Sustainable Supply Chain Management in a Circular Economy: A Bibliometric Review

Monrudee Theeraworawit, Suparak Suriyankietkaew and Philip Hallinger
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Monrudee Theeraworawit: ASEAN Center for Sustainable Development Studies and Dialogue, College of Management, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand
Suparak Suriyankietkaew: Center for Research on Sustainable Leadership, College of Management, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand
Philip Hallinger: Center for Research on Sustainable Leadership, College of Management, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 15, 1-21

Abstract: Since the mid-2010s, the circular economy has emerged as a key conceptual lever in corporate efforts to achieve greater environmental sustainability. Corporations have increasingly drawn upon the circular economy perspective in efforts to rethink sustainable supply chain management practices. This new corporate approach to sustainable supply chain management is evident in an emerging literature that has yet to be fully documented. In this systematic review of research, bibliometric methods were applied to a database of 709 Scopus-indexed documents. Author co-citation analysis identified four schools of thought comprising the intellectual structure of this literature: Sustainable Production and Environmental Management, Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Reverse Supply Chain Management, and Circular Economy. Synthesis of these themes suggests that the adoption of a circular economy perspective is transforming sustainable supply chain management in two important ways. First, this perspective reorients supply chain management away from a narrow focus on efficiency and waste reduction and towards a new paradigm of redesign, reuse, and product transformation. Second, adoption of the circular economy highlights and leverages reverse cycles in the supply chain. Thus, circular economy business models enable supply chain management to enhance corporate contributions to sustainable production and consumption. Drawing upon this framing of supply chain management within a circular economy, the review proposes a new framework for accelerating corporate sustainability.

Keywords: bibliometric review; circular economy; sustainable supply chain; supply chain; corporate sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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