A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE ON COLLABORATION IN SUPPLY CHAIN

UMA ANÁLISE BIBLIOMÉTRICA DA LITERATURA INTERNACIONAL SOBRE COLABORAÇÃO NA CADEIA DE SUPRIMENTOS

Although over time the studies on supply chain (SC) have focused mainly on its implementation and management (Fisher et al., 1997; Lambert and Cooper, 2000, Christopher, 2000; Lee, 2002), collaboration between the players of these chains has been identified as a relevant study matter, which can help broaden the understanding of this research field (Hudnurkar et al., 2014).

A major concern in SC management is to determine how to coordinate different independent players so that they can work together as a unit towards a common goal (Montoya-Torres and Ortiz-Vargas, 2014). That is why collaboration is intrinsically related to effective SC management, being its driving force (Baihaqi and Sohal, 2013; Min et al., 2005) and the key to value creation (Horvath, 2001).

However, collaboration within the SC context is a rather embryonic subject, which emerged in the second half of the 1990s as Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment – CPFR (Barratt, 2004). Since the beginning of 2000 the interest in this subject has increased both in the industry and in universities (Kumar and Banerjee, 2012). However, it is widely believed that few companies have really understood and leveraged its potential (Min et al., 2005; Fawcett et al., 2012), and that scientific production on the matter is limited in providing concepts that explain aspects of collaboration in the SC (Hudnurkar et al., 2014; Kumar and Banerjee, 2014). Collaboration is a very broad and generic term, and when used in the context of SC, it needs to be clarified (Barratt, 2004).

In addition to being such a broad and fuzzy term, recent research shows that there are gaps in the integration and collaboration practices between SC companies and that collaborative management performance can be quite fragile in this kind of organizational arrangement (Montoya-Torres and Ortiz-Vargas, 2014; Andrade and Paiva, 2012; Moori et al., 2007). These studies show that discussions in this area are still incipient, both in terms of surveying and organizing the information already available on the subject and in providing reflections and alternatives for its appropriation in the organizational environment. Therefore, mapping the literature on this topic can bring contributions to the area, considering the aspects presented.

In order to gain further insight into the development of the area and to understand how research in this field of study has evolved, the goal of this paper is to systematically map international scientific publications on collaboration in SC. Thus, we carried out a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature indexed to a database recognized by the international academic and scientific community, the Web of Science – Social Sciences Citation Index (WoS-SSCI) database.

Unlike other recent literature review papers that investigate aspects related to collaboration in SC – which randomly selected the articles for analysis (Hudnurkar et al., 2014) or determined a specific period in approximately ten years of publications (Montoya-Torres and Ortiz-Vargas, 2014) – this paper employs bibliometric and systematic analysis techniques to trace the trajectory of publications over the years and produce a broad overview of scientific production on the subject, identifying: the chronological distribution of publications; the most representative journals – (i) those with the most articles on the topic, and (ii) those most cited in research on the topic; researchers/authors who stand out for the number of published articles and for the impact (citations) of their research on the topic; and, finally, a systematic analysis based on the selection and reading of full texts of two publication groups: highly cited papers and recent papers (as detailed in the methodological procedures described in Methodological procedures). From this work, the study sought to answer the following question: How the international scientific literature has addressed the topic collaboration in the SC?

This paper is organized in five parts. After the introduction, we present a few aspects describing the field of study on collaboration in SC (Collaboration in supply chain), followed by the methodological procedures adopted to conduct this study (Methodological procedures). Later, we present and analyze the main results (Results), concluding this paper with our final considerations (Conclusions), followed by the references.

Collaboration has been extensively discussed in the academic and business environment (Barratt, 2004; Kumar and Banerjee, 2012; Hudnurkar et al., 2014). As Min et al. (2005) state, the collaboration issue has been widely investigated in many areas, including sociology, psychology, marketing, management and business. Recently it has been the focus of research in the field of SC management, which seeks to investigate collaboration within the SC (Min et al., 2005; Hudnurkar et al., 2014), even using the term “SC collaboration” (Matopoulos, 2007; Cao and Zhang, 2011; Ramanathan and Gunasekaran, 2014).

