1 Introduction

COVID-19 pandemic impacted supply chains, organizations and industries as a whole creating severe risks including; supply risks, demand risks, financial risks (Sharma et al. 2020a, b), reduction in sales and vanishing of profits (Shafi et al. 2020). It has also revealed how fragile supply chains are Mahajan and Tomar (2020) and to what extent enterprises are inresilient to disruptions (Shafi et al. 2020). Markets were adversely affected too, which led to major shortages in critical supplies and daily life products and services (Atkinson et al. 2020). The pandemic also brought many activities to standstill which entailed taking vigorous steps by governments to facilitate people’s lives (Timilsina et al. 2020). For example, Putri et al. (2020) argued that lowering interest rates, elimination of tax, direct assistance to business actors and leniency of regulations enabled the Indonesian market to survive the pandemic and to lessen its impact on the economy (Frederico et al. 2021a, 2021b).

While the pandemic led to negative consequences across various industries and within certain contexts, still it also created opportunities that were seized by many organizations especially those operating in the pharmaceutical industry and online retailing (Amalia et al. 2020; Acioli et al. 2021; Frederico et al. 2021a). Another industry that flourished during the pandemic is the express delivery as there was a significant increase in the diversity and extent of service-related transport to commercial and residential locations during and post the pandemic (Yang et al. 2021).

Furthermore, there is another stream of research argued that the pandemic is a unique opportunity to propose and examine models and solutions. Singh et al. (2020) for example, proposed a model that can help in developing a resilient and responsive food supply chain. Similarly, Russell et al. (2020) suggested a framework that enables enterprises to understand the uncertainty characteristics within pandemics. Likewise, Hossain et al. (2021) identified 15 enablers for emergency supply chain within healthcare.

Having that said, many scholars and practitioners call for a global restructuring of supply chains, which entails redesigning of processes, defining of roles and alignment of objectives across all chain members (Michael and Lami 2020; Min et al. 2020).

The aforementioned debate reveals that there is no agreement among researchers on the outcomes of the pandemic whether it impacted supply chains positively, negatively or it had no impact but an opportunity to suggest and validate new models and solutions. Nonetheless, the number of studies tackling the impact of COVID-19 on supply chains has continued to expand at an exponential rate.

Accordingly, a comprehensive review of the frequently cited research studies, which can significantly inform future research, is lacking. Therefore the objective of this study is to (1) critically review the frequently cited papers indexed through Scopus and Google Scholar, (2) analyze the research methods adopted, highlight the main industry sectors investigated and summarize the main contexts explored, and finally to (3) to report any themes that might emerge.

Using COVID-19/coronavirus and supply chain/logistics as key search words, it was found that within Scopus and Google scholar, there are 770 research studies that tackled the subject. However, after removing duplication, limiting the research to English papers only and excluding out of scope studies, the final research papers are a set of 95 papers published during the period 2020–2021.

The descriptive analysis of the 95 research studies provided interesting insights on many aspects including the industries investigated, the contexts explored, the research methods adopted, the data gathering tool employed and the findings reported. A deep review of the described literature led to the emergence of four important themes; namely, (1) COVID-19 is a complete threat to supply chains and organizations, (2) COVID-19 is an opportunity for certain industries, (3) COVID-19 is both an opportunity and a threat and finally (4) COVID-19 enabled proposing models that proved to be viable in minimizing the impact of any pandemic. The rest of the paper is structured as follows Sect. 2 presents a review of the literature. Section 3 highlights the methodology adopted. Section 4 presents the discussion and the analysis, followed by the findings in Sect. 5. Section 6 discusses the conclusion including the theoretical and practical contributions as well as the limitations of the study.

2 Literature review

COVID-19 nightmare is still ongoing with the virus continuing to mutate into what is called now Omicron spreading rapidly with tough months waiting ahead. The threats that the pandemic brought were immense impacting economies, industries, organizations and individuals (Kumar 2020; Zhang 2021; Mahajan and Tomar 2020).

The challenge is how to contain the consequences of what has already occurred and what are the lessons learned that should enable decision makers to take informed decisions. While globalization and outsourcing improved supply chain efficiency and effectiveness, they also exposed businesses to many risks and uncertainties because what happens in any part of the world can have many-fold ripple effects on other nations (Michael and Lami 2020; Dhiaf et al. 2021). Evidently, it took few days for the epidemic that was initially spotted in China, to reach every corner in the world causing unprecedented pandemic.

