What influences the selection of supply chain management approaches? a grounded theory analysis

Over time, approaches such as agility, leanness, resilient, and sustainability have been developed for supply chain management. Strategically, the selection and integration of these four managerial approaches are very important, as each approach requires different incentives, prerequisites, and methods to improve supply chain performance and pursue specific goals. Literature shows that research has primarily focused on selecting and implementing a single approach, and although many studies have addressed the combination of approaches to improve performance, how to make decisions and the factors affecting the selection of approaches have not been addressed. In fact, selecting appropriate approaches is a challenging and complex task that requires a deep understanding and a holistic view of the various factors that may facilitate or hinder it. However, scientific research in this area is very limited. The purpose of this article is to help develop a comprehensive framework of factors that affect the selection of appropriate approaches. To achieve this goal, the literature related to different approaches has been systematically and inductively analyzed based on Grounded Theory (GT) to identify critical factors for in-depth examination. In general, 45 critical factors have been extracted, which have been developed into a unified framework of factors at four main levels of organizational, environmental, product-related, and performance factors, classified into 17 categories for selecting appropriate approaches. Finally, based on the findings, the factors have been grouped into two categories of status and stimulus, and a unified framework of factors has been developed for the selection of approaches.