Overall, in the management and business fields, the term collaboration has usually been used as a synonym for cooperation, however, some scholars have called attention to the fact that both terms are concepts with distinct meanings (Winckler and Molinari, 2011; Gulati et al., 2012). Winckler and Molinari (2011) assert that the two terms mean “work together”, but they are different because collaboration occurs in horizontal and vertical level in support of a company to another, and cooperation occurs in horizontal level with gains for the partners involved. In this regard, it is believed that a successful collaboration can develop into cooperation. Gulati et al. (2012), on the other hand, consider that the cooperation and coordination are facets of interorganizational collaboration, in other words, are two integral parts of collaborative efforts. The main focus is on the distinction between cooperation and coordination. Interorganizational cooperation is defined as “joint pursuit of agreed-on goal(s) in a manner corresponding to a shared understanding about contributions and payoffs”, while coordination is defined as “the deliberate and orderly alignment or adjustment of partners’ actions to achieve jointly determined goals” (Gulati et al., 2012, p. 3, 7).

Previous studies of the SC make clear the differences between collaboration and cooperation (Kanda and Deshmukh, 2008), while other studies are not concerned with establishing a conceptual difference between the terms (Matopoulos et al., 2007).

In general, the SC literature is clear that collaboration and coordination are components of SC integration, and so are different elements (Gomes and Kliemann Neto, 2015), but there is still no consensus on the conceptual distinction between collaboration and cooperation. In this article, the terms integration, coordination, collaboration and cooperation are considered different concepts. However, this work does not intend to deepen the discussion about these differences and its scope is limited to use of term collaboration in the SC literature.

Within the SC context, collaboration is a mostly social process (Kumar and Banerjee, 2014), where many agents of the SC work together – sharing common goals, trust, respect, resources, skills and knowledge, risks and rewards – to create a sustainable competitive edge and obtain greater benefits than could be achieved by isolated actions (Simatupang et al., 2004; Min et al., 2005). Within this context, collaboration can also be defined as “an act of properly combining (relating, harmonizing, adjusting, aligning) a number of objects (actions, objectives, decisions, information, knowledge, funds) for the achievement of the chain goal” (Montoya-Torres and Ortiz-Vargas, 2014, p. 344). Collaboration in SC refers to the union of two or more autonomous companies to work effectively together, planning and executing SC operations towards common goals (Cao et al., 2010).

Collaboration is seen as a strategy for effective management of the SC (Kumar and Banerjee, 2012; Min et al., 2005). As pointed out by Baihaqi and Sohal (2013), the core principle of effective management of a SC is collaboration between its members. The general idea is that collaboration between the agents of a SC can lead to many benefits. According to Kumar and Banerjee (2014), some of these benefits are: higher service levels, increased flexibility, greater satisfaction of end customer, reduced cycle time, as well as dealing with great demand uncertainties. Successful collaboration within the SC context includes results of increased efficiency, effectiveness and better market positions for the companies involved (Min et al., 2005).

“Collaboration has been referred to as the driving force behind effective SC management and may be the ultimate core capability” (Min et al., 2005, p. 237). This means that collaboration helps in the development of a relation-based business strategy, which competitors may have a hard time duplicating (Kumar and Banerjee, 2014). This could be the reason why new collaboration practices and models specifically geared towards SC are referred to as areas of great potential (Horvath, 2001).

In SCs, the activities undertaken by all players are important and interdependent, that is, if an activity fails, the chain is broken, negatively impacting the performance and destabilizing the work production in other areas, thus compromising the effectiveness of the whole chain. Therefore, in order to provide higher service levels and effectiveness, every activity along the chain needs to be in balance (Stevens, 1989). The main goal is to create or increase the value for the end customer and doing that requires coordinated efforts between the players throughout the SC (Keller et al., 2001). This could explain the fact that issues such as SC collaboration and SC coordination are so closely related in academic research, as shown by Hudnurkar et al. (2014).

The impact of lack of collaboration is difficult to identify in standard operations of an organization but it becomes clear in a SC. The bullwhip effect (Lee et al., 2004) is an example of that, which can only be avoided if the buyer trusts the supplier to correctly interpret the demand for information and if the supplier trusts the buyer to provide correct demand estimates (Akkermans et al., 2004). In addition to trust, many authors mention benefit reciprocity, information exchange, and risk sharing as the base for collaboration (Barratt, 2004). Within this context, information technology can be the backbone of the business structure of SCs, being used to acquire, process, and convey information between the chain members, thus improving communication and decision-making processes (Sanders, 2002).

