Supply chain scholars see public policy and workers’ rights as research priorities. Yet, when we asked about the field’s future, respondents expected these topics to receive less attention than they believed they deserved. Human factors, geopolitical uncertainty and decarbonization showed a similar pattern.

That gap is one of the findings in our new paper, “Looking Back, Moving Forward: A Guiding Framework for Future Research in Supply Chain Management,” published in the Journal of Business Logistics. We wanted to understand how the field has developed and where scholars believe it should go next. The results also invite a conversation about the research choices we make ourselves. This paper was a joint effort with Domenico Mecca, Andreas Wieland, Christian F. Durach, Robert B. Handfield and Ethan Nikookar - so a big thanks to them for the efforts throughout the study. But thank you also to the SCM scholars who contributed to the study and whose perspectives helped shape the research agenda. We hope the paper gives something useful back to the community.

We analyzed 2,413 articles published in four supply chain and operations management journals between 2014 and 2023. Two surveys, conducted in 2024, then asked the scholarly community about the following five years. The first gathered proposed research themes from 185 scholars. In the second, 186 respondents rated 48 themes according to how important they should become and how important they were expected to become.

Separating those two judgments gave us a useful comparison. Public policy and workers’ rights had the largest gaps between desired and expected importance. AI and blockchain showed the reverse pattern. Respondents considered AI important, but expected it to attract even more attention than they believed was warranted. The finding raises a question about how research attention is distributed across topics, including topics we already recognize as important.

The retrospective analysis adds some context. Behavioral research was well represented in the articles we reviewed, while the categories covering people, ethical issues and human capital had much smaller shares. Many behavioral studies examined how people’s choices affect operational decisions and performance. Their rights, welfare, working conditions and careers were less visible in the sample.

I think that distinction deserves attention. Understanding how people influence supply chain performance is useful. So is understanding how supply chain decisions affect people. A study of delivery scheduling, for example, can examine service performance alongside the workloads and discretion of those responsible for delivering it. The questions we choose determine which consequences we are able to see.

To develop the agenda further, we asked eight scholars to explore connections among research themes. Their completed matrices, together with the literature review and survey findings, informed our framework. It connects the human implications of AI; environmental sustainability and social equity; and public policy, geopolitical change and supply network reconfiguration. Human, social and humanitarian concerns run across all three areas.

Consider AI in supply chain planning. Research can investigate who defines the problem that a system is asked to solve, chooses its performance criteria and decides whether its recommendations can be challenged. Responsibility becomes harder to assign when a decision made by one organization changes schedules or workloads at a supplier. Studying that situation requires attention to the technology, the working relationship between the organizations and the people affected by the decision.

Decarbonization raises a different set of questions about responsibility. If a buyer asks suppliers to reduce emissions, who funds the necessary investments? What additional work falls on suppliers, and can smaller firms meet the requirements? Research should examine when environmental improvements also benefit workers and communities, and when the costs or burdens fall on actors with fewer resources. Circular practices deserve the same scrutiny: their environmental and social consequences need to be examined in the places where they are implemented.

Public policy connects directly with these issues. The paper calls for closer study of what happens between a formal requirement and its implementation across a supply chain. Firms and suppliers may interpret the same requirement differently or have different capacities to respond. Geopolitical changes add questions about sourcing and network design: when do firms make temporary adjustments, and when do they replace suppliers or relocate activities in ways that produce lasting changes?

The framework places these areas within the context of overlapping global crises. A response to one pressure may change the options available for addressing another. For research, this means following the consequences of decisions across topics and organizational boundaries. A project on supplier relocation, for example, could examine both the resilience sought by the buyer and the implications for the workers and communities affected by the move.

For managers, I see these research directions as useful prompts when discussing an AI investment, a supplier emissions target or a sourcing change. Who will carry out the additional work? Where will costs and risks fall? What scope will affected suppliers and employees have to question the decision? These are questions for examining a proposed change before judging its success solely through the measures used by the organization initiating it.

For scholars, the gap between “should” and “will” brings the discussion back to our own decisions. Researchers, editors and doctoral supervisors can use the findings when choosing projects, shaping special issues and advising students. I hope the paper encourages us to ask whose experiences our research includes and whether the questions we support reflect the priorities we say matter the most.