A critical analysis of supply chain management content in empirical research (2011)

A critical analysis of supply chain management content in empirical research Business Process Management Journal A critical analysis of supply chain management content in empirical research Gunjan Son.

Business Process Management Journal

A critical analysis of supply chain management content in empirical research

Gunjan Soni Rambabu Kodali

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Gunjan Soni Rambabu Kodali, (2011),"A critical analysis of supply chain management content in empiricalresearch", Business Process Management Journal, Vol 17 Iss 2 pp 238 - 266

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Martha C Cooper, Douglas M Lambert, Janus D Pagh, (1997),"Supply Chain Management: More Than

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A critical analysis of supply chain management content

in empirical research

Gunjan Soni and Rambabu Kodali

Mechanical Engineering Group, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to carry out a critical assessment of empirical research content

in supply chain management (SCM) The assessment involved 569 empirical research articles published

in 21 selected journals between 1994 and 2008.

Design/methodology/approach – The methodology of critical assessment involved selection and classification of 569 empirical research articles in SCM A systematic classification and a critical analysis is carried out so as to identify research gaps in content of SCM in empirical research, as well as

to recommend directions for future research.

Findings – Critical analysis of selected articles led to conclusion that SCM content in empirical research is very much based on analysis of focal firms and most of the authors prefer to perform empirical studies for combination of various entities of analysis considering possible elements of exchange Performance measurement is on the rise and will continue to be but should be used at higher levels of analysis as well The principal component bodies of SCM need further development to stage SCM at maturity level Overall, it is highlighted that there is still a need for better frameworks that can overcome the shortcomings in extant empirical research literature of SCM.

Originality/value – Many literature reviews that aim at critical examination of SCM literature are reported but none of them focused exclusively on content of empirical research in SCM Another unique feature of this paper is that the sample size of articles with respect to number of papers (569 papers) as well as number of journals (21 journals) is larger then ever considered for literature review in SCM The paper spans a longer time span of 15 years (1994-2008) as well.

Keywords Supply chain management, Serials, Classification, Research work Paper type Literature review

1 IntroductionOver the past 25 years, supply chain management (SCM) has been evolving as conceptand gradually managers have accepted that their firm is just one entity in the chain

of firms whose purpose is to satisfy the customer In order to develop such thinking,

a lot of support is provided by researchers from academia, industry and consultants.Asufficient amount of research in SCM is performed using empirical studies Minor et al.(1994) defined empirical studies as those involving the gathering and analysis of data,and subsequent reporting of findings and conclusions The importance of empiricalstudies in applied business research has been highlighted by many authors (Ebert, 1990;Hayes and Clark, 1985; Flynn et al., 1990) Since SCM is also an applied businessphilosophy, there is a need to examine the empirical research aspect of SCM as well.Thus, an attempt is made in this paper to investigate the SCM content in empiricalresearch and suggest directions for future research in SCM

The objective of the paper is to provide a critical analysis of empirical researchcontent in SCM Section 2 critically examines various literature reviews published

in SCM literature Section 3 elaborates the methodology adopted for the purpose

of providing a comprehensive and critical literature review of SCM content in empirical

research This is followed by classification and analysis of SCM content in empirical

research in Section 4 Finally, the identification of gaps in present research, and

significant findings are reported in Section 5 The implications to future are discussed in

Section 6 and finally, the paper is concluded in Section 7

2 Literature reviews in SCM

The huge literature body of SCM has led to numerous literature reviews in past 15 years

A list of literature reviews in SCM is given in Table I

It is evident from Table I that none of the literature reviews had a focus on reviewing

content of SCM in empirical research The literature review of Croom et al (2000)

focused on categorization of literature linked to SCM The paper provided guidelines to

review SCM research but did not carry out the review of literature It mainly contributed

to a critical theory debate through the presentation and use of a framework for the

categorization of literature linked to SCM Ho et al (2002) analysed articles of empirical

research in SCM with reference to state of constructs used in SCM research,

which highlights some major weaknesses of the extant literature with respect to the

conceptualization, operationalisation and modeling of SCM But it did not present any

classification scheme to categorize and analyse extant empirical studies on SCM, and

neither had it aimed on the chronology of publications in empirical research Authors

like Gammelgaard (2004) and Halldo´rson and Arlbjorn (2005) classified and reviewed

the literature on the basis of various schools of thought but their work is not at all related

with reviewing the present state of content of SCM in empirical research It is also

observed that remaining literature reviews are mostly concerned with types of research

designs, types of data analysis techniques used and constructs of SCM, but none of them

has any focus towards content of SCM in empirical research The time horizon of

literature review is another issue where most of the literature reviews considered papers

published in recent years Among the list of reviews in Table I, only two comprehensive

literature reviews spanned a period of more than ten years In first literature review by