According to (Barratt, 2004), there are many forms of potential collaboration in SC, which can be divided into two main categories: (i) vertical, including collaboration with customers, internal collaboration (between functions), and with suppliers; and (ii) horizontal, comprising collaboration with competitors, internal collaboration (between functions), and with non-competitors. In any of these collaboration forms, the performance management system should be in line with the common goal in order to encourage collaborative work and avoid conflicting goals (Stank et al., 1999). Chains that are managed through collaboration to integrate demand and supply are believed to have a significantly better performance (Barratt, 2004). Akkermans et al. (2004) suggest, for instance, that the more partners in a SC work collaboratively together, the more they will trust each other and the more they will be willing to share information and data. In other direction, this will improve their performance level when working together, thus further increasing their trust, and so on.

In view of the challenges and benefits associated with SC collaboration, many companies have been striving to reach the desired level of collaboration and the rewards that come with it, and have been seeking to deal with critical details, such as selecting the adequate partner, aligning interorganizational needs and capabilities, and establishing standards and goals (Nyaga et al., 2010).

Thus, the behavior and collaboration activities in SC have gained considerable importance both in the practical and theoretical sense (Hudnurkar et al., 2014). A number of studies on collaboration issues within the SC context have been published; however, the strategies and collaborative processes were not well understood, making it relevant to conduct literature reviews in this area (Fawcett et al., 2012; Montoya-Torres and Ortiz-Vargas, 2014). In the next section, we will describe the methodological procedures adopted in this study.

This is a bibliometric study that uses bibliographic data and indicators to trace the development trajectory of scientific production (Araujo, 2007; Machado, 2007) and analyze relevant papers in a given field of research (Santos et al., 2011). The field of bibliometrics as a whole includes quantitative aspects and models of scientific communication and storing, dissemination and retrieval of scientific information (Kobashi and Santos, 2006). Therefore, bibliometric studies have also been applied to measure the impact of published papers, by counting the number of citations, in different knowledge areas (Lazzarotti et al., 2011). Additionally, they provide essential information for a systematic analysis of qualitative data from the selected work (Kurtz et al., 2013).

The procedures adopted in this work were similar to those used in other bibliometric studies and systematic literature review (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010; Kurtz et al., 2013; Santos et al., 2011). They were carried out in two stages: (i) systematic search and (ii) systematic analysis of literature.

As described above, 173 papers on SC collaboration were retrieved after bibliometric survey in the Web of Science – Social Sciences Citation Index (WoS-SSCI) database. These papers are published in 68 journals and were written by 380 authors associated with 226 institutions of 32 different countries. We also observed that these 173 papers used 7,041 bibliographic references, an average of 40 references per paper. Table 1 shows an overview of general results (bibliographic data) obtained in the research.

Table 1.
General results: publications on collaboration in SC.

Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI / Web of Science, from 1956 to 2014 (28 August).

Regarding the distribution of the publications over time, we verified that, within the available period in the database (from 1956 to 2014, 28 August), the first paper on collaboration in SC was published in 1996, and the second was published in 1999. After 2000, the interest in the topic seems to have grown and the number of publications increased, going from 7 papers in 2001 to 13 in August 2014 (totaling 29 papers in 2012-2013). By analyzing the number of papers published biannually, we observed that this number exceeded 30 papers in three consecutive periods: 2007-2008, with 31 papers; 2009-2010, with 37 papers; and 2011-2012, with 41 papers. Figure 1 shows the chronological distribution over time of those publications.

Figure 1.
Chronological distribution of publications on collaboration in SC.

Note: (*) Value estimated based on data until August 2014.

Data collected from Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI / Web of Science.

Among the 68 journals with papers on collaboration in SC, we tried to identify the most representative ones for this research. Two bibliometric indicators were considered: the number of papers published in each journal and the number of citations to each journal. Table 2 shows the list of top journals for the number of articles on the subject. Table 2 also shows the citation rate to these journals, measured by TLCS (Total Local Citation Score), which means the number of citations these journals received in the 173 papers (analyzed collection). These journals (see Table 2) are responsible for the publication of 98 papers on collaboration in SC, corresponding to 57% of total. The top three journals with the highest number of papers on the subject, above ten papers, are, respectively: SC Management – an international journal, with 20 papers; International Journal of Production Economics, with 17 papers; and International Journal of Operations & Production Management”, with 13 papers. These results allow us to infer that, on the one hand, the editorial line of these journals are showing interest in research on this specific topic and, on the other hand, researchers recognize these journals as relevant channels to communicate their findings in this research field.

Table 2.
Top journals in the collection listed by amount of articles on collaboration in SC.

Data collected from Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI / Web of Science. Note: (*) 28 August 2014.

