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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether managers can acquire strategic skills using management education methods in lieu of experience. It demonstrates that experienced‐based pedagogical methods can be effective in developing traditional skills or “hard” skills and “soft” skills such as interpersonal communication, which then facilitate the acquisition of strategic skills.

The paper uses data from questionnaires and achievement scores from capstone classes to determine whether exposure to an experiential technique called large‐scale simulation can lead students to acquire traditional, soft and strategic managerial skill sets.

The results show that soft and traditional skills are complementary and together lead to better acquisition of strategic skills and also imply that mastering soft skills may enhance the mastery of traditional skills.

A limitation of the research stems from the use of students as research subjects. While this limits generalizability, it is important to remember that many such students go on to be successful managers in large and small organizations, partly due to their educational background. Replicating these findings with graduate and executive students is required.

A key practical implication is that organizations may be able to effectively supplement their own experienced‐based developmental efforts for their managerial personnel with course‐based learning.

The paper's findings support an option for many firms, although this has not received much direct empirical support. Additionally, the results support the increasing emphasis placed on soft skills, suggesting that development of strategic skills may help managers grasp the bigger‐picture implications.

In the last decade there have been dramatic impacts on, and changes within, the field of purchasing/supply management. Given supply management's new strategic role, this research seeks to examine the key skills and knowledge necessary for firms to improve in order to maximize the purchasing function's contribution to the organization. The research also aims to identifies the major shifts in supply management that have occurred in the last decade.

A qualitative study was conducted with a series of focus group meetings with 54 executives across the USA in order to construct theoretical relationships with which to develop a grounded theory of supply management skills evolution in a changing business environment.

The implications from this research indicate that supply management professionals will assume a more strategic role in the future. The data indicate that there are strong trends underlying this movement. These include the need for building strategic relationships, focusing on total cost and strategic cost reduction, yet collaborating and integrating with suppliers. While in the past these efforts may have appeared to be contradictory, with proper strategic planning they can be complementary.

Supply managers of the future need to acquire strategic skills that add value and enable effective alignment with key business functions at a senior decision‐making level. Additional research is needed in the area to determine how best to recruit and train managers in these skills to move forward.

Start-ups are the new avenues for innovation and employment. Strategic management is critical for employee engagement and skill development of start-ups. This study aims to understand the impact of strategic management on employee engagement and skill development.

The study attempts to identify principal factors of strategic management influencing employee engagement and skill development. Structural equation modeling has been used to understand effects of the study.

The study results have shown the challenges concerning employee skill development and reflected on importance of the employee engagement programmes for the growth of the human resource in the start-ups.

The study has confined to strategic management for employee engagement and skill development. However, studies related to challenges encountered by start-ups in the specific areas of marketing, operations and finance, etc. would provide more detailed impact on the growth of start-ups.

This study provides an insight into strategic management for employee engagement and skill development. The results would provide directions for improving strategy management from the perspective of employee engagement and skill development.

The study on start-ups provides a direction to the owners of start-ups to understand the importance of strategic management and human resource management for building strong enterprising which can provide employment opportunity for the youth of the nation and improve the society at large.

This paper is an attempt to provide directions for managing challenges from the perspective of employees’ engagement and skill development, which is essential for growth and sustainability in the future.

This study serve aims to fill a gap in the supply management literature with respect to supply management contribution to channel members' performance and its antecedents: strategic supply management skills and supplier integration. The resource‐based theory of the firm is used to establish the tested theoretical framework.

The sample used consists of 152 firms represented by highly ranked supply management professionals. The conceptual model and the hypothesized relationships are tested using structural equation modeling.

Support was found for the causal relationships among: strategic supply management skills and supply management contribution to channel members' performance; supplier integration and supply management contribution to channel members' performance; and for supply management strategic skills and supplier integration. Additionally, strategic supply management skills were found to have a significant mediated effect on supply management channel members' performance through supplier integration.

This study offers some guidance to supply management professionals who need both a clear understanding of the underlying tradeoffs involved in deploying the tested strategies and a prescriptive model to help guide their use. The results of this study will help supply management professionals in rationalizing their making various decisions concerning supplier relationships, recruiting the necessary skills in the supply management function, and investing in a supply knowledge base.

