A systematic review of supply chain knowledge management research: State of the art and research opportunities

Abstract

The literature concerning the evolution of the supply chain (SC) has highlighted that supply systems have undergone massive changes. The SC is a multi-objective system (economic, productive, strategic, environmental, social, etc.) crossed by a variety of flows (financial, material, information, technology, etc.). In such a complex system, the management of the processes of adoption, creation, storage, transfer, sharing and application of knowledge appears to be the necessary response to the new challenges posed to the SC by globalization and sustainability issues. This paper provides a systematic review of knowledge management (KM) in SCs in order to identify the state of the art in the literature, highlight research gaps, and define appropriate research questions to be addressed. To this end, eighty-two papers were selected and studied in detail. The paper shows that although there are a growing number of papers addressing KM in SC, many research issues are still neglected. In particular, the paper highlights eight main gaps in the SC literature. The first three gaps concern the factors affecting the adoption, creation, storage, transfer, sharing, and application of KM practices. The next three gaps address the systems to support knowledge management. The seventh gap considers the barriers to the adoption of KM practices. The eighth gap looks at the impact of adoption of KM practices on performance. Starting from these eight gaps, nine research questions have been formulated. These research questions represent possible areas of investigation to improve the body of knowledge in the field of KM in SC.