Supply Chain Management: An Analytical Framework for Critical Literature Review

Abstract

There can be little dispute that supply chain management is an area of importance in the field of management research, yet there have been few literature reviews on this topic (Bechtel and Mulumudi, 1996, Proceedings of the 1996 NAPM Annual Academic Conference; Harland, 1996, British Journal of Management 7 (special issue), 63}80; Cooper et al., 1997). This paper sets out not to review the supply chain literature per se, but rather to contribute to a critical theory debate through the presentation and use of a framework for the categorization of literature linked to supply chain management. The study is based on the analysis of a large number of publications on supply chain management (books, journal articles, and conference papers) using a Procite (database from which the literature has been classified according to two criteria: a content- and a methodology-oriented criterion.