To identify the journals with the highest impact, all 68 journals were listed in descending order according to the number of citations in the 173 papers (a total of 177 citations, an average of 2.6 citations per journal). This shows that when researchers on collaboration in SC cite papers on this subject they often use the papers published in these journals (Table 3). Altogether, these journals were cited 161 times within the collection, corresponding to 90% of a total of 177 citations.

Table 3.
Top 10 journals: Most cited journals in the collection on collaboration in SC.

Data collected from Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI / Web of Science. Note: (*) 28 August 2014.

Tables 2 and 3 show us that SC Management – An International Journal has the highest number of publications on the subject (20 papers), also being the one with the highest citation impact (55 citations). The International Journal of Production Economics, ranking second in number of publications (17 papers), comes fourth among the journals with highest impact (21 citations). However, three of the journals with only one paper on the topic (see Table 3) are in the list of the most cited journals in the collection on collaboration in SC. They are: Transportation Journal, with 6 citations; Journal of Business Logistics; Communications of the ACM; and MIS Quarterly, with 3 citations each.

Table 4 lists the authors with the highest number of papers published on collaboration in SC. The publications of these authors represent 26% of the papers identified in this study (45 out of 173 papers). These authors are associated with institutions of different countries in Europe (France, Spain, Greece, and the United Kingdom), Asia (Malaysia and Taiwan), and the United States. The list of all represented countries (with research institutions of authors) does not include any South American country (including Brazil). In general terms, 59% of the institutions represented by authors with papers mapped in this study are located in the USA (27%), UK (13%), Taiwan (9%), China and Spain (5% each). A similar result was found by Hudnurkar et al. (2014), who conducted a literature review on the factors affecting collaboration in SC and found that most studies on the subject were carried out by researchers associated with institutions in the USA and UK.

Table 4.
Authors with the most publications on collaboration in SC.

Data collected from Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI/Web of Science. Note: (*) until 28 August 2014.

The nationalities of the institutions which the authors with the highest number of papers on collaboration in SC (Table 4) are associated with may be diverse, but the same is not true for the authors with the highest number of citations (Table 5). The ten most cited authors are researchers associated with institutions in the United States, except for Robert D. Klassen (University of Western Ontario, Canada). Three authors stand out as most productive and most cited: Fawcet (Brigham Young University, USA), Magnane (Seattle University, USA) and Sheu (Kansas State University, USA).

Table 5.
Most cited authors in the collection on collaboration in SC.

Data collected from Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI / Web of Science. Note: (*) 28 August 2014.

Table 5 also shows that, similarly to other authors (such as Magnan and McCarter), Chwen Sheu and Stanley Fawcett have 5 published papers on the subject and 10 citations. However, one of Sheu’s paper is cited 9 times and one of Fawcett’s paper is cited 7 times. This means that both Sheu and Fawcett are in the list of authors with the most papers on the subject (Table 4) and most cited authors within the analyzed collection (Table 5), and that each of them is the main author of highly cited papers (as will be shown in the next section).

SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS RESULTS

As described in the methodological procedures section, two groups of paper were selected: most cited papers (Table 6) and most recent papers indexed in high impact journals (Table 7), totaling 18 papers. Table 6 shows that Barrat’s paper (2004) stands out among the most cited papers with 25 citations. This means that it was cited by 25 of 173 papers in the analyzed collection.

Table 6.
Most cited articles in the collection on collaboration in SC.

Data collected from Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI / Web of Science. Note: (*) 28 August 2014.

After applying the selection criteria for most recent papers, published between 2013 and 2014 and indexed to high impact journals on collaboration in SC (Table 3), the list was comprised of 7 papers, 3 of which were published in 2013 and 4 in 2014. The papers in this group are published in the following journals: Decision Support Systems (1 paper), International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (1 paper), International Journal of Production Economics (2 papers), International Journal of Production Research (2 papers), and Production Planning & Control (1 paper). This information allows us to know which high impact journals in the field have published papers recently (last two years) on collaboration in SC.

Table 7.
Recent articles in the collection on collaboration in SC (2013-2014).

Data collected from Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI/Web of Science, until 28 August 2014.

The papers listed in Tables 6 and 7 were read and analyzed. First, we searched these 18 papers for definitions and/or key concepts that help understand the meaning of collaboration and/or which aspects are relevant to its operation in the SC. In general terms, few papers provide an explicit definition for collaboration. Out of 18 analyzed papers, only the papers by Sheu et al. (2006), Sanders (2007), and Cao and Zhang (2011) provide clear definitions of collaboration in SC (see Chart 1). For these authors, collaboration refers to interdependence between parties in a SC oriented for long-term relationship (Sheu et al., 2006), which is directly related to human interaction (Sanders, 2007) and is implemented in the partnership process focused on planning and executing SC operations towards common goals and mutual rewards (Cao and Zhang, 2011).

