realtime locating systems).
2. Literature review A systematic literature review adapted from Tranfield et al. (2003),
Pittaway et al. (2004), Easterby-Smith et al. (2012), Cerchione and Esposito (2016) was
conducted to provide a taxonomy of green initiatives. Summarizing and integrating the
different methodological steps identified by these contributions, a systematic literature review
was conducted throughout the following three main phases: 1) paper search, 2) paper
selection, and 3) paper analysis.
The paper search phase aimed to identify all the pertinent papers focusing on ES in LSPs. In
order to guarantee a coverage as wide as possible in terms of peer-reviewed journals to be
included, we used the Web of Science and Scopus academic databases
The initial list of keywords includes “green”, “environmental”, “sustainab*”, “carbon
footprint”, “CO2 emission*” in combination with “LSP*”, “logistics service*”, “third party
logistics”, “third-party logistics” or “3 PL*”. Subsequently, the keywords frequency analysis
revealed the importance of the keyword “freight transport”. Therefore, the keyword “freight
transport*” was added and the final search string is: (“green” OR “environmental” OR
“sustainability” OR “carbon footprint” OR “CO2 emission*”) AND (“LSP*” OR “logistics
service*” OR “third party logistics” OR “third-party logistics” OR “3 PL*” OR “freight
transport*”).
As for the paper selection phase, according to Tranfield et al. (2003), we have chosen a
systematic review approach conducted on manual filtering since this approach is adequate to
conduct literature reviews on qualitative topics such as ES in LSPs. This approach allows us
to reduce bias in the results of literature reviews and provide an in-depth understanding of
qualitative aspects rather than automatic filtering.
The paper selection phase involves only papers published in peer-reviewed journals
(Gunasekaran et al., 2015; Cerchione and Esposito, 2016) and only papers belonging from
subject areas in line with the topic investigated (Demartini, 2013). A total of 415 papers were
selected from both Scopus and Web of Science excluding duplications.
The paper selection phase aimed to select only papers relating to the objective of this section.
In this phase, two criteria of exclusion and a technique of inclusion of research papers were
defined. The first criterion relates to the focus of the abstract, in line with the approach
proposed by Pittaway et al. (2004).
This criterion allowed us to include only those papers whose abstracts deal with ES in LSPs.
For this purpose, the abstracts were read
Only papers included in the first list (113) were considered for the second criterion.
The second criterion relates to the focus of the paper. A detailed analysis of the full content of
each paper was performed. More specifically, the full papers were read by two readers, and in
the case of doubt, by a third researcher to exclude 80 papers not focusing on the research
topic
Finally, a technique of inclusion, i.e. cross-referencing, allowed us to include in the final
sample thirteen additional papers which had not been included in the selected databases or
had not been found with the specific search string despite being cited in the literature. This
last technique allows us to be confident that all the main contributions on this point have been
included in the final sample to generate both an unbiased and comprehensive review of the
literature on the topic.
The paper analysis phase aimed to provide a descriptive and content analysis of papers on the
topic of ES in LSPs. Papers’ content was analysed by two different researchers in parallel and
this analysis has been based on the entire paper and not merely on the evaluation of the
abstract or specific sections. As for this phase, we defined a list of green aims, green practices
and technological tools on the basis of our experience with the context of investigation
(Mayring, 2000; Krippendorff, 2013).
After the analysis of the half 1064 P. Centobelli et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 165
(2017) 1063e1077 of papers and the adoption of inductive category development procedures
(Tranfield et al., 2003), we revised the initial set of topic areas and identified three main
categories: 1) papers dealing with green aims, 2) papers dealing with green practices, 3)
papers dealing with technological tools. The content analysis of individual papers included in
these three categories allowed us to select a list of green aims, green practices and
technological tools adopted by LSPs. Starting from this list, the further inclusion of additional
papers focusing on each individual green aim, green practice and technological tool allowed
us to provide three comprehensive taxonomies which will be presented in detail in the next
section to provide an answer to the first research question formulated
3. Taxonomies of green aims, green practices and technological tools
This framework has been drawn from the literature and includes both the typology of green
initiative (single firm initiatives, supply chain initiatives) and the phase of the service (transport,
warehousing, logistics service, management). It is structured according to three levels.
Both green practices and technological tools are divided into single firm practices (tools) and supply
chain practices (tools)

In summary, according to Sutton (2004), Zhu and Sarkis (2004), Lieb and Lieb (2010a, 2010b) and
Maas et al. (2012) there are seven main green aims towards ES strategies (Table 1): 1) reduction of
oil and other fossil fuels; 2) reduction of greenhouse gas emission; 3) reduction of energy
consumption; 4) use of renewable resources rather than depletable resources; 5) adoption of
recycled materials; 6) reduction of the use of physical resources and polluting chemicals; and 7) the
redesign of production and distribution processes to reduce toxic materials.

Therefore, the taxonomy proposed in this paragraph consists of four types of green aims: 1)
transport aims (reduction of oil and other fossil fuels, reduction of greenhouse gas emission); 2)
warehousing aims (reduction of energy consumption, use of renewable resources rather than
depletable resources); 3) logistics service aims (adoption of recycled materials); and 4) management
aims (reduction of the use of physical resources and polluting chemicals, the redesign of production
and distribution processes to reduce toxic materials).