Developing the WH2 framework for environmental sustainability in logistics service providers: A taxonomy of green initiatives

•The paper provides a taxonomy of green initiatives adopted by LSPs.•LSPs plan their strategies without setting out green aims in an integrated manner.•LSPs adopt green practices mainly driven by environmental and cost efficiency issues.•LSPs achieve their green aims without exploiting the potential of technological assets.•LSPs show misalignment in the adoption of green practices and technological tools.

This paper aims to provide a novel taxonomy of green initiatives and to investigate their diffusion among logistics service providers (LSPs). The term 'green initiative' has been defined as a multifaceted concept which incorporates three perspectives: the managerial perspective (the aim), the organisational perspective (the practices), and the technological perspective (the technological tools). Starting from a systematic literature review, we developed the WH2framework to identify a taxonomy of green aims, green practices and technological tools that can be used by LSPs to achieve their environmental sustainability (ES) strategies. A web-based document analysis methodology was carried out to investigate the degree of diffusion of green initiatives in 464 LSPs. This methodology was conducted through six main steps: 1) document search; 2) document selection; 3) manual analysis; 4) computer-assisted analysis; 5) confirmation analysis; 6) triangulation of findings. The results highlight that the LSPs investigated tend to plan their ES strategies without setting out in an integrated manner the green aims related to the different typologies of service provided and mainly neglect those related to logistics and management services. As for the green practices, their low level of diffusion shows the attempt of LSPs to combine management and environmental efficiency without a defined ES strategy roadmap. As for the technological tools, the results highlight that these are more commonly adopted than green practices. Nevertheless, LSPs tend to adopt traditional systems instead of collaborative technologies. The results make it possible to identify three main gaps among LSPs: a technological gap, a cultural gap, a managerial gap.