Supply chain risk management: a new methodology for a systematic literature review

Supply chain risk management (SCRM) has recently gained increasing attention in the supply chain context, both from the practitioners' perspective and as a research area. Given the relevance of the topic, the aim of the present paper is to present a focused literature review, investigating the process of knowledge creation, transfer and development from a dynamic perspective within the context of SCRM.

A review of the literature on SCRM was undertaken. The new proposed methodology combines the systematic literature review approach to identify the most relevant articles to be included in the study with the citation network analysis in order to unfold the dynamics of the field under study. The authors define this new methodology as systematic literature network analysis.

The paper demonstrates that there are a number of key themes in the field of SCRM. The contributions that influenced the field were identified and, by analysing the evolution over time of key concepts, a number of research directions were identified and discussed.

The dynamic nature of current literature review allows the identification of the directions in which research is moving and thus the recognition of streams of research that appear most promising. However, the application of the research methodology, and in particular of the citation network analysis, requires the support of specific computer programs. Moreover, the underlying assumption of the citation network analysis is that, by analysing the network of citations made to and from articles, it is possible to explain the flows of knowledge used to generate new results. This is only partially true since the spread of measures based on impact assessment led many researchers to an excessive use of citations, even if their content is not always decisive for the outcome of their work.

The present paper outlines a research agenda that may facilitate the development of models for managing supply chain risk. Furthermore from the evidence of the performed literature review some managerial insights can be derived on how to manage supply chain risk: by considering uncertainty in the design of supply chains, by understanding the impact of risks arising from network collaboration and interactions between supply chain partners, by developing proactive mitigation capabilities to hedge the increasing level of risk.

The novelty of this research lies in the combination of two existing methodologies for reviewing the literature and in the adoption of a dynamic perspective in order to analyse theory development.