Supply chain risk management research agenda – from a literature review to a call for future research directions

Purpose: Supply chain risk has increasingly attracted academic and corporate interest, however the supply chain risk debate in academic literature are rather limited to case and location specific studies. Hence, this paper utilised a systematic literature review to explore the supply chain risk research trends and gaps within the management literature.

Design/methodology/approach: To achieve the research objective a systematic literature review (SLR), looking into 25 years since 1990, into supply chain risk management was conducted, which resulted in 114 papers.

Findings: While the supply chain risk management literature is growing, results from the systematic literature review identified limited organized understanding of what constitutes holistic supply chain risk process, and high reliance of particular categories for supply chain risk, such as the high reliance on specific country settings (the USA and the UK); limited presence of cross competitive supply chain risk process analysis and challenges in developing conceptual supply chain risk frameworks.

Research limitations/implications: The supply chain risk embeds categories of location, scope of supply chain, risk management tools and industry sectors involved, The search for related publications was mainly used from a wide range of coverage from accountancy to design in supply chain risk, hence although there is indication to specific industries, and foci of risk, this could be further explored.

Practical implications: This review of supply chain risk management identifies various research gaps and directions for future research to develop theory and practical understanding of supply chain risk.

Originality/value: Current literature on supply chain risk have been assessed based on its definition and utilisation. The current paper bridges this gap by synthesizing the diverse academic journal papers into the categories based on design continiuum, relationship continiuum, process continiuum and economic continiuum. In addition it highlighted the gaps in industry context, theoretical contribution, geographic location, and research methods applied and addresses the scope for further research.