Carter and Ellram (2003), articles published only in Journal of Supply Chain

Management ( JSCM) were reviewed that were spread over a span of 34 years But since

it is biased towards only one journal, it cannot be considered for tracing the direction of

growth of SCM content in empirical research Another comprehensive review by Wolf

(2008) also reviewed SCM literature covering a period of 16 years in 282 papers, which

primarily focused on characterizing the processes of knowledge creation in SCM and its

evolution over time, but this review is short of specifically focusing on the content of

SCM in empirical research The review by Fabbe-Costes and Jahre (2008) revealed the

link between supply chain integration and performance by systematically analyzing

38 research papers and came up with evidence that emphasized a requirement for a

deeper empirical investigation of linkage between supply chain integration and

performance of supply chain However, their work is also not focused on empirical

literature alone Lastly, Giunipero et al (2008) examined SCM literature on the basis of

SCM definitions, subject categories in SCM, empirical vs non-empirical literature, level

of analysis, primary research methods and data analysis techniques One of the major

shortcomings of the paper with respect to empirical research content is that the analysis

is limited to level of analysis and subject categories in SCM only Second, the period

SCM content

in empirical research 239

before 1997 is not considered in the review Further, the aim of paper is anyway not

focused on in-depth analysis of empirical research literature rather it is two pronged and

divided between empirical and non-empirical literature Hence, it can be said that it

becomes inevitable to have an effort directed solely towards reviewing content of SCM in

empirical research

3 Methodology

This section of paper elaborates the methodology adopted for the purpose of providing a

comprehensive and critical literature review of empirical research in SCM The issues of

time horizon of review, journal selection, article selection, article classification and

analysis of articles will be discussed under literature review methodology A schematic

representation of literature review methodology adopted in the paper is shown in

Figure 1:

Step 1 The assessment period of articles is between 1982 and 2008, a 26-year timehorizon The year 1982 is considered as the starting point of data collectionbecause term “Supply Chain Management” first appeared in 1982 (Oliver andWebber, 1982) The year 2008 is chosen as the terminating point of data collectionfor providing a landmark to end data collection

Step 2 The articles were collected from four major management sciencepublishers viz Science Direct, Taylor & Francis, Emerald Online and WileyInterscience (earlier Blackwell Synergy) as majority of well-referred journals ofindustrial management are found in these databases

Figure 1 Literature review methodology adopted

in the paper

Selection of database:

> Emerald > Taylor and Francis

> Science direct > Wiley inter-science Journal selection:

Search "supply chain" in article title and select journals that contain 75% of these articles

Classes under which every research article will be classified

Time Horizon for selection of papers:

From year 1980 till end of year 2008

Empirical research article selection:

Select articles that use one or more of following research designs:

> Survey

> Empirical research growth in SCM

> PCB'S and related issues in SCM

Analysis after classification of articles

Outcome 1: Gaps identified Outcome 2: Significant findings Outcome 3: Future directions

Research article sample preparation for review

Step 3 Exact phrase “supply chain” was searched in article title of all fourdatabases Burgess et al (2006) also adopted similar approach for selection ofarticles Articles which were available online but not published in any volume bythe end of year 2008 were also considered.

