CSR and logistics: A bibliometric and systematic review of SCOPUS database from 1997 to 2021

This bibliometric and systematic study aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the link between CSR and Supply Chain. The objective is to analyze a large number of documents in a simple and reliable way by examining the relationship between articles, citations, and keywords, thus providing detailed scientific information. Through a preliminary study of the literature «scoping study», we developed the search query by juxtaposing the two terms «SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY» and «SUPPLY CHAIN». Following its deployment on the SCOPUS database chosen for its quality of coverage of the different research fields and after several manipulations of automatic and manual filters, we have kept 2950 documents. The data of the selected articles were exported in Bibtex format to be analyzed on the free software developed in the R environment bibliometrix. Thanks to its toolbox, we were able to generate visualizations of the annual evolution of scientific production, the most important journals, the most contributing authors, the most active countries, the most cited articles, and the leading themes. In addition to the visualizations, a systematic analysis of the 10 most cited articles was performed. The analysis of these documents allowed us to have an idea about the evolution of the research structure and to identify its tendencies. The results reflect a very important gain of interest and maturity in this field based on a deep theorization. The results also reflect the interest given to the economic and environmental aspects, unlike the social dimension which does not attract enough attention from the scientific community. Despite the methodological limitations that may impact our research, notably the risk of irrelevance in picking words for the query, and the risk of coverage related to the choice of the database. This study will allow the scientific community to clearly identify literature gaps that can be considered opportunities to deepen our thinking.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, supply chain, sustainability, logistics.

JEL Classification: M14

Paper type: Empirical research