Sweating the Assets: Asset Leanness and Financial Performance in the Motor Carrier Industry
研究了美国上市卡车运输公司资产精简程度与财务绩效的关系，发现两者呈U型而非预期的倒U型关系，对物流和运营管理者有参考价值。
Originally adopted by the automotive manufacturers, lean management practices have since been applied to many other manufacturing industries. This study reviews the different theoretical perspectives on the leanness‐performance relationship in the context of the motor carriage industry. Drawing on both the lean management in logistics and organizational slack literatures, we develop hypotheses addressing the link between asset leanness and financial performance. These hypotheses are empirically tested using a comprehensive panel data set of 1,172 firm‐quarter observations from the U.S. publicly traded truckload motor carriers. Initially expecting an inverted U‐shaped relationship between asset leanness and performance, findings indicated a U‐shaped relationship, both for carriers' total assets and the subset of trailer assets.