Correspondingly, many are claiming that supply chains need to be restructured (Michael and Lami 2020) with organizations defining and aligning objectives within their firms and across the supply chain (Min et al. 2020). Evidently, early studies of COVID 19 disruptions on supply chain were highly focused into supply chain risk management perspective, Alhawari et al. (2021) focus of supply chain risk management were based on supply chain resiliency management. However the research was limited interms of the context, bibliographic search, theoretical focus and supply chain performance assessment of COVID 19 impact etc. While studies by Hassan and Abbasi (2021) discussed the various aspects of the supply chain integration extents, contingencies and performance, review of the study was limited to duration in terms of period between Jan 2015 and April 2020. While the Covid 19 impact on supply chain was wide spread between March 2020 and until March 2023, these studies largely ignored the big impact of the various aspects that are unfolded in this study.

Other researchers such as Al-Mansour and Al-Ajmi (2020), argue that businesses need to revisit their strategies, connect more with their supply chains and should double their efforts with regards to partnerships with other organizations. Additionally, revisiting resources and reallocating them could be another important step that organizations need to consider during pandemics in order to remain operationally competitive (Warrington et al. 2021; Atayah et al. 2021).

Although researches regarding COVID-19’s impact on supply chains is being conducted, there is a need to shed the light on what has been achieved so far so as to provide guidance to both practitioners and researchers. The next section will discuss the literature review methodology adopted in this research to achieve the intended objectives, review analysis, findings and discussions.

3 Research methodology

Since the research objective in most cases defines the research strategy (Creswell 1999; Denzin and Lincoln 1998), this research adopts grounded theory methodology. Grounded theory is well known qualitative research design that allows for concepts to be explored, relationships to be identified and themes to emerge accordingly (Strauss and Corbin 1990).

Therefore, this research intends to explore the studies tackled COVID-19/Coronavirus and supply chains/logistics to identify what has been achieved in this field using systematic literature review methodology. Specifically, we used the resources available on Google Scholar and Scopus to search for all related studies that have been published during the period from January 2020 to December 2021. We used these two resources because of their comprehensiveness in terms of what has been published regardless of the type and recency of publications (Zhao and Strotmann 2015). The search was initially run using four key words “Covid-19 and Supply Chain”, “Coronavirus and Supply Chain”, “COVID-19 and Logistics, and “Coronavirus and logistics”.

As illustrated in Fig. 1 and using google scholar to search for research studies that had COVID-19/coronavirus and supply chain/logistics words in their titles, a total of 361 studies were identified. Likewise and using the same key words, a total of 409 studies were identified through Scopus. After removing duplications, entries that are only citations and patents, 539 records were excluded leaving 231 studies that can be subject for further screening. During the screening process, 62 papers were found out of the scope and therefore excluded. Finally, the remaining 111 studies were furtherly examined and investigated with 16 articles found to be not in English language therefore excluded. As a result a total of 95 articles were found eligible to be included in this review.

Fig. 1
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Article collection and Screening process

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3.1 Type of publications

Out of the ninety five publications, eighty nine were published as journal articles, two as conference papers, one book chapter and three as organization reports and discussion papers. The pie chart below (Fig. 2) summarizes the types of these publications. With 94% of the studies included are peer reviewed journal articles it is undoubtedly appropriate to claim that the inferences made are genuine and valid.

Fig. 2
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Article publication type

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3.2 Number of citations

Notwithstanding that a good number of articles that investigated COVID-19’s impact on supply chains have been cited significantly, two gained high attention and were cited more than 300 times. Interestingly enough, both article were coined by the same author namely; Dr. Dmitry Ivanov, the professor at Berlin School of Economics and Law in Germany. One reason for such high number of citations for both studies could be that the author neither specified a certain industry nor focused on one context, so his findings were of a great help to many researchers across many fields. In addition, while in one study, the author warned for the threats that COVID-19 introduced, in the second study he proposed a model that can help supply chains become agile, resilient and quickly recover after the pandemic.

Another spotted study that received a great deal of attention, is the work of Belhadi et al. (2021) which was published in the year 2021 but has been cited 127 times. Although the authors investigated COVID-19’s impact on one of the mostly affected industries i.e. automobile and airline but they provided very good insights on how industry 4.0 technologies such as big data can strongly help these industries recover and alleviate their performance. Table 1 below highlights the top 20 cited studies including author name and publication year.

