Bibliometric Analysis of Supplier Management: The Theme and Cluster Perspectives

Abstract

This paper conducted a bibliometric analysis based on 4687 papers on supplier management from 1997 to 2017. Through a comparative analysis of the four stages using Bibexcel and Ucinet6 software, this paper explores the evolution of supplier management from the theme and cluster perspectives. The results show that supplier management research has made breakthroughs in both breadth and depth. Representative research themes, such as “sustainable supply chain”, “corporate social responsibility”, “knowledge management”, etc., have gradually penetrated into the field of supplier management. Research related to “supplier selection” and “supplier relations” have always been of the highest strategic importance, and themes in “supplier relations” cluster such as “trust” and “commitment” have gradually attracted more and more researchers’ attention. The “inventory” cluster has also been a research focus, and the structural stability and maturity of the cluster have gradually improved. The “innovation” cluster is a relatively “open” cluster, and its impact on the entire research filed of supplier management has been gradually increasing. More importantly, the “sustainability” cluster is an evolving cluster, research themes related to “sustainability”, such as “green supply chain”, “sustainable supply chain” and “green supplier selection”, will play an increasingly important role in the field of supplier management.

Creating Shared Value and Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility through Outsourcing within Supply Chain Management

“…Wen et al [58] performed a bibliometric evaluation primarily based on 4687 papers on supplier management from 1997 to 2017. The outcomes demonstrated that the supplier management field has made breakthroughs in both breadth and depth.…”

A Review of Chinese E-Commerce Research 2001-2020

“…Co-word analysis involves performing statistical analysis on co-words to investigate the internal connections between the literature and academic subject structures. Since its introduction in the 1970s, co-word analysis has been widely used to investigate the research development trends of various academic disciplines, such as environmental crisis management (Dai, Duan, & Zhang, 2020); the evolution of Omega products (Wang et al, 2020); higher education institutions (Vilchez-Roman, Sanguinetti, & Mauricio-Salas, 2020); technology education (Fang, 2016); science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education (Wen, Sun, & Liu, 2020); information ecology (Wang, Guo, Yang, Chen, & Zhang, 2017); and biodiversity (Nita et al, 2019). However, few studies comprising co-word analysis have investigated EC in China.…”

Research on Sustainable Supplier Selection Based on the Rough DEMATEL and FVIKOR Methods

“…Strict green measures lead to serious social problems, such as increasing the unemployment rate and decreasing the exports of suppliers, that adversely affect the competitiveness of multinational companies [6]. Research on green supplier evaluation ignores the impact of social factors, so the research trend has gradually shifted to sustainable supplier selection [7]. Building a comprehensive sustainable supplier evaluation criteria system is an important element of our research.…”