Coordination, cooperation and collaboration in logistics and supply chains: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Paper aims: This paper identifies, evaluates and structures the research that focuses on supply chain coordination, cooperation and collaboration (CCC) within the domain of production economics and reveals its intellectual foundation. Originality: The paper develops a distinct CCC-model, which enables a clear distinction between the elements of CCC based on five criteria. Afterwards, it presents the most influential papers and authors when it comes to CCC in supply chain production economics research. It also provides a visualised intellectual structure of five citation subfields and their interrelations. Research method: Based on the reference list of more than 270 CCC-related papers, the authors perform a citation and co-citation analysis of the 47 most frequently cited papers in one selected academic journal. This analysis included multidimensional scaling, factor analysis as well as cluster analysis. Main findings: The study reveals the intellectual base of CCC in a production economic-specific research domain, which reflects coordination only. The citation clusters represent different aspects of supply chain coordination mechanisms such as contractual agreements, information sharing and buyer-vendor integration. One subfield represents methodological aspects. Implications for theory and practice: Neither cooperation nor collaboration related sources were identified in the most frequently used papers which certainly offers a research gap that needs to be closed in the future.