Present and future trends of supply chain management in the presence of COVID-19: a structured literature review

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 inflicted worldwide heavy losses and exposed the vulnerability of the global supply chain. Since then, the number of research works exploring the supply chain-related issues raised by this terrible pandemic steadily increases, making a structured review a necessity. To this end, this paper figured out three major tasks: (1) 166 relevant articles are identified, along with a macro-level analysis in terms of general information of the literature; (2) through mapping the relevant research works from the problem-oriented and methodology-driven perspective, the present research hotspots and methodologies/theories used in these studies are revealed; and (3) a research agenda with the consideration of supply chain disruptions and 3Rs in the supply chain is proposed. Research findings may shed more light on the discussion of the COVID-19’s impacts on supply chains, and providing academical guides for researchers and managerial insights for decision-makers to develop appropriate responses to the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• supply chain disruptions
• 3Rs
• structured literature review

Acknowledgement

The authors sincerely thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and important comments on the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This data is retrieved from the physical addresses of all authors listed in the publication.

2 The dashboard could be obtained from the official website of World Health Organization, which is available online at: https://covid19.who.int/ [27 August 2021]

3 The strong correlation means that there are clear keywords directly related to the pandemic in the theme, such as ‘pandemic’, ‘epidemic’, or ‘COVID-19’; the weak correlation means that there are no clear pandemic-related keywords, but there are ‘disruptions’, ‘risks’, ‘uncertainties’, ‘resilience’ and other words that are potentially related to the pandemic.

4 As we start to search articles, some special issues have shut down the ‘calling for paper’ procedure and removed corresponding documents. Therefore, it is unfortunate that deadline information for some special issues cannot be tracked, which is presented as ‘–‘ in the table.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Number 71701151, 71702130]; Research Program of Tianjin Municipal Science and Technology Development Strategy [Grant Number 18ZLZXZF00140]; Major Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Number 91646117]; Major Project of National Social Science Foundation of China [Grant Number 18ZDA060].

Notes on contributors

Xiaoran Shi

Xiaoran Shi is an assistant professor in the School of Management at Tianjin University of Technology, China. She is also a post-doctor at Tianjin University, China. She obtained her Doctor degree from University of Miami (USA) in 2015. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of supply chain management, platform operations and marketing strategies. Her research works have been published in international scholarly journals, such as Computers and Operations Research, Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Computers and Industrial Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, etc. She can be reached at [email protected].

Weihua Liu

Weihua Liu is a Professor of the Department of logistics and supply chain management, College of management and economics, Tianjin University, China. He obtained his Doctor degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2007. He specialises in logistics and supply chain management, and has published more than 60 international research papers including International Journal of Operations and Production Management, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, Production Planning & Control, Transportation Research Part E: transportation and logistics review, Annals of operation research, etc. He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].

Jiahui Zhang

Jiahui Zhang is a postgraduate student in the College of Management and Economics of Tianjin University, China. Her research area covers supply chain and logistics management. Her papers have been published in journals such as Transportation Research Part E, Managerial and Decision Economics, and International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications. She can be reached at [email protected].