Chart 1.
Definitions and key aspects of collaboration in SC.

Data collected from analyzed articles from Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI/Web of Science.

Some key aspects for understanding and implementing collaboration in SCs are highlighted in the analyzed papers (Chart 1). Barratt (2004) and Matopoulos et al. (2007), for instance, draw attention to the importance of setting selection criteria to determine with whom companies should collaborate. Complementarily, Jayaram and Pathak (2013) highlight the relevance of choosing partners strategically, as knowledge integration may not have any impact if conditions are not well defined or if wrong partners are involved. On the other hand, Cao and Zhang (2011) advocate that all parties should collaborate for collaboration to be rewarding. Aspects regarding information sharing, long-term relationship, trust, organizational competences, and information technology usage are also mentioned (Akkermans et al., 2004; Baihaqi and Sohal, 2013; Sheu et al., 2006; Cao and Zhang, 2011). In short, several authors have defined collaboration in SC differently. The analyzed papers do not seem to have the intention to conceptually define the term collaboration. Focus is on discussing its importance and the aspects or factors involved which could affect collaboration within this context. This result could be partially explained by the type of research carried out (mostly empirical quantitative studies). Next section presents and discusses the profile of these papers according to the type of research.

RESEARCH TYPE AND PAPER APPROACH

As shown in Figure 2, regarding research type, quantitative studies are predominant (61% of analyzed papers), while qualitative studies represent 22%. There are also two theoretical studies (2% of papers) and only one paper adopted a qualitative-quantitative approach. Except for two theoretical papers, all other papers are empirical.

Figure 2.
Breakdown of articles by study type.
Data collected from analyzed articles (Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI/Web of Science).

Regarding the research techniques adopted, all qualitative studies use case study as a research strategy. The quantitative studies use surveys and some employ structural equation modeling. Only one study uses data triangulation, presented here as qualitative-quantitative research. Chart 2 shows, in chronological order of publication, research type, context, and main results and conclusions of analyzed papers.

Chart 2.
Main results and conclusions appointed by articles on collaboration in SC.

Data collected from analyzed articles (Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI/Web of Science).

Barrat (2004) proposes associating collaboration and organizational strategy through the analysis of cultural, strategic, and implementation elements and SC segmentation, based on the buying behavior of customers and service demands. In another literature review article, Ganesh et al. (2014) discuss information sharing under the aspect of substitute products, analyzing the impact of substitution in a global SC with several levels that provide multiple substitute products.

According to Fawcet et al. (2008), three macro-aspects should be analyzed: (i) Forces that lead to collaboration in the chain (increased competitive intensity, more demanding customers, power change in the channel, economic globalization, tighter alliance relationship, reduced product cycles, new information technologies, etc.); (ii) Benefits (unmatched products and services, faster P&D cycle times, higher quality, cost competitiveness, reduced order cycles, flexible response to customer, improved delivery performance, improved asset management, etc.); and (iii) Barriers (lack of high management support, operational and strategic policies not in line with the company’s philosophy, inability to share information, lack of trust between chain parties, lack of commitment to share risks and rewards, inflexible organizational systems and processes, resistance to change, etc.).

Klassen and Vachon’s (2003) paper addresses the environmental approach to collaboration in SC, focusing on environmental investment. The studies of Vachon and Klassen (2008) and Kuo et al. (2014) also deal with the environmental issue but focusing on collaborative activities and data sharing, respectively.

Chong and Zhou (2014) analyze the relation between the adoption of e-SC integration and performance in service innovation from the perspective of SC management. The model proposed verifies the relation of technological and collaborative structures with chain management of web-based demand and with innovation of processes and products relative to services.

Akkermans et al. (2004) focuses on the collaborative planning process and analyzes the interactions between the trust level of partners, information transparency, and improvements resulting from the SC performance. Along the same line, Ramanathan and Gunasekaran (2014) seek to identify the impact of collaborative planning, collaborative decision making of chain supply partners, and collaborative execution of all SC processes for successful collaboration, using as constructs collaborative planning, collaborative execution, collaborative decision making, successful collaboration, and long-term collaboration or future collaboration.

