Defining and measuring supply chain digitalization: A systematic literature review

Abstract

The potential and opportunities in the digitalization of supply chains are immense yet our understanding of digitalization today at both firm and supply chain levels is increasingly becoming superficial. Because of this, managers cannot easily qualify and quantify the performance outcomes of their digital investment decisions. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to explore how digitalization is perceived and measured within the supply chain management (SCM) literature. We conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) analysis of scientific articles drawn from SCM literature over 5 years (between 2017 and 2012). The findings suggest that digitalization and supply chain digitalization are popular concepts theoretically and have high potential in practice. The literature further shows a loose operationalization of the concepts “digitization”, digitalization” and “digital transformation” across the extant literature. In addition, the findings show that the measures of the degree of digitalization are not dissimilar across firms and across the supply chains but could vary across industries.