Review on SCM Empirical Research Published in Chinese Journals: Trends and Future Research Directions

Supply chain management (SCM) is an important research field and has yield many valuable theories and methods. To use empirical research methods to build and testify the theories in SCM field is not only necessary but fruitful. This paper reviews and evaluates SCM empirical research in 63 papers published in Chinese journals from 2001 to 2009, to assess these papers’ research purposes, research industries, research contents, data collection approaches, and data analysis technologies. To compare the SCM empirical research in China with the research in USA, we find some interesting differences and make a conclusion of the problems in Chinese research. We also discuss the trends and directions for further empirical research in SCM.