Supply chain digitisation trends: An integration of knowledge management

Abstract

The rapid digitisation of industry, or industry 4.0, is trending in supply chain management. While the amount of data made available through digitisation has enabled supply chain benefits, there still exist challenges regarding the rapid digitisation of the field. Therein lies opportunities for scholars to leverage the growing amount of data through knowledge management to cultivate valuable information for organisations. The purpose of this paper is to understand future inquiries for scholars to broaden their perspectives and leveraging knowledge management to enhance the supply chain digitisation research paradigm. This is done through both a large-scale literature review as well as a textual analysis and forecasting on industry- and field-applications, technologies and topics in digitisation. Utilizing textual data as well as google trends data from 2010 to 2018, comparisons are conducted on two measurements (prevalence and growth) to determine significant differences between the scholarly publications and practitioner (news and video) media to compare scholarly vs. practitioner activity in the aforementioned areas of supply chain digitisation. Applying the field of knowledge management to supply chain management through a knowledge management theoretical framework, this paper provides future research inquiries pertaining to how scholars can utilize the largely ignored areas of supply chain digitisation as well as the growing areas to explain how the human dimension of supply chain management can be further explored for the purposes of optimizing supply chain digital performance.