A systematic literature review of closed-loop supply chains

What is it about?

Closed-loop Supply Chain (CLSC) is one of the important concepts in sustainable supply chain and logistics management. The research in CLSC has been growing rapidly and has addressed key issues such as reverse logistic, recycling, remanufacturing, reuse, and end of life product management. This paper presents a thorough bibliometric and network analysis that facilitate an understanding of the key features and research directions in the contemporary literature. The study using a systematic literature review rooted in bibliometric analysis of about 333 selected documents from the period 2008 to 2018 uses advanced tools from bibliometric analysis. The study identifies influential authors, sources, regions, affiliations, and papers. In addition, to the use of network analysis tools from bibliometrics, the study identifies emerging research clusters. A topological analysis allows defining key research topics, and the interrelation and collaboration networks and their patterns. A systematic graphical mapping utilizing network analysis helps understanding the evolution of research over the period of interest along with the predictions for future research agenda. Later multivariate analysis methods such as k-means clustering, and factor analysis are employed for determining optimal co-citation cluster. The optimal k-means clustering resulted six clusters. Similarly, factor analysis also suggested six factors. Factor analysis also identified the dominant clusters.

Featured Image