Despite the growing interest in 3PL, the literature on this area appears to be
disjointed. Based on an extensive literature review (114 references), this paper aims to
offer a taxonomy of 3PL studies and point out opportunities for further research. In a
previous attempt, Razzaque and Sheng (1998) summarised the results of their literature
survey which also included articles from practitioner journals and the trade press.
For the sake of rigour, the present study concentrates only on refereed journal papers
published during 1990-2005