Contrasting supply chain traceability and supply chain visibility: are they interchangeable?

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-05-2020-0214
• Published date: 26 January 2021
• Date: 26 January 2021
• Pages: 942-972
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics
• Author: Vivek Roy

Contrasting supply chain

traceability and supply

chain visibility:

are they interchangeable?

Vivek Roy

Department of Operations Management and Decision Sciences,

Indian Institute of Management Kashipur, Kashipur, India

Abstract

Purpose–Supply chain traceability and supply chain visibility have become a critical element for the effective

management of contemporary complex supply chains. At their core is information sharing, which has been

acknowledged as a key prerequisite for logistics and supply chain performance, but whose notional

underpinnings have not been delineated fully, leading to interchangeable deployment of these terms.

Addressing the shortcoming, this paper aims to establish a contrast between the two notions.

Design/methodology/approach –Drawing from systematic review protocols, a multi-disciplinary review

scope is constructed wherein the synthesis is strategized to primarily channel implications for thescholarship

of logistics and supply chain management. The review is aimed at addressing two research objectives: (1) how

the notions of traceability and visibility in supply chain management develop contrast in terms of their

thematic emphasis and (2) to attain an integrative understanding of the notional convergence and divergence

between supply chain traceability and visibility for raising strategic recommendations.

Findings –The review outcomes help contrast both the convergence and the divergencebetween traceability

and visibility in the supply chain environment, and the differentiated but fundamental role that information

sharing plays within these notions to outline why they are not interchangeable.

Originality/value –The originality of the findings lies in the conceptual synthesis of the relevant literature

from both technological and non-technological perspectives to ultimately draw logistics and supply chain

management implications. The review also points out key strategic considerations to demarcate the notional

boundaries of traceability and visibility in future research.

Keywords Supply chain traceability,Supply chain visibility, Information sharing, Supply chain performance,

Literature review, SLR

Paper type Literature review

1. Introduction

Contemporary supply chains are complex systems due to the presence of a highly dynamic

business environment, multi-layered supply chain actors, geographical dispersion and

disruption risks. Information sharing among supply chain partners has, therefore, been

emphasized as the key prerequisite to handle such challenges (Barratt and Oke, 2007).

Further, the integration of advanced technologies in supply chain processes is being

increasingly deliberated upon to understand the real-time and proactive exchange of

granular information for achieving traceability and visibility in the supply chain (Brandon-

Jones et al., 2015).

Traceability and visibility have resultantly emerged as two pivotal arcs of information

sharing in logistics and supply chain management (Somapa et al., 2018). Yet, their notional

boundaries remain highly fluid due to (a) ubiquitous and simultaneous deployment of these

IJLM

32,3

942

Thanks are due to Mr. Nilanjan Bhattacharya who served as Research Assistant in this study for a

limited course of pr ogress. I am grateful to my mentor Prof. T obias Schoenherr of Michigan State

University.

Received 26 May 2020

Revised 19 August 2020

25 November 2020

3 January 2021

Accepted 6 January 2021

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 32 No. 3, 2021

pp. 942-972

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-05-2020-0214

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0957-4093.htm

notions across literatures and (b) lack of integrative synthesis of these notions to locate

conceptual spaces of convergence and divergence (Papert et al., 2016;Wowak et al., 2016).

As such, only a few attempts in the past have synthesized the notional boundaries of

traceability and visibility, however, in a standalone fashion, and bereft of a holistic review

emphasis. For instance, the review by Somapa et al. (2018) on supply chain visibility

synthesizes measurement frontiers of visibility in supply chain processes. Similarly,

Ringsberg’s (2014) treatise on traceability remains highly domain-specific to account for the

dimensions governing food traceability. Amidst these dedicated positions, technology-

centric reviews are emerging to characterize the role of specific technologies such as

Blockchain to facilitate information sharing in supply chains (Cole et al., 2019;Kumar et al.,

2020). Yet, interestingly, the terminologies of traceability and visibility can be found heavily

deployed in these technology-centric pieces as well.

These scenarios point out to the need of establishing a contrast between the notions of

supply chain traceability and supply chain visibility—since, it is still unclear in notional

sense as to what exactly (and what not) constitutes traceability and visibility in supply chain

management. This is further illustrated by the fact that the concepts are often used

interchangeably to reflect information sharing between supply chain partners in general. For

instance, Tse and Tan (2012) define supply chain visibility as “traceability and transparency

of the supply chain process”(p. 51). Roth et al. (2008) similarly specify supply chain

traceability as the ability to track product flow throughout the supply chain. Furthermore,

even viewing outside the academic frame, and in terms of meaning, traceability and visibility

propagate similar yet distinctive denotations. While traceability can be denoted as visibility

into the course of developments, visibility denotes the state of being able to see or be seen.

Applying these denotations to the context of supply chain management further convolutes

the comprehension of these notions to demand an integrative understanding.

This research, therefore, reviews the notions of supply chain traceability and visibility to

establish a contrast. This contrast is achieved by addressing two highly conceptual and

sequential review objectives. The first objective is scoped to obtain a contrast in thematic

emphases of these notions to demarcate distinctive investigative orientations and agenda

within. This is achieved by conceptualizing principal research themes within each notion

based on a rigorous qualitative synthesis strategy. This strategy avoids posting a simplistic

or structural description of articles, and rather focuses on critical/in-depth appraisal of

conceptual underpinnings and competing paradigms to inform future research within the

themes. Further, building on insights derived from the thematic evaluation, and toward

strengthening the contrast –the second review objective extends a profound comparative

orientation –to explicitly theorize on the notional convergence and divergence between

supply chain traceability and visibility. Thereby, it outlines strategic recommendations that

are essential to strengthen the conceptualization and boundaries of these notions to avoid

interchangeability. This is achieved by synthesizing newer perspectives on the ways these

notions have been viewed traditionally versus how they should be viewed. These research

objectives (RO) are segregated as follows:

RO1. How the notions of traceability and visibility in supply chain management develop

contrast in terms of their thematic emphasis?

RO2. To attain an integrative understanding of the notional convergence and divergence

between supply chain traceability and visibility for raising strategic recommendations.

Addressing these research objectives is important for many reasons. First, with the

emergence of discourse on disruptive technologies within logistics and supply chain

management, the notions of traceability and visibility are being heavily emphasized upon to

Traceability

and visibility

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