Working capital management:
a literature review and
research agenda
Harsh Pratap Singh and Satish Kumar
Department of Management Studies,
Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review research on working capital management (WCM) and
to identify gaps in the current body of knowledge, which justify future research directions. WCM has
attracted serious research attention in the recent past, especially after the financial crisis of 2008.
Design/methodology/approach – Using systematic literature review (SLR) method, the present
study reviews 126 articles from referred journal and international conferences published on WCM.
Findings – Detailed content analysis reveals that most of the research work is empirical and focuses
mainly on two aspects, impact of working capital on profitability of firm and working capital practices.
Major research work has concluded that WCM is essential for corporate profitability. The major issues
with prior literature are lack of survey-based approach and lack of systematic theory development
study, which opens all new areas for future research. The future research directions proposed in this
paper may help develop a greater understanding of determinants and practices of WCM.
Practical implications – Till date, literature on classification ofWCMhas been almost non-existent.
This paper reviews a large number of articles on WCM and provides a classification scheme in to
various categories. Subsequently, various emerging trends in the field of WCM are identified to help
researchers specifying gaps in the literature and direct research efforts.
Originality/value – This paper contains a comprehensive listing of publications on the WCM and
their classification according to various attributes. The paper will be useful to researchers, finance
professionals and others concerned withWCMto understand the importance of WCM. To the best of the
authors’ knowledge, no detailed SLR on this topic has previously been published in academic journals.
Keywords Literature review, Survey methods, Operating cycle, Working capital management
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
Over the last 40 years, major theoretical developments have occurred in the areas of
long-term investment and financial decision-making. Many of these new concepts and
related techniques are now being employed successfully in industrial practice. In
contrast, far less attention has been paid to the area of short-term finance, in particular
that of working capital management (WCM). Such neglect might be acceptable because
of working capital considerations of relatively little importance to the firm. Due to this
reason, only peripheral research interest in studying WCM process has been shown in
the literature. This may occur for several other reasons, first, because decisions dealing
with working capital occur frequently, and they are routine in nature. Thus, their
individual impact is insignificant. Second, unlike decisions related to capital investment,
these routine decisions are reversible over time. However, due to significant decline of
corporate performance during and after financial crisis of 2008, once again, interest of