Transportation, logistic performance and moderating effect of information technology : a conceptual model in Malaysia

Logistics performance is important to economic growth in developed and developing countries worldwide. They believed can act as an invisible catalyst linking supply and demand, and the most important operations for business development. Other than the core competency of delivering goods on time, logistics companies add value to their clients’ businesses by designing and executing complex supply chain cycles, project management and inventory reduction. Recognizing the important of logistics performance to economy development, many studies on logistics issue particularly related to small business had been done by previous researcher. Most of the prior studies focus on the impact of logistics activities includes transportation activity on logistics performance, but there is still little research focusing on the moderating effect of IT since IT can be considered the new competitive weapons in the logistics industry. In spite of that, until recently, IT is one of the vital valuable matters to logistics performance, but the ways of applications and how IT can affect logistics performance is still sparking a heat debate. Hence, to fill this gap this paper provides a conceptual model that links the relationship of transportation activity on logistics performance and moderating effect of IT between them. This model is originated by synthesizing the previous evidence, both empirically and theoretically from prior literature. This model is expected could benefit the small business performance, particularly in Malaysia environment well as improve logistics performance via information technology.