Table 1 Publications based on citations
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3.3 Publication Journals

An interesting finding is that the ninety eight articles were published in seventy nine journals with ten journals published two articles each. This wide spectrum of journals uncovers the increasing interest among many research institutions and publishers in this important research topic. Table 2 below highlights the ten important journals that published two articles each.

Table 2 Publication Journals
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3.4 Research methodologies used

The qualitative research design has been mostly used by many researchers across different fields and industries. Evidently, seventy research studies out of the ninety five, adopted qualitative methods focusing on three main data gathering tools; literature review, interviews and case studies. Moreover, eighteen studies employed quantitative methods using surveys and secondary data. Finally, seven studies used triangulation complementing the qualitative phase with a quantitative one. The bar chart in Fig. 3 below illustrates the different research methods used.

Fig. 3
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Articles based on research method

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3.5 Data gathering tools

Qualitative research design is dominating research methodologies employed by most researchers. Numerically, 41 studies used literature review as their main source of data. Next comes secondary data with 20 studies relied an existing data already gathered by other researchers or provided by external parties. Also, 15 research studies used interviews with industry experts or organizations executives as their main source of data. Surveys represented only 8.4% of all data gathering tools, in other words, only 8 studies used self-reported data. Case studies came next after surveys with 7 studies adopted such data gathering tool. Surveys were also triangulated with interviews in certain occasion and with secondary data in other occasions with 3 studies and 1 study followed these approaches respectively. The pie chart in Fig. 4 below visualize the different data gathering tools used.

Fig. 4
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Article based on data gathering tools

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3.6 Industries covered

In total, thirty seven studies didn’t cover any specific industry, rather discussed COVID-19’s impact on supply chains in general. The remaining publications covered twelve different industries namely; twenty studies covered the food industry, eight studies covered healthcare and the same number too covered logistics and shipping industry. Moreover, the fashion industry was covered by five studies while four articles focused on the agriculture industry with the same number covering the automobile and airline industry. Additionally, both manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries were covered by three articles each. Finally, two articles covered the IT industry while one article focused on each of the after mentioned industries; hospitality, humanitarian and real estate. Table 2 below summarizes the industries explored by the ninety five studies (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5
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Articles based on Industry type

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3.7 Contexts explored

The studies reviewed covered many contexts and regions, to elaborate, forty six papers explored COVID-19’s impact on Asian countries. In the same vein, eighteen papers covered north American countries including the UA and Canada. Europe came third with eleven studies covering the UK, Spain, Ireland, Germany and France. Furthermore, Australia was explored by three studies while Africa and South America were covered by one study each. Finally, twenty four research studies covered the entire world. Figure 6 below, highlights the main contexts explored by the ninety five papers.

Fig. 6
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Publications based on region

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4 Discussion

Such as any other pandemics, COVID-19 impacted many industries, supply chains and regions leading to disastrous consequences on individuals and organizations (Zhang 2021; Butt 2021a, b; Thompson and Anderson 2021; Sen et al. 2020; Atkinson et al. 2020). Many scholars, researchers and practitioner investigated the threats created and the risks imposed on businesses due to many measures imposed by governments in an attempt to lessen the spread of the pandemic (Timilsina et al. 2020; Karmaker et al. 2021; Burgos and Ivanov 2021). Few have benefited from the contagion and sought to seize many opportunities generated such as those in the pharmaceutical, transportation as well as ocean carriers and containership industries (Yang et al. 2021; Wackett 2021; Hobbs 2021). This systematic review of 95 articles provides very interesting insights on what has been researched and investigated so far from different aspects. Firstly, peer reviewed articles seem to be the most rigorous yet acceptable research output as 94% of the studies reviewed were journal articles. Secondly, while there are many studies attempted to uncover COVID-19’s impact on supply chains, few have gained high attention especially those that not only highlighted the threats faced by business but also provided a roadmap on how to recover the pandemic consequences. To elaborate, Ivanov’s (2020a, b) two research studies which were among the highly cited papers (i.e. 867 and 313), not only they used simulation based analysis to predict the impact of the pandemic but also proposed a model that can make supply chains agile, resilient, and sustainable. Another study that was significantly cited (i.e. 261 citations), is the work of Rizoua et al. (2020). The researchers sought to summarize the impact of COVID19 on the food supply chain wherein they also provided the opportunities created by the pandemic recommending that more robust measures need to be undertaken in the production, processing and delivery of food.