In order to increase relevancy of selected journals with respect to SCM, journalswhich published approximately 75 percent of the total number of articles wereselected The list of selected journals along with number of articles is given inTable II

Step 4 Flynn et al (1990) explained that any empirical research article can haveone or more of the following empirical research designs viz single case study,multiple case study, panel study, focus group and survey We selected empiricalresearch articles from the selected population of journals on the similar lines.Step 5 All the selected research articles are classified under following nineclasses:

in SCM literature is traced using frequency analysis of articles published eachyear Such classification gives the researcher an idea about the growth in thenumber of articles of empirical research in SCM

two purposes either on the basis of empirical data one can propose one’s owntheory (called theory building) or one can verify an already existing or newlyproposed theory on the basis of empirical data (called theory verification) Theclassification of selected articles on this basis permits a researcher to find outthe inclination of researchers is towards theory building or theory verification

several attempts earlier also to identify the PCBs or constructs or areas offocal research in SCM and issues that fall under each Cooper et al (1997)recognized planning and control, work structure, organization structure,product flow facility structure, information flow facility structure, productstructure, management methods, power and leadership structure, risk andreward structure and culture and attitude as ten major SCM components.Burgess et al (2006) identified seven major constructs namely leadership,intra-organizational relationships, inter-organizational relationships, logistics,process improvement orientation, information systems, business results andoutcomes Ho et al (2002) emphasized on three key constructs to SCM Theconstructs were value creation, integration of key business process andcollaboration All these three papers did not mentioned or enumerated the issues

of SCM that fall under each construct or PCB van der Vaart and van Donk (2008)enumerated more than 50 issues of SCM addressed by various articles But theydid not group the issues under constructs or PCBs of SCM In the frameworkpresented by Croom et al (2000) for reviewing the SCM literature, theymentioned six PCBs of SCM that are strategic management, logistics, marketing,relationships/partnerships, best practices and organization behavior along withissues falling under each PCB They also clarified that those issues which areduplicated under multiple PCBs have multiple perspectives surrounding theproblem process These PCBs identified by Croom et al (2008) were chosen

SCM content

in empirical research 243

for classification of selected articles as they seemed to cover almost every issue

in the selected population of articles

For example, supplier, manufacturer, distributor, retailer, 3PL, etc The term

“supplier” here means an entity that exists on inbound side of supply chain andsupplies raw material or semi-finished product to “manufacturer” While

“manufacturer” is final finished product supplier to any one of “distributor”,

“retailer”, “third-party logistic (3PL)”, “fourth-party logistic (4PL) provider” or

“consumer” All entities including “distributor”, “retailer”, “3PL” or “4PL” lie onoutbound side of supply chain and are involved in distribution of final finishedproduct The identification of entity of analysis in the article is done by simplyfinding out whether article is focusing on only one of these entities or otherwise

it considers multiple entities For multiple entities, the word “combination” isused in classification The significance of using this class is that it reveals thepractical aspect of empirical research, which gives an idea to the researcherabout entities that received inadequate attention and hence more thoughtshould be given to these entities

critical literature review given by Croom et al (2000) Same class is also used

by Gubi et al (2003), Halldo´rsson and Arlbjørn (2005), Sachan and Datta (2005)and Giunipero et al (2008) Although Croom et al (2000) suggested onlythree levels, i.e dyadic, chain and network, Halldo´rsson and Arlbjørn (2005)have addressed the fourth level, also denoted by “firm” Also, a similar classwas proposed by Fabbe-Costes and Jahre (2008) where they used multiechelon, single echelon: manufacturers, single echelon: first tier suppliers andsingle echelon However, in this review, the class proposed by Gubi et al (2003)

is adopted that includes four levels of analysis

emphasized networks as composed of actors, resources and activitiesinvolving exchange, later Croom et al (2000) utilized the same work andproposed “element of exchange” as one of the dimensions for classifying theSCM literature They described that this class is about “what” is exchanged inthe supply chain (material assets, financial assets, human resource assets,technological assets, information and knowledge) and “how” relationshipsbetween actors are conducted and managed

part of the world But there are places where it is dominant compared to otherparts in the world It is thus imperative to find out the countries/regionsdominating empirical research in SCM This class therefore helps inidentifying regions around the globe where the requirement of empiricalinvestigation in SCM is needed to a larger degree

thus important to find out the range of industries from which data arecollected This classification criterion will thus help in identifying possiblesectors of SCM research as well as highlight sectors that received inadequateattention of researchers

Performance measurement A performance measurement system plays animportant role in managing a business as it provides the informationnecessary for decision making and actions (Gunasekaran and Kobu, 2007).