Even though the association between collaboration and organizational performance is mentioned in the papers in general, three of them mention it as a direct goal: (i) Vereecke and Muylle (2006) aims at empirically testing the relation between SC collaboration and improved performance through hypotheses developed from the existing literature, incorporating the dimensions of customer and supplier collaboration as well as performance improvement; (ii) Sanders (2007) proposes and tests a model for the relation between the organizational use of e-business technologies, organizational collaboration (intra- and inter-collaboration), and performance, using empirical data; (iii) Cao and Zhang (2011) aim at discovering the nature of SC collaboration and exploring its impact on a company’s performance based on a collaborative advantage paradigm.

From the perspective of the relationship between partners, Matopoulos et al. (2007) create a model based on two pillars: (i) Design and governance of SC activities; (ii) Establishing and maintaining SC relationships.

Nyaga et al. (2010) examine collaboration relationships in two distinct studies: one analyzes the buyers’ perception and the other analyzes the suppliers’ perception. Both studies are then compared to determine the economic and relational factors driving satisfaction and performance from the viewpoint of each party.

Sheu et al. (2006) develop a comprehensive supplier-retailer relationship model with specific investigation positions: business relationship between supplier-retailer (interdependence, intensity, trust) affects the long term orientation; business relationship between supplier-retailer affects the SC architecture (information sharing, inventory system, information technology resources, coordination structure); long-term relationship affects the SC architecture; SC architecture affects the level of collaboration between supplier and retailer; and collaboration between supplier and retailer improves the performance of supplier and retailer.

From the perspective of sharing, Baihaqi and Sohal (2013) conceptualize and evaluate several factors that influence the level of information sharing in SCs, namely integrated information technologies, internal integration, information quality, and cost-effectiveness of sharing, and the relation with information sharing intensity, collaboration, and organizational performance.

Cai et al. (2013) discuss the mechanisms underpinning knowledge sharing in SC. The study particularly focuses on knowledge sharing in a dyadic buyer-supplier relationship. It refers to trust and power as two important antecedents of two types of knowledge sharing between buyer and supplier, namely technical exchange (generally simple and direct, involving small work units or independent individuals), and technology transfer (which involves complex challenges, such as coding and communication capabilities) and its relation with organizational performance.

From the perspective of new product development projects, Jayaram and Pathak (2013) propose two different types of mechanisms within a collaborative SC: short-term knowledge sharing and iterative knowledge enrichment. They investigate the effects of knowledge sharing and enrichment between companies and their collaborative network partners on product concept effectiveness and process performance.

AVENUES FOR FUTURE STUDIES

Chart 3 shows the main gaps and opportunities for future research as indicated by the authors of the analyzed papers.

Chart 3.
Main gaps and opportunities for future research identified in the articles on collaboration in SC.

Data collected from analyzed articles (Social Sciences Citation Index – SSCI / Web of Science).

While pointing out the need for a future research focused on the impact of the specific collaboration activities into the SC, Klassen and Vachon (2003) connect environmental management, SC management and SC collaboration. The authors posit that it may be expected that specific collaboration activities will turn out to be more beneficial in specific circumstances. For instance, in some contexts, environmental focused collaboration activities (e.g., technical interchanges to develop pollution prevention) may be critical to durable goods and less important to consumer goods. Moreover, the authors suggest “the physical or organizational distance from commodity material suppliers and end-consumers, might create additional challenges for managers seeking to develop a greener SC” (Klassen and Vachon, 2003, p. 349). The exploration of these aspects in empirical researches (in survey and case studies, for example) appears to be a promising path. In this direction, Kuo et al. (2014) study points to the company’s interest in establishing green SCs and proves, through the study of an illustrative case in a textile/clothing SC, that the sharing of data related to environmental impacts is a key factor of success for developing this kind of chain. The authors point out that there is a space for future researches that will examine in the different SCs (not only in the textile/clothing industry) how the information related to environmental impacts (e.g., carbon emission information) is shared by the agents in these chains. The mentioned articles (Klassen and Vachon, 2003; Kuo et al., 2014) reveal that there are still many paths to be followed by future researches that might explore the aspects that involve the Green SC Management, especially collaboration and data sharing among enterprises within green SCs.

In the conceptual discussion of the importance of understanding the meaning of collaboration in the context of the SC, Barratt (2004) brings out new elements that characterize the collaboration in this context (such as collaborative culture, external and internal trust, mutuality and information exchange). It suggests that future empirical researches will examine deeply the interrelations between these collaboration elements. Complementarily, Sheu et al. (2006) point to the need for carrying out deeper studies of the relations between the elements that make up the collaboration and determine its essence. There is an opportunity to study how the elements trust, power and dependence interact in the process of conception and development of the SC collaboration (Matopoulos et al., 2007).

