Abstract
Governance and inter-organizational coordination are essential for translating sustainability objectives into aligned action across value chains, yet the relevant literature is dispersed across concepts such as coordination, collaboration, contracts, responsibility, information sharing, policy, and technological traceability. This study maps the governance gap in sustainable value chains through a sequential design combining qualitative research-gap identification with bibliometric science mapping. In the first stage, Data Sweep was used to examine the Limitations and Future Research sections of five relevant studies and to identify three recurrent gaps: governance and interorganizational coordination; empirical validation and contextual diversity; and digitalization, data, and decision support. With the support of this Data Sweep analysis, governance and inter-organizational coordination was identified as the focal gap for further investigation. In the second stage, a Web of Science Core Collection search produced a corpus of 331 publications retrieved on 18 August 2026. The search window was 1975–2026, while the publications in the corpus span 2002–2026. Keyword co-occurrence analysis was conducted in VOSviewer 1.6.21 using all keywords, full counting, and a minimum threshold of five occurrences. Of 1,456 identified keywords, 131 met the threshold and formed seven clusters, with 3,235 links and total link strength of 6,979. The results reveal a pronounced coordination–governance asymmetry: coordination is the dominant network hub (125 occurrences; 124 links; TLS = 822), whereas governance is comparatively peripheral (13 occurrences; 21 links; TLS = 38). Governance-related mechanisms are distributed across all seven thematic clusters rather than concentrated around the explicit governance concept. Temporal analysis further shows that the most recent research frontier is associated with technological and circularity-related mechanisms, including blockchain, traceability, closed-loop supply chains, reverse logistics, and remanufacturing. The findings refine the governance gap as a problem of conceptual fragmentation rather than an absence of governance-relevant research and suggest the need for a more integrated sustainable value-chain governance framework.
Cuvinte cheie
sustainable value chains
governance
inter-organizational coordination
circular economy
traceability
Istoric articol
Publicat
31.08.2026
Informații autori
Citare recomandată
Cătălin Crăciunel (2026). Mapping the Governance Gap in Sustainable Value Chains: A Bibliometric Analysis. Constantin Brâncuși University of Târgu Jiu Economics Series, 2(1), 178–193. https://doi.org/10.65631/jes.4.2026.17
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