Collaborative Logistics: Developing a Framework to Evaluate Socio-Technical Issues in Logistic-Based Networks

The concepts of collaborative logistics, logisticsbased networks, focused logistics, and distributed adaptive logistics describe a futuristic approach to logistics planning encompassing automated, adaptive technologies, and proactive human collaboration. Such an approach creates novel challenges for collaboration within socio-technical systems, which encompass the collaborative technologies, the people and machines involved in the act of collaboration, and social context of collaboration. These challenges need to be addressed by theoretical models incorporating multidisciplinary approaches to the study of collaboration. The present paper introduces a framework for collaboration which may inform the design and implementation of collaborative technologies and systems from a socio-technical perspective.