review 58 papers. The aim is to evaluate the relationship between knowledge management and supply chain management. The review analyses knowledge exploration and exploitation processes in some areas of supply chain management and identifies different theoretical and methodological characteristics concerning the way knowledge management applications are proposed in the context of the supply chain. The review also shows that there is little evidence for the positive relationship between the use of knowledge management practices and firms’ performance.
Both these reviews highlight an increasing interest in the application of knowledge management practices in the supply chain. Nevertheless, they do not analyse the literature highlighting the specificity of the diverse phases of the KM process (adoption, creation, storage, transfer, sharing and application) and do not indicate whether the unit of analysis concerns customer-supplier dyadic relationships or supply chain relationships.
However, these two analytical perspectives are crucial and highlight important additional issues. In fact, the factors affecting the adoption of KM practices in the various phases of the knowledge management process are not necessarily the same. Even the systems of knowledge management (KMSs) used are different (i.e.: crowdsourcing systems concern the phase of creation, whereas the database and data warehouse concern the storage phase). As for the unit of analysis, the relationship between customer and first-tier supplier is different (in terms of exchange of information and knowledge) from the relationship between first-tier supplier and second-tier supplier