As per Kaplan (1990), “No measures, no improvement,” it is thus essential tomeasure the right things at the right time in a supply chain and virtualenterprise environments so that timely action can be taken For the samereason “performance measurement” – the most referred issue in the selectedSCM literature (see Table V in Section 4.3) will be further analysed forcapturing greater insights into the literature Also, performance measurementspans majority of other issues hence it is taken as a separate class for analysis

Step 6 Since the objective of this paper is dominantly descriptive in nature Thus,

is not suitable for applying statistical methodologies for deducing or for anyinferential purpose using hypothesis testing In this step, all the efforts aredirected towards critically analyzing the classified articles so as to identifyresearch gaps in content of SCM in empirical research as well as to presentsignificant findings from the existing literature

The results will be presented using tables and charts

4 Analysis of SCM content in empirical research

4.1 Empirical research growth in SCM

The frequency of empirical research articles in SCM published since 1994 (rather than

1982 as first empirical research article in the selected literature appeared in EJPSM in

1994 by Bessant et al (1994)) is tabulated in Table II

It can be very well observed from Table II that rise in empirical research articles in

SCM since 1994 is very much evident, as the total number of empirical research articles

published since 1982 was 30.1 percent of total articles (569 out of 1,807 articles) in the

selected journals Although this finding does not exactly match with findings of review

by Sachan and Datta (2005), where number of empirical research articles was

24.8 percent from a sample 442 papers, but these percentages are not contradicting also

This could be attributed to difference in sample size (569 in present case) and the rise in

number of empirical research publications in SCM in later period of 2000s It can be seen

that maximum number of articles is published in IJPE (256 articles), although only

77 (i.e 30 percent) of articles of them are in empirical research On the other hand, EJPSM

dominantly published 96.7 percent of articles in empirical research (32 out of 33 articles)

A histogram of percentage of articles published in empirical research for each journal is

shown in Figure 2

The year-wise distribution of empirical research articles in SCM is also shown in

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows that the empirical research articles in SCM have shown substantial

rise in number of articles published, with most prominent rise in number of articles in

2002 and 2004

4.2 Purpose of empirical research

Flynn et al (1990) definition on theory building and theory verification was taken as a

guideline for placing the article under theory building or verification If the article

involved proposing a new theory on the basis of some hypothesis or statistical findings,

SCM content

in empirical research 245

then it was placed under the category of theory building It also includes those articleswhich propose and then verify the proposed theory as well In other case, if the theory isborrowed from some other article and used in another situation to check its validity then

it is said to be a theory verification article It was found out that there were 496 articles ontheory building and 73 on theory verification This fact is also validated by the fact thatSCM is a rather young field of research, the need for further conceptual and theorybuilding research is frequently highlighted (Croom et al., 2000; Mu¨ller et al., 2003) as ameans to continue to shape the boundaries of SCM (Mouritsen et al., 2003) Out of

73 articles on theory verification, highest were published in IJOPM (12 articles), whileSCMIJ published maximum number on theory building (39 articles)

4.3 PCBs and related issues in SCMFirst, the focal issue of each article is identified and then that article is placed underappropriate PCB In order to identify the focal issue, a list of possible issues that thearticle contains is laid down using title of the article and abstract Then, the issue whosephrase is repeated maximum number of times in the article is selected to be the focalissue of the article The scheme of subjects given by Croom et al (2000) is used to find outthe PCB under which the focal issue lies Some focal issues which lie out of this schemeare then placed under respective PCB’s in consultation with the subject experts PCB andrelated issues in SCM is given in Table III

It can be easily apprehended from Table III that SCM encompasses plethora ofissues spanning various PCBs The most frequently visited issue is of performancemeasurement (44 articles), followed by supply chain integration (36 articles)

SCM issue PCB Frequency

Status of SCM in a field or industry or nation Others 28

Environmental change or influencing factors LOG 9

Collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment REP 4

(continued)

Table III PCB and related issues

in SCM

SCM content

in empirical research 247

(continued) Table III.

and assessment of status of SCM in a field or industry or nation using empirical research

design comes third (28 articles) It is interesting to relate the work of Fabbe-Costes and

