Literature Review: Risk Management strategies and practices to cope with risks in the Textile Supply Chain

Hey fellow students! 

I hope you had a great summer, even though the weather (in Europe) did not show its best side .. 

 

It’s time for the third and last blog entry about my attempt to conduct a systematic literature review. Since the last time, I finished summarizing the risks prevalent in the Textile Supply Chain and started to summarize my findings from the literature search in order to analyze them. The 3^rd phase included issues like what type of information I need to be abstracted to fulfill the purpose of my review. Since I aimed to find strategies to cope with risks specifically prevalent to the Textile Supply Chain, I sorted the literature I found regarding the risk types to see if certain risks allow specific strategy or practices. 

Moreover, it was important to determine which type of information I need to conduct my analysis. Since I aimed to additionally investigate trends in Risk Management strategies in the era of digitalization, not only the findings of each study were important for my analysis, but also the publication dates and research methods. Nevertheless, the difficult part of the 3^rd phase is to see specific patterns or irregularities in the literature to abstract findings. Luckily, Excel is a helpful tool. 

 

Finally, I could start with the 4^th phase, structuring and writing the review. I started off with clarifying the purpose and motivation of my review. Afterwards, it is important to document and report my research process as detailed as possible to ensure replicability. The level of information provided needs to be appropriate in order to allow for transparency, so that the reader can easily judge the quality of my literature review. However, I am aware that my review is highly biased since I searched, summarized, categorized and analyzed all the data myself. 

Next, I am going to present and explain my findings, hopefully in a clear and structured way, so that my review makes a contribution to the literature.

 

I do not regret the choice to conduct a literature review during the field study, especially since the topic I choose seems relevant and up to date. However, looking back I recommend to not work by yourself on a literature review, because a second opinion on certain issues is very valuable. I had several times when I got stuck in my thinking and conclusions and even though I asked friends for advice, they could not help me since they did not have the same level of knowledge about the topic as I did. This definitely prolonged the process. 

 

I hope you all had a good experience during your field study!

See you soon!

 

Best,

Michaela