As far as the journals used in publishing these 89 articles is concerned, it is importantly noticed that a gigantic number of journals were involved, with only 10 journals published 2 articles each. The remaining 69 articles were published in different journals. This could clearly indicate that COVID-19’s impact on supply chains is of a chief concern for many journals and publishing institutions.

From the research methodology perspective, it can be rationally claimed that relatively, there is a dearth of both mixed method and quantitative driven studies compared with the qualitatively oriented ones. To clarify, 70 studies adopted qualitative methods verses 18 studies employed quantitative tools and only 7 studies triangulated their quantitative phase with qualitative one. Among those who used mixed method approach and gained high attention is the work of Shafi et al. (2020) which was cited more than 230 times. The significance of the study stems from being one of two studies that covered the Pakistani context summarizing the pandemic’s negative effects on the country’s economy including financial, supply chain disruption, decrease in demand, reduction in sales and diminution of profits. It would be recommended that more studies are to be conducted using mixed method approach, since some results could be sometime inconclusive using a single approach, triangulation therefore, can assist in uncovering hidden relationships or explain any heterogeneity in the data (Younis et al. 2020).

In relation to the research methods employed, and from a data gathering point of view, the review indicates that literature review was used the most as 41 studies relied on extant literature. Alternatively, 21 studies used secondary data, 15 used interviews, 8 adopted surveys, 7 case studied organizations, 3 used a mix of surveys and interviews and 1 used both primary and secondary data. This diversification of data gathering tools is another indicator that researchers are endeavoring to employ many tools to help understand the behaviors of pandemics so as to lessen their impact on businesses and supply chains.

As long as the industries covered is concerned, it is indeed interesting to notice that 38% of the studies (or 37 papers) didn’t address a certain industry rather they adopted a holistic view aiming to be conclusive and offer an overall deep insights. Controversially, the remaining 58 studies focused on specific industries with the food being the mostly targeted industry with 20 research papers. The respective studies investigated the impact of COVID-19 on different food supply markets such as vegetables (Zhang 2021), coffee (Pereira et al. 2021), chicken and halal products (Asih et al. 2021), hogs (Wang et al. 2020) and seafood (Siamhan and Trirath 2020). Additionally, few other researchers studied the impact of COVID-19 on the entire food supply chain. Examples include, Rizoua et al. (2020), Singh et al. (2020), Aday and Aday (2020), Mahajan and Tomar (2020), Kumar et al. (2021), Thilmany et al. (2021), Cariappa et al. (2021) and many more. The healthcare as well as shipping & logistics were the second highly researched industries with 8 studies each.

Amongst the highly cited studies that focused on the healthcare industry is the work of Larraneta et al. (2020) who investigated how the 3D printing enabled Irish organizations to produce different healthcare consumables in the fight against COVID-19. Interestingly enough, the second study within the healthcare that gained high attention is Novak and Loy’s (2020) study, who also examined the 3D printing response to COVID-19 challenges within Australia. Similarly, few other researchers measured the overall impact of COVID-19 on the entire healthcare system in different contexts (Rahman et al. 2021; Jha and Sharma 2020; Helmold et al. 2020; Hossain et al. 2021; Warrington et al. 2021; Jamshidiantehrani et al. 2020; Lemenuel-Diot 2020). On the shipping and logistics industry, Sharma et al. (2020a, b) is one of the fairly cited studies which recommended developing internal capabilities to lessen the dependency on other countries when it comes to shipping. In the same vein, Srinivas and Marathe (2021) examined COVID-19’s impact on last‐mile delivery practices in India. Other researchers, examined COVID-19’s impact on commercial transport drivers (Kenneth 2020) on container ports capability (Russell et al. 2020) and finally on logistics costs and business competitiveness (Nguyen 2020).

The fashion industry came third with 5 studies highlighting how COVID-19 impacted several aspect of the supply chain such as; the reasons behind the lack of social sustainability in the clothing industry (Majumdar et al. 2020), the impact on apparel workers (Sen et al. 2020), the recovery challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic (Paul et al. 2021), the vulnerability and capability factors and their relationship with supply chain resilience (Ali et al. 2021) and finally, strategies to lessen the impact of COVID-19 on the apparel supply chain (Taqi et al. 2020a, b).

