How to advance theory through literature reviews in logistics and supply chain management

Purpose: The discipline's most common uses for literature reviews—identifying gaps, developing research agendas, and categorizing the literature—too often fail to challenge, change or advance theoretical perspectives. The authors offer guidance to theorization through literature reviews. The key to theory advancement is consistency between the state of theory and the chosen review type. Design/methodology/approach: A conceptual approach is taken. The authors identify shortcomings in literature reviews of logistics and supply chain management (LS A New Paradigm for Systematic Literature Reviews in Supply Chain Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management) by outlining four review types, and offering further insights to theorization, as is typically the goal in the synthesis step of literature reviews. (Less)