Framing supply chain visibility through a multi-field approach

Purpose: Supply chain management (SCM) literature places great importance on supply chain visibility (SCV) and companies are looking to improve it. While better SCV offers benefits to supply chain (SC) actors, SCV is not clearly defined and little is said about how to achieve it. Our aim is to identify its existing meanings, facilitating/hindering factors and to elaborate on the concept. Methodology: To grasp this complex notion, situated at the interface of several fields, we conducted a literature review on the visibility concept using a multi-field approach. This conceptual work was complemented by an exploratory empirical study in an industrial company. Using a "life stories" methodology, we gathered respondents' experiences of visibility issues in the field to enrich the proposed framework. Findings: Visibility is recognized as a strategic challenge for supply chains, but is also used in other fields. Its complexity and the richness of capabilities it creates is dis-cussed in several disciplines. Field experiences highlight visibility issues in the context of a supply chain: it concerns different needs, objects and organizational levels. These inputs helped to build the SCV conceptual framework. Originality: The originality of this research is that it provides a multidisciplinary perspective to complement the knowledge of SCV in SCM literature. Using the "life story" research strategy, concept characteristics enrich and give meaning to the proposed SCV framework. The resulting integrative SCV framework is helpful to better understand the academic concept and its managerial relevance.