Supply chain practices : A content analysis in empirical research and framework for future development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to perform content analysis in empirical research in supply chain practices (SCPs) over the last 16 years. The research also aims to identify implications for future research in the area of SCPs. Design/methodology/approach – The review of SCPs research is based on 382 papers published from 1997 to 2012 in the 16 selected journals. The state of research is assessed by examining the empirical research growth of SCPs in selected journals, empirical research growth of SCPs, country of sample industry, sample industry, issues discussed in SCPs literature, purpose/objective of research, research method, response rate and data analysis techniques. The research gap is identified through reviewing the selected practices and framework for future development is proposed. Findings – The empirical research in SCPs predominantly performs in the developed countries like USA, UK and Spain. A significant percentage of articles contribute towards the effect of SCPs on organizational performance, but majority of authors employed performance analysis for at firm level only. Hypothesis testing is seemed to be very a common method of defining research question. From the content analysis, it is found that the response rate for the survey research is very low. The trend in survey research is shifting from descriptive statistics’ to framework building and testing. Research limitations/implications – This paper focuses only the identifications of SCPs and content analysis in empirical research. Further empirical study can be undertaken to find out the relationship between different SCPs and their effect on the organizational performance. Practical implications – The methodological review will provide better understanding of the current state of research in the area of SCPs. Originality/value – Many literature reviews aim at critical examination of supply chain management (SCM), but none of them focused the empirical research in SCPs. Another unique feature of this paper is that, it represents 382 articles from 16 selected journals over the past 16 years.