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

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.