The remining industries received lesser attention as only 4 studies addressed automobile and airline (Belhadi et al. 2021; Handfield et al. 2020; Free and Hecimovic 2021; Ishida 2020) with the same number also covered the agriculture industry (Sharma et al. 2020a, b; Timilsina et al. 2020; Cariappa et al. 2021; Joshi et al. 2020). The manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries were targeted by 3 studies each (Min & Jianwen 2020; Agrawal et al. 2020; Chen et al. 2020) and (Jha and Sharma 2020; Helmold et al. 2020; Jamshidiantehrani et al. 2020). While 2 studies focused on the IT industry (Modgil et al. 2021; Ishida 2020) and one study covered each of the humanitarian, real estate and hospitality industries (Thompson and Anderson 2021; Uchehara et al. 2020; Gonzalez-Torres et al. 2020).

From a context perspective, the review shows that 46 studies addressed Asian countries. While India being on the top of the list with 15 studies, china and Bangladesh came second with 5 studies each. Among the highly cited studies within the Indian context is the researches of Singh et al. (2020), Sharma et al. (2020a, b), Mahajan and Tomar (2020), Agrawal et al. (2020), Kumar et al. (2021), Mahajan et al. (2021), Srinivas and Marathe (2021), Cariappa et al. (2021), Kumar (2020). As far as China is concerned, three studies are gaining attention which are Min and Jianwen (2020), Wang et al. (2020), Min et al. (2020). On the Bangladeshi context, four studies are being cited fairly including: (Karmaker et al. 2021; Taqi et al. 2020a, b; Sen et al. 2020; Paul et al. 2021).

North American continent came second after Asia with 15 studies covering both the US and Canada. The US was covered by 14 studies with van Hoek’s (2020a, b) two studies among the highly cited papers at which the author indicates the threats and opportunities COVID-19 has created. Other US related studies include; (Lemenuel-Diot 2020; Warrington et al. 2021; Kenneth 2020; Thilmany et al. 2021; Russell et al. 2020; Atkinson et al. 2020; Thompson and Anderson 2021; Xiong et al. 2021; Nikolopoulos et al. 2020; Handfield et al. 2020; Hobbs 2021; Höhler and Lansink 2021; Márquez and Tolosa 2021).

Europe followed Asia and North America with 11 studies spread across the continent. Example of the highly cited papers include the study of Nikolopoulos et al. (2020) wherein the researchers provided predictive analytics tools for forecasting and planning during a pandemics. Other studies that gained attention is the work of Handfield et al. (2020) at which the authors claimed that Brexit and the USA imposing tariffs is creating new obstacles that redirects the flow of supply chains. Additional studies that were undertaken within Europe include; (Larraneta et al. 2020; El Baz and Ruel 2021; Gonzalez-Torres et al. 2020; Burgos and Ivanov 2021; Höhler and Lansink 2021; Uchehara et al. 2020; Helmold et al. 2020; Do et al. 2021; Keshta et al. 2020).

Australia ranked 4th in terms of studies, as only 3 articles were undertaken within the Australian context which include: (Free and Hecimovic 2021; Novak and Loy 2020; Rahman et al. 2021). Finally, south America and Africa had one study each namely; Pereira et al. (2021) work in Brazil and Akintokunbo and Adim (2020) research in Nigeria.

It is equally important to mention that 24 studies were not regionally driven, rather they were general with some of them very highly cited. Clarifyingly, Ivanov’s (2020a, b) two research papers are among the significantly cited studies that were general in nature. Furthermore the following are also examples of highly cited papers that were not undertaken in a certain context: (Rizoua et al. 2020; Golan et al. 2020; Belhadi et al. 2021; Sarkis 2020; Mollenkopf et al. 2020; Ketchen and Craighead 2020; Djankov & Panizza 2020; Timilsina et al. 2020; Hashem et al. 2020).

5 Findings

A deeper and critical review of the 95 studies has led to the emergence of four distinctive themes in terms of incumbent researchers view of COVID-19’s impact on supply chains. The pie chart within Fig. 7 below highlights these 4 themes followed by a detailed discussion.