There is also a range of possibilities for future researches focused on the factors that affect SC collaboration. Sheu et al. (2006), for instance, recommend the development of studies to examine if the duration/stability of SC collaboration is affected by environmental factors or other factors and how it happens; and, also, to look into the influences of the national differences in collaboration. It seems that there is a research gap in the exploration of questions regarding the SC collaboration in the international environment (Sheu et al., 2006). There is also the opportunity to research how power affects the nature of collaboration between the various SC agents; and how the competitive environment influences this collaboration (Baihaqi and Sohal, 2013). Subsequent studies may also analyze deeply the impact of information technologies into collaboration (and organizational performance), regarding the relation between the specific types of information technologies and their connection with the specific needs of the SC collaboration (Sanders, 2007).

Other research suggestions are directed towards the relation between collaboration and performance. Future studies might research more empirical evidence that help explain the influence of collaboration on the company’s performance in the SC, since the companies that show a better performance are not always the ones that provide the highest levels of collaboration (Vereecke and Muylle, 2006). These authors describe two different forms of the SC collaboration – a collaboration focused on the exchange of information (on forecasts, planning, inventory and delivery) and a more structural collaboration, focused on geographical proximity – and suggest that future empirical studies may bring forth new evidences that will allow to explain how each of these forms of collaboration (or the entire group of them) may affect the performance improvement, “i.e. the four traditional areas of delivery, cost, quality, and flexibility, as well as two additional areas: procurement (cost and lead time), and innovativeness (time to market)” (Vereecke and Muylle, 2006, p. 1192). When mentioning that it is a cross-sectional study, Vereecke and Muylle (2006) suggest that there is a gap to be explored through the carrying out of researches with a longitudinal approach to examining the relations between SC collaboration and performance improvement. Recently, Ramanathan and Gunasekaran (2014) suggest examining the success of collaboration and its impact on future collaborations by involving several of SC partners. Companies that are interested in SC collaborations can consider (or not) engaging in long-term collaboration, regarding the success of actual collaborations (Ramanathan and Gunasekaran, 2014). In this direction, longitudinal studies may help explain how actual collaboration can affect future collaborations and, consequently, the obtained benefits/results.

According to Fawcett et al. (2008), the benefits that companies may obtain from the SC collaboration can be noticed – however, some barriers could block the obtaining of these benefits. “Understanding these barriers can lead to designing bridges to allow companies obtain SC benefits” (Fawcett et al., 2008, p. 45). There is indeed the need for more researches that allow to increase the understanding of benefits, barriers, and bridges to collaboration in SC. For instance, researches on different types of barriers to collaboration in SC, such as technology issues (e.g., technology, information, measurement systems) and people issues (e.g., culture, trust, aversion to change, and willingness to collaborate), are empirical studies that must be done.

There is also a need for comparative studies between various SCs from different industries (Chong and Zhou, 2014) in order to generalize the results beyond the specific SCs. It must be included on these studies the analyses of the different collaboration configurations (for instance, collaborative planning) (Akkermans et al., 2004), the risks of collaboration in SC (Matopoulos et al., 2007), and the companies related incentives in different levels of the SC in order to share information with their commercial partners (Ganesh et al., 2014).

Some studies are limited to the study of collaboration in SCs in a dyadic relation, from a one sided point of view (e.g. in the relationship supplier-buyer only one of the sides answer the survey questions). This gap suggests the carrying out of future researches to examine genuine dyadic relationships, which should collect information from both sides (Cao and Zhang, 2011; Cai et al., 2013). Cai et al. (2013), for instance, requested the survey informants to choose a key supplier to answer the survey questions related to the exchanges with the chosen supplier. Although it is recurrent to adopt this type of strategy to collect data in the SCs surveys, the opportunity for future researches that will explore both points of view together is opened. These studies may also contribute to improve the understanding of the relationships “between SC collaboration, collaborative advantage, organizational performance [...] providing more interesting and useful results for researchers and practitioners” (Cao and Zhang, 2011, p. 176). Nyaga et al. (2010) also suggest that studies focused on practices, mutual efforts and value from relationships between the buyers and their strategic suppliers are essential for the research field of SC collaboration.

Furthermore, Cai et al. (2013) posit that the use of other methods, such as the analysis of social networks, may help explain the different collaboration configurations inside the SCs, in both the individual company’s level and the global chain’s level. Jayaram and Pathak (2013) mention that it is worth considering that network structures may have significant implications with respect to how companies manage the information stream in the SC. In this direction, there is the possibility to extend the opportunity of carrying out researches that may contribute to the theoretical and methodological improvements in the field.

