The Impact Of Trust And Relationship Commitment On 3PL Integration And Performance

With the rapid development of third-party logistics, 3PL providers are playing more and more important role in their user's supply chain. The indispensability of establishing a close partnership between logistics users and providers and integrating third-party logistics (3PL integration) has received increasing attention from academicians and practitioners. Trust and relationship commitment are key factors on the cooperation of inter-organization, which is especially true in China, a typical relationship-oriented society. Therefore, an investigation of the impact of trust and relationship commitment on 3PL integration and performance under the context of Chinese culture is of significant importance.Based on the research and analysis of existing literature, this study proposes a conceptual model and research hypotheses on trust, relationship commitment, 3PL integration and performance. We propose and empirically test a model using data collected from 361 third-party logistics users in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The results show that: (1) the conceptual model on trust, relationship commitment, 3PL integration and performance is acceptable and of universal significance. (2) Trust is a key factor on the impact of relationship commitment; however, different types of trust impact relationship commitment in different ways. Ability trust is positively related to both normative relationship commitment and instrumental relationship commitment, while goodwill trust is only positively related to normative relationship commitment. Trust has impact on 3PL integration by relationship commitment. The total effect of goodwill trust on 3PL integration by relationship commitment is greater than the total effect of ability trust on 3PL integration by relationship commitment. (3) Both normative relationship commitment and instrumental relationship commitment are positively related to 3PL integration, but normative relationship commitment has a greater impact on 3PL integration than instrumental relationship commitment. (4) 3PL integration has positive impact on the performance of both 3PL users and 3PL providers. Based on the review of the questionnaire, we choose a 3PL user from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan respectively to do the case studies and further verify and explain the conclusion from the statistical analysis.Conducted under the context of logistics development in Greater China, this study integrates concepts and knowledge from multi-disciplines, which provides cross disciplines, multi-angle insights and understanding for the important research topic of 3PL integration. This study makes significant contributions as follows: (1)Studying the correspondence between trust and relationship commitment and third-party logistics integration from the perspective of relationship management, and examining the impact of two types of trust on relationship commitment, and the impact of two types of relationship commitment on 3PL integration, thus expanding and enriching the commitment-trust theory (Morgan and Hunt, 1994) through detailed division of trust and relationship commitment and discussions on the impact of third-party logistics integration; (2) Verifying the importance of 3PL integration on the performance of 3PL users and providers by theoretical analysis and data evidence; making up the evidence shortness in this area; adding logistics service quality as an important performance variable to the conceptual model, expanding the measurement dimension on enterprise performance, exploring the relationship between performances of different dimensions, thus enriching the research angle of 3PL integration and deepening the theoretical study of 3PL integration; (3) Combining large scale questionnaire investigation and multi-case research methodology with statistical data from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as practical data from case companies to verify and explain the model, thus gaining significant inspirations and findings different from the research under different culture and industry contexts. The research conclusions reflect the impact mechanism of trust and relationship commitment on the integration and performance of third-party logistics under the context of the logistics development in Greater China, thus providing guidelines and reference for 3PL users and 3PL providers of Great China to strengthen 3PL integration by relationship management and consequently enhancing their performance.