EXAMINATION AND DETERMINATION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SUPPLY CHAIN FLEXIBILITY TYPES IN LITERATURE

Abstract

ABSTRACT Supply chain flexibility is an emerging and increasingly important issue in academic research and business practice. As a result, supply chain flexibility has been differently defined and discussed by many scientists. Furthermore, many different types, dimensions, and components of supply chain flexibility have been identified, defined, and described in the academic literature. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the structure and origin of flexibility research, focusing on the types and dimensions of supply chain flexibility. Additionally, the current paper aims at reducing the many flexibility types and dimensions to a limited set to provide a cleary arranged structure of the scientifically most important types and dimensions that affect the flexibility of industrial supply chains. Therefore, a sample of 153 internationally published papers containing more than 5,000 citations that refer to more than 2,500 sources has been analysed to explore the most influential works and their impact on flexibility research. We evaluated the importance of the discussed flexibility types based on their citation frequency and attached greater value to more frequently cited and discussed flexibility types. Subsequently, we ranked the flexibility types to determine those that are most influential. Our results indicate that supply chain flexibility is primarily driven by three major capabilities: sourcing, logistics, and structural flexibility. Keywords flexibility, supply chain flexibility, flexibility types, supply chain management.