Some other articles suggest the carrying out of future researches which might use another constructs, such as absorptive capacity (Vachon and Klassen, 2008) and knowledge creation (Jayaram and Pathak, 2013), to help explain some aspects related to collaboration in SC. For instance, a study focused on the role of absorptive capacity in the relationship between collaboration in SC (“collaboration with suppliers” and “collaboration with customers”) and manufacturing performance would be welcomed. “It can be expected that a higher degree of absorptive capacity will moderate the collaboration–performance relationship” (Vachon and Klassen, 2008, p. 312). Based on the analyzed articles we realize that there is a lack of other constructs that might be useful to add knowledge in the research field of SC collaboration. Some of them are: organizational and interorganizational learning, leadership, organizational memory, and dynamic capabilities, among others.

In the next section, we conclude this paper with a few considerations (conclusions) drawn from the results shown, and other future research directions.

In order to really understand the research field and be able to provide theoretical and practical contributions, the development of quality scientific research requires access to foundations and accumulated knowledge (from previous studies) on a specific subject.

Therefore, this study contributes to the development of research on SC by means of bibliometric and systematic study of the scientific production on the subject. This study may be a guide for researchers doing their research in this area, especially researchers that are not familiar with the subject.

By providing the chronological distribution of publications, this work allows to trace the trajectory of the scientific production on the subject over time. The first two papers retrieved from the database were published in 1996 and 1999, confirming that, as pointed out by other researchers, collaboration within the SC context is a relatively new subject and has attracted the interest of the scientific community after the second half of the 1990s. The growing interest and relevance of collaboration in SC is demonstrated by the significant increase in the number of publications along the years 2000 to current days (taking as reference the date this bibliometric study was carried out: August 2014).

This bibliometric study also allowed us to identify journals and papers that stand out in the research field on collaboration in SC. Two journal lists were presented in this paper: (i) journals with the highest number of papers and (ii) most cited journals by papers on the subject (high impact journals). These results show that most journals focus on Operational Research and Production/Operations Management. The papers that most stand out in the area, papers with a high count of citations, and papers published in the last two years in high impact journals were also listed. These lists (presented along this paper) enable researchers to know where to start/further their research on the subject and to become familiar with the most influential studies in the area, that is, the papers that other researchers have used to support their research and that have high impact.

This paper also provided a comprehensive analysis of selected papers, showing gaps and opportunities for future research on collaboration in SC. With this information, researchers interested in the subject could use the results as input to conduct their research. The opportunities for future research include the need to carry out in-depth research exploring the inter-relationships between the aspects of collaboration within the SC context.

Some limitations of this article are related to the bibliometric method used. The use of the citation counts – to select journals and articles – does not allow us to understand the context in which the article/journal has been cited in the bibliographical collection analyzed, since a reference can be cited sporadically (once or twice in the text) or as a essential way for the construction of the arguments. Future research may include all papers initially retrieved in the database and analyze the content of the articles to understand how the citation was made and which references are really representative as foundations for the development of research on SC collaboration field.

In short, the mapping of the field of research on collaboration in SC presented in this paper allows for learning about the history and current state of this research field at the international level from bibliographical data retrieved from Web of Science – Social Sciences Citation Index (WoS-SSCI). However, other limitation of this study is due to the use of a single database, the WoS-SSCI. In spite of the importance this database has in the scientific community, we suggest that future bibliometric studies on this topic should also include other databases, such as Scopus, Science Direct, EBSCO, and Scielo. One of many other ways to conduct literature review studies on collaboration in SC is mapping the scientific production of Brazilian researchers, both in Brazilian and international journals. It would also be interesting to conduct literature reviews on subjects related to collaboration in SC, such as cooperation, integration, and coordination.

Although it was mentioned that collaboration and cooperation are different concepts, this work did not look for analyzing and exploring the existence of these differences. To fill this gap, it is perceived an opportunity for future studies to analyze in depth how both terms are used in the SC literature and in what ways it occurs in the practical context of organizations. Theoretical essays, structured literature review and even empirical studies can be conducted to expand the understanding of the differences and complementarities of both types of strategies in the SC context.

This study shows several opportunities for future research and contributes to the understanding of the bibliographic framework of collaboration within the SC, providing input that enriches the discussion on the possible directions that research in this area has taken and scientific trends for researchers and/or those interested in the topic.