Fig. 7
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Research themes emerged

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Theme 1

COVID-19 was a complete threat on supply chains and brought about many types of risks. Example of researchers supporting this argument is Shafi et al. (2020). The researchers found that COVID-19 caused financial, supply chain disruption, decrease in demand, reduction in sales and profit risks. Similarly, van Hoek (2020a, b) concluded that COVID-19 impacted businesses negatively since most of them lacked preparedness and had shortcomings of response plans. Furthermore, Aday and Aday (2020) claimed that the pandemic had a severe consequences on organizations and countries. From a social risk perspective, few researchers claim that the pandemic had several social threats. For example COVID019 impacted the well-being of individuals (Mollenkopf et al. 2020), led to deferred payment of workers salaries and employee layoffs (Sen et al. 2020), and finaly affected consumers’ livelihood (Cariappa et al. 2021). Table 3 below summarizes the 18 highly cites studies that support this view.

Table 3 Publications with COVID 19 as threat
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Theme 2

COVID-19 created many opportunities for supply chains in general and for certain industries in particular. To elaborate,14 studies concluded that COVID-19 offered unparalleled opportunities and that the pandemic had positive impacts to the nations, regions and the world (Majumdar et al. 2020). Moreover, the pandemic forced organizations to use Industry 4.0 technologies which had the potential to transform and help the humanity and enabled businesses to collaborate to improve their performance (Acioli et al. 2021). The same findings were also echoed by (Modgil et al. 2021) who concluded that within the pandemic, the implementation of artificial intelligence minimized the impact of disruptions, and offered personalized solutions to both upstream and downstream supply chain stakeholders. Furthermore, the pandemic pushed some organizations to use blockchain technology and therefore they had lesser negative impact caused by the pandemic compared with other organizations (Xiong et al. 2021). Table 4 below summarizes the top 9 cited studies that supported this argument.

Table 4 COVID 19 opportunity themes emerged
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Theme 3

COVID-19 created threats and opportunities.

34% of the studies reviewed, concluded that while COVID-19 created many threats, it has also generated many opportunities. For example although COVID-19 pandemic generated many challenges in the supply chain and the food industry, but it created several opportunities for businesses to revise existing measures related to processing and delivery of goods (Rizoua et al. 2020). Because the pandemic has come in different waves, the opportunities for supply chain organisations would also be in different waves. Early business opportunities of alternate business model have been instrumental for small and medium business organization to capture the market in 2020, which have faded away giving with some degrees of benefits. Emerging out from the crisis supply chain organization could transform from ‘new normal” to “next normal” and that could be the focus for organisations in order to provide more stronger, resilient and sustainable supply chain solutions. Besides, COVID-19 generated some short-term environmental sustainability gains whilst long-term effects are still require further research (Sarkis 2020). In the same manner, Larraneta et al. (2020) argue that the pandemic led to shortages of medical supplies which negatively impacted organizations and individuals. However it also pressurized organization to use advanced techniques such as 3D printing in the fight against COVID-19 which led to cost optimization. Lastly, COVID-19 challenges allowed buying firms to apply agile production and distribution practices and modifying inventory policies leading to reduction in costs (Butt 2021a, b). Table 5 below highlights the most significant studies supporting this proposition.

Table 5 Threats and opportunity themed studies
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Theme 4

Studies that provided a model.

Whilst some studies investigated the threats and opportunities of COVID-19, other studies contributed differently by identifying barriers to supply chain efficiency, pinpointing some risk mitigation strategies, proposing a model that can help reduce the impact of risks or maximize the opportunities of the pandemic and finaly provided soecific recommendations. All these studies were grouped unde one theme called “proposed a model”. Table 6 below lists few of the highly cited studies that proposed a mode. An example of highly cited studies include Ivanov’s (2020a, b) paper. The researcher proposed viable supply chain (VSC) model that can help make organizations agile, resilient and sustainable. Likewise, Singh et al. (2020) proposed a model that can help in developing a resilient and responsive food supply chain. Also, Nikolopoulos et al. (2020) provided predictive analytics tools for forecasting and planning during pandemics. Equally, Srinivas and Marathe (2021) proposed a “mobile warehouse”. The researchers argue that such mobile warehouse can be an effective solution to last‐mile logistics issues during pandemics such as COVID-19. Lastly, Russell et al. (2020) proposed framework that can help in understanding uncertainty characteristics and assessing various elements of capacity within the supply chain.

Table 6 Studies that proposed a model
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Table 7 proposed the various categorical supply chain risks that are identified through the review and provided proposed mitigation strategies for providing sustainable supply chain strategies at Covid times. These resilience strategies are vey imperative elements for organisations to strive their competition and preparing to cope-up with the new normal.

