A Review of the Proximity Literature: Supply Chain's Missing Link

Firms that span a wide array of locations, cultures, and industries have to interact with one another and make efforts to effectively coordinate their supply chains. This has led the concept of proximity to be increasingly important in different streams of literature. However, proximity in the context of supply chain represents an important construct that lacks a clear conceptualization and needs further research. In this paper, we contribute to the body of literature on proximity as well as that of supply chain by proposing an extension to existing proximity frameworks and incorporating a new dimension of supply chain proximity. We conduct a systematic review of supply chain and other relevant literatures, summarize key findings, and present a new multidimensional framework of proximity, inclusive of supply chain management. We discuss methodological issues, and outline research suggestions for different streams of literature.