Innovation and productivity: insights from Malaysia's logistics industry

Abstract

Efficient logistics is critical to a country's trade competitiveness. This paper uses the Data Envelopment Analysis Malmquist Index that includes an innovation component comprising three dimensions (input, process, and output), to assess the impact of innovation by third-party logistics (3PL). We treat the panel data of asset-based 3PL in Malaysia from 2007 to 2012. Three findings hold. First, innovation is not always accompanied by productivity gains. Second, innovation is still lacking in the logistics industry in Malaysia. Third, 3PL need to invest more in technology and stay financially healthy to accelerate the diffusion of innovation under a more competitive cost structure. This paper has two contributions. First, we offer an enhanced methodology for total factor productivity by including an innovation component and apply it for the first time to the logistics industry. Second, we augment the performance measurement literature specific to the logistics industry and our research suggests that the antecedents of productivity in logistics companies are investment and financial strength. These productivity–innovation findings provide insights into Malaysia's logistics industry and may be helpful for economies similar to Malaysia.

Keywords:

• logistics
• innovation
• productivity
• data envelopment analysis (DEA)
• Malmquist

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education for the financial support of this work under the Exploratory Research Grant Scheme (ERGS) 203/PMGT/6730127 and the Short Term Grant 304/PMGT/6313072. The authors gratefully acknowledge the ERGS Grant (No: 6730127) and USM-Short Term Grant (No: 6313072) for supporting this project.