InnoMarket · Innovation in the road freight transportation chain facilitating sustainability and low cost: A socio-technical perspective on work and development of road freight transport markets.

Innovation in the road freight transportation chain facilitating sustainability and low cost: A socio-technical perspective on work and development of road freight transport markets.

InnoMarket is opening the black box of the international road freight transport market, which in many ways is organized as a bazaar market. The project investigates this 'institutional order' of road freight transportation that leads to unintended in-efficiencies such as less than full truck loads. There is also a high degree of logistics innovation, which is a consequence of the organizing in networks and idiosyncratic knowledge. The objective is fistly to identify innovative potentials for lowering cost and increasing sustainability by analyzing practices of overlapping markets and built-in controversies in the transport chains. Secondly, the project aims at closing a gap in transport research by introducing social aspects in explanations of strategic development. Theoretically, the project builds on organization and market literature and the socio-technical view of innovation processes. An ethnographic action net study is applied to investigate the overlapping markets and international inter-sectoral transport chain actors; the industrial shipper, customer, intermediaries, transporter and drivers. The study involves 50 interviews in Poland, Denmark and Sweden, documentary studies, and “shadowing” actors. The results of the study is a novel perspective on how road transport markets work, contributing to knowledge of transport-chain efficiency, sustainability and innovation. CBS expertise in transportation, valuation theory and ethnographic narratives advances the fellow in research, methodology, public dissemination and publications. Host professor supervised in transport and logistics research, publication and editorship skill. Secondment at ITD/International Transport Denmark´s innovation center provided training-in-innovation projects. Knowledge on triggers to innovation and obstacles to sustainable road transportation are disseminated. Fellow research profile is broadened, including organizing, transportation expertise, ethnographic action net methods, publishing, outreach experience, and an international network of academics and non-academics.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union