Corporate social responsibility for supply chain management: A literature review and bibliometric analysis

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in supply chain management (SCM) has gained an increasing research attention in recent years. Extant studies have discussed stakeholder interests, performance evaluation, ethical sourcing, and sustainable production. The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic study quantitatively depicting the knowledge structure and the intellectual progress of CSR for SCM. This research adopts bibliometric analysis in conjunction with network analysis to systematically evaluate the CSR-related publications for SCM. The analysis involves 628 peer-reviewed articles identified with careful selection of influential work. Data analytic techniques including citation analysis, co-citation analysis and co-word analysis are used. Key findings for researchers include (1) an analytical discussion of the five sub-fields that constitute the intellectual structure of CSR for SCM; (2) Theoretical and conceptual research significantly dominate in this field; (3) The topics of sustainable development and economic and social effects are more frequently discussed among scholars; (4) Key research gaps include lacking of practical and normative modeling research, and considering from the supplier perspectives in emerging economies. The findings suggest that future research would emerge a greater depth of practical and modeling analysis to enrich the theories.