Toward Greening City Logistics: A Systematic Review on Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility in Managing Urban Distribution Centers

Background: The ramifications of climate change are rampant: All stakeholders must act effectively and swiftly. Unsustainable and increased urbanization adds additional strain on combatting environmental degradation. Since the last decade, urban distribution centers (UDCs) have emerged in response to the steep rise in urban freight transportation and its negative impact on city congestion and air quality. Methods: In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive review of the performance of UDCs and investigate its alignment with the corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, including the shareholders’ governance strategies and policies, as well as environmental, social, and economic measures. Our systematic literature review consists of multiple phases: In the first one, we utilize bibliometric tools to implement a quantitative analysis of the extant literature. Next, a cluster-based network analysis complements this analysis to describe the evolution of research in this area. Results: Our descriptive analysis categorizes existing research on UDCs based on CG- and CSR-compliant themes. We classify pertinent peer-reviewed articles into topical clusters and offer research opportunities related to improving the performance of UDCs. Conclusions: This study aims to stimulate further scholarly inquiry into sustainable city logistics and provides a knowledge-based guide for academicians and practitioners, logistics service providers, policymakers, and customers.