Past, Present and Future Trends of Purchasing and Supply Management: An Extensive Literature Review. A Review and Outlook

Abstract

The original paper aimed to evaluate the state of the art of Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM). This was carried out through an in-depth analysis of 1055 papers published in 20 peer-reviewed journals, providing a snapshot of PSM research. Other literature reviews related to PSM were conducted in the past but focused primarily on specific topics and/or considering a narrower set of publications. Furthermore, the authors defined a framework useful to analyse the PSM literature and outline the state of the art of PSM research from a content-specific perspective. The commentary note starts remembering the beginning of the International Purchasing Survey project (IPS), a wide and longitudinal research project initially conceived by the Italian PSM team at Politecnico di Milano, in which the team from Rotterdam played a crucial role since the beginning. The note focuses then on methodological strengths and areas of improvement of the presented literature review. Finally, three key research contributions are highlighted: the in-depth analysis of the use of existing theory in PSM papers, the useful classification of PSM contents in existing research studies, and the multidisciplinary approach that might further open PSM research to be published in non-PSM journals in the future.