Supply chain implications of industrial symbiosis: A review and avenues for future research

Industrial symbiosis (IS) has attracted the attention of practitioners and researchers since 1972, with its inception in an industrial park in Kalundborg, Denmark. IS involves traditionally separate entities working collaboratively by exchanging wastes and sharing resources to gain competitive advantage. This collaboration among separate entities has a significant impact on the structure of supply chains and the relationships among the participating entities. In the literature, studies address IS from ecology, energy, environmental science, and materials management perspectives. However, there are not many papers that explore IS from the supply chain management perspective. In this paper, we first introduce the definition of symbiotic supply chains and provide a review and taxonomy of scholarly works in this area. We find that the majority of the researchers focus on self-organized and facilitated IS at the strategic/tactical symbiotic supply chain levels. Specifically, institutional capacity, i.e., qualitative factors that impact the capability of a group of firms to reach solutions, is explored extensively. Finally, we propose a research agenda that serves as a single source for researchers interested in exploring symbiotic supply chains.