Jahre (2008) with these findings as well They explored the relationship of supply chain

performance with supply chain integration Emphasis of authors on such study very

well reflects the importance given to these focal areas of research in SCM It is also found

that only 16 issues out of 115 issues cover more than 50 percent of total articles These

highlighted issues in literature are performance measurement, supply chain integration,

status of SCM in a field or industry or nation, relationship management, information

sharing and commitment, collaboration, strategy formulation, information technology

(IT), green supply, quality, supply chain practices, incentives, identification of barriers

for SCM, critical success factors, design of supply chain and selection of type of supply

chain It will be worthwhile to find out the most stressed PCB in selected SCM literature

and also number of issues falling under each PCB Frequency of PCBs in selected SCM

literature is given in Table IV

From Table V, it seems that “best practices” covers maximum number of issues

(30 issues) addressed in SCM but same trend is not observed in number of articles

published, as the highest frequency (153) of papers are published in “strategic

management” Giunipero et al (2008) also reported maximum number of articles in SCM

strategy in their review of 405 articles Another observation can be made in “others”

category that even though it covers only two issues viz “status of SCM in a field or

industry or nation” and “academic debate”, the relative number of articles is pretty high

compared to marketing and organization behavior

4.4 Entity of analysis

The entity of analysis is found out by tracing out which member of supply chain is under

investigation If more than one entity is under consideration, then article is placed under

“combination” category Some articles considered multiple entity of analysis hence such

articles have been placed under the category of “combination” It was revealed that

Notes: STM – strategic management; BST – best practices; ORB – organization behavior; REP –

relationships and partnerships; LOG – logistics; MKT – marketing Table III.

SCM content

in empirical research 249

majority of articles involved “combination” of multiple entity of analysis (340 articles)while articles with manufacturer as main entity of analysis were second highest(154 articles) Also, articles including suppliers were 17, retailer with ten, 3PL with four,consumer with four, distributor with three and 4PL with one article Unlike Halldo´rssonand Arlbjørn (2005), this study considers combination of various entity of analysis alongwith “3PL”, “4PL”, “customer” and “supplier” also It can be seen clearly from Table VIIthat “combination” of various entities is most prominent research approach coveringalmost 60 percent of total articles selected for review If research focus on single entity isconsidered, then issues related to “manufacturer” are most visited by researchers in theirarticles (29.07 percent) which is in congruence with the findings of Halldo´rsson andArlbjørn (2005) (28.1 percent) Out of 229 articles on single entity, 68.5 percent of articles(157 articles) belong to the manufacturer alone While only five articles are addressed

to “3PL” and “4PL” together Also, total of “supplier”, “retailer”, “consumer” and

“distributor” entities makes total number of articles up to 16 percent only In order

to present the frequency distribution of entity of analysis over the analysis period,Table V represents year-wise distribution of entity of analysis

From Table V, it is quite evident that majority of researchers are considering

“combination” of various entities in the empirical research and it is increasing at a steadyrate with the increase in number of publications per year Another importantobservation is that empirical literature on “supplier” as an entity is increasing per yearbut similar trend is not visible in other entities like “retailer”, “3PL”, “consumer”,

“distributor” and “4PL”

4.5 Level of analysis

In the literature, various terminologies for level of analysis can be found out like level(Narasimhan and Kim, 2002; Kim, 2006a), stage (Kim, 2006b), degree (Frohlich andWestbrook, 2001), arc (Frohlich and Westbrook, 2001), type (Swink et al., 2007) andsupply chain structure (Stock et al., 2000) Thus, in order to avoid confusion as to find outwhich level of analysis is considered in the article, a simple guideline was followedaccording to which if the analysis or focus of the paper was on inter-function,intra-company then was listed under the category of “firm” Further, the level of analysiswas “dyad” if paper addresses at inter-organizational level and includes immediateupstream or downstream member of supply chain into analysis The level of analysis

is “chain” when more than two members are included in the analysis and “network”when analysis is subjected to multiple members at each echelon Examination of data

Principal component body (PCB) No of issues in each PCB

Frequency of articles Total % of articles

of analysis and element

of exchange

SCM content

in empirical research 251