Digitalization of Rural Supply Chains: Striking Gap of Literature

Purpose: Published supply chain research explicitly recognizes the rural areas almost exclusively through the lenses of urban or city logistics, lacking the holistic point of view. Based on the systematic literature review in this working paper, the authors identify the gap and suggest possible directions in which the research in the field of rural supply chain management should be conducted further.
Design/methodology/approach: Geographically scoped, the authors conducted systematic literature review of peer-reviewed qualitative and quantitative studies touching the emerging topic of rural supply chains.
Findings: It is striking the complete combination of specified keywords identified beyond the abstract or title, excluding the potentially predatory journals, produced only extremely low number of outcomes meeting the review criteria. Such a finding itself justifies the necessity to explore the topic with the introduction or development of new models or collection and analysis of empirical data.
Research limitations/implications: The study supports the very limited number of published sources framing the emerging theory of rural supply chain management. Its major limitation is the primary focus on European environment and its context.
Practical implications: Since social equity is one of the sustainable development dimensions, the research suggests further research direction and framework addressing the challenges of living and doing business in rural areas the policy makers and rural development stakeholders shall deal with.
Original/value: The multidimensional view on rural life and relevant supply chains of the study reflects and investigates the relatively resilient environment with the potential to thrive no less than the urban and sub-urban areas while engaging the potential of digitalization and its applications.