Does resilience influence food waste causes? A systematic literature review

Abstract Studies that seek to relate resilience and food waste are still at an early stage. For organizations to be prepared to avoid and/or reduce it to improve their operations it is necessary to understand the impact of resilience on the food waste reduction. The aim of this article is to identify how elements of resilience can influence the causes of food waste in retail. To that end, we conducted a systematic literature review, which resulted in 90 articles. Next, we conducted a content analysis to facilitate a rigorous exploration of complex issues in the management field, seeking to relate the elements of resilience to the causes of food waste. We imported the articles into the QDA Miner qualitative data analysis software and then separated phrases and texts following the codebook guidelines. It was possible to locate common properties to the articles and to make initial comparisons between the resilience and food waste causes. As a result, it was observed that the elements of resilience can positively or negatively influence the causes of food waste in the retail and that most of these elements are related to the anticipation. The main elements of resilience identified are: Flexibility, Visibility and Collaboration. However, this influence is partial, since some of the elements, such as Redundancy and Financial Strength, prevent the full implementation of waste reduction. Finally, we discuss the study’s limitations and opportunities for further development in the conclusion.