Table 7 Supply chain risks and proposed strategy
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The objective of this research is to thoroughly analyze the literature that focus on understanding how COVID-19 impacted supply chains. Google Scholar and Scopus are used to locate the related publications using COVID-19/coronavirus and supply chain/logistics as keywords. A total of 95 relevant publications are systematically analyzed from different aspects including, publication type, number of citations each study received, publication journals, research methodologies used, data gathering tool employed, industries targeted and finally contexts explored. Four interesting themes emerged grouping the results achieved by most researchers in the field. To elaborate 27 studies found that COVID-19 posed several threats including, social, operational, financial, economic and supply chain risks. Alternatively, 14 studies claimed that COVID-19 opened up enourmus opportuties and led to the creation of many “unicorns” (companies that worth more than $1Bilion before being listed in stock markets).

Moreover, 32 studies concluded that while COVID-19 posed many thrats, it also created unparalleled opportunites in different sectors and industries such as containerships, online retailing, and delivery services. Finaly 22 studies contributed in a different way, they either identified barriers to suppl chain efficiency, recommended certain strategies to mitigate COVID-19 risks or proposed a model that can help maximizing opportunities and minimizing risks.

5.1 Theoretical contributions

In addition to the detailed analysis and discussion of the 95 articles, the study contributes to theory through the very useful insights drawn with 4 unique themes emerged including; (1) researchers who believe that COVID-19 is a complete threat to supply chains and organizations. (2) researchers who argue that COVID-19 created many opportunities, (3) researchers who are neutral claiming that COVID-19 created both threats and opportunities and finally (4) those who suggested models that can help supply chains overcome the pandemic consequences. With the emergent themes identified in this paper, the authors contribute toward the theoretical body of knowledge by supporting the institutional theory coined by DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983). The authors claim that firms attempt to adapt to the surrounding environment by adhering to legitimacy rules and regulations from one side and through seeking social fitness from another side (DiMaggio and Powell’s 1983). Evidently, and to sustain the pandemic, few businesses attempted to satisfy their stakeholders supporting with stakeholders theory by adhering to the new measurements stipulated by their governments from one side and meeting their customer requirements from another side. Examples include the use of 3D printing by healthcare organizations in Australia to respond to COVID-19 challenges while at the same time meeting customer demand (Novak and Loy 2020). Moreover, and due to limitations of last‐mile delivery practices during COVID‐19, few Indian organizations proposed “mobile warehouse” as an effective solution to last‐mile logistics issues (Srinivas and Marathe 2021).

5.2 Practical contributions

Undoubtedly, this study acts as an easy reference for decision makers, supply chain professionals, executives and logistics manager intending to understand the pandemic’s impact on supply chains, industries and organizations. Such knowledge can help them mitigate any negative effects the pandemic might impose on their organizations. Similarly, the study highlights the many opportunities created by the pandemic that can be seized to improve the performance of their organizations. Furthermore, the study offers unparalleled opportunity for industry professionals to become acquainted with and knowledgeable about the successful models developed across different industries and within several contexts that can be applied within their organizations.

5.3 Limitations

The limitations of this study are of two folds; firstly, it only covered COVIS-19’s impact of supply chains/logistic systems without specific focus on certain processes within the supply chain such manufacturing or transportation. The reason why the study was general in nature, is because the authors intended to gain an understanding of COVID-19’s overall impact on supply chains and sought to discover how different industries, businesses and contexts reacted to the pandemic. The same approach was adopted by few other researchers including; Singh et al. (2020), Ishida (2020), Ivanov (2020a, b), Sarkis (2020), Acioli et al. (2021), Golan et al. (2020). The second limitation is the use of Google Scholar and Scopus only to define the related publications. The authors believe that Google Scholar and Scopus have become a good destination when it comes to publications since they provides journal articles or links that lead to the required publication in the research space (Younis et al. 2021).

5.4 Future studies

This paper provided good insights on the areas that other researchers could pursue to deepen their understanding on COVID-19’s double edged sward, and how businesses can use their business acumen to convert the challenges into real opportunities. The study also opens the door wide for other researchers to investigate COIVD-19’s impact on each of the five stages of supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model, i.e. plan, source, make, deliver and return (Younis et al. 2021).

The insights from the fourth theme emerged in this study, namely, the models proposed and tested to fight against COVIS-19, can provide very fruitful research avenue for other researchers to explore the applicability of these models on other industries or within other contexts. Finally, the study might be useful for researchers interested in exploring how industry 4.0 practices can help fighting against COVID-19.