A state-of-the-art review and meta-analysis on sustainable supply chain management: Future research directions

There is no doubt that since the last decade, as the focus towards sustainability has grown significantly in the supply chain field, many empirical and conceptual papers have been published in journals. This study aims to investigate the present and emerging trends in the field of SSCM (sustainable supply chain management), meanwhile exploring future research directions. This article conducts the meta-analysis and systematic review of 362 research papers published in the well known peer-reviewed journals in the last sixteen years (2004–2019). The present study structured the reviewed literature with the following categories: drivers and barriers of the sustainable supply chain, adopted multi-criteria-decision-making techniques, year-wise number of research papers, names of journals and publishers, and classification of articles based on research design and method. This study draws an up-to-date picture of the recent developments, emerging trends, and gaps for future studies in the field of SSCM. The finding shows that the area has dominated by MCDM (Multiple-criteria decision making) based research methods and firms-level studies. Furthermore, researchers need to employ efficient algorithms and advanced economic modelling and conduct studies on the macro-level (country, and region-levels) to explore new linkages.