Although previous literature documented the link between supply management and the focal firm's performance, the research of supply management's contribution to channel members' performance has been largely overlooked. This work answers the recent calls for more empirical research in general and, specifically, for more empirical supply management strategy research. It should assist future researchers who focus on strategic supply management and channel performance and would also be of interest to supply management practitioners interested in keeping up with the academic literature.

Thinking and acting strategically have been identified as essential skills for managing organisations in the twenty‐first century. The rapid rate of technological change, the increasingly complex nature of organisations, and the greater number of environmental uncertainties are some of the reasons cited for this need. Research suggests that strategic thinking encompasses six skills that are critical to managerial effectiveness at senior levels in organisations – knowing the business and markets, managing subunit rivalry, finding and overcoming threats, staying on strategy, being an entrepreneurial force, and accommodating adversity. Obstacles to the development of these skills, and work experiences which stretch managers′ capacities for strategic thinking, are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a model linking school principals’ strategic, interpersonal skills and teachers’ participation in decision making (PDM) to predict teachers’ skill flexibility (SF) during the implementation of educational reform.

From 113 randomly selected elementary schools in Israel that had undergone a reform called “New Horizon,” 1,482 teachers participated in the study. Data were analyzed through the multilevel structural equation modeling.

Results showed that only principals’ strategic skills lead to teachers’ PDM, which in turn predicts teachers’ SF. Furthermore, based on the upper echelon theory (Hambrick and Mason, 1984), principals’ strategic skills promoted teachers’ SF through teachers’ PDM.

This research enables expanding the theoretical upper echelon model, both in the context of leaders’ skills and in their relation to change outcomes.

Using of strategic skills will help principals influence teachers to participate in decision making, adapt to the reform and promote their ability to use skills according to changing needs.

The results of this research emphasize the strategic role of school principals as the leaders of organizational change and promoters of its outcomes.

There is a lack of extensive research related to the immediate consequences of supply management ethical responsibility (SMER) and the moderating and/or mediating factors that strengthen or weaken its consequences. Although the underlying presumption is that companies no longer have the luxury of ignoring the importance of SMER, the lack of empirical research of SMER's impact on supply management performance (SMP) reflects the need for research that draws on and empirically tests established theories concerning the role of corporate ethics within the context of supply management (SM). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the impact of SMER and strategic supply management skills on SM perceived reputation and performance.

Structural equation modeling is employed to investigate the hypothesized relationships. A sample of 162 purchasing managers provided the data via survey.

Strategic supply management skills and perceived reputation have a positive direct impact on performance. SMER is not directly affected by skills and has an indirect impact on performance through its positive relationship with perceived reputation.

The findings suggest that SMER is limited in its ability to predict performance, but is a valuable component of building SM perceived reputation. Firms should not ignore SMER, as it may provide strategic marketing advantage as an order qualifier or limiting criterion.

This paper investigates the interplay among several important determinants of supply chain performance, including the greatly under‐studied ethics construct.

This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

This empirical research seeks to evaluate purchasing practices in Taiwan based on survey data collected from companies located in that country. A research model is presented and tested using structural equation modeling. The model includes three factors: purchasing risk taking, purchasing knowledge and skills, and strategic purchasing. The research findings indicate that purchasing risk‐taking impacts purchasing knowledge and skills and purchasing knowledge and skills impacts strategic purchasing. Also, the study finds that the relationships among risk taking, purchasing knowledge and skills and strategic purchasing for high performing firms are stronger than for low performing firms.

Research on purchasing managers and their skills requirements supports the training and education of purchasing professionals. This paper offers an in-depth analytical review of the purchasing skills reported in the supply chain management (SCM) literature. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the most important skills and factors that influence these skills.

This paper employs a systematic literature review methodology. Two databases, Scopus and Web of Science, are searched for relevant articles. The selected journal articles are used as sources to obtain a view not only on the relevant purchasing and supply management (P/SM) skills, but also on factors that emphasize certain P/SM skills. This paper also summarizes the ten skills ranked as most important (often described as the “top ten”) among the sample articles.

The paper highlights the essential skills for purchasing professionals, verified both by their frequent appearances in rankings and by citation frequency in the literature. Generic managerial skills, such as communication, cost analysis, teamwork, problem-solving, negotiation, influencing, and persuasion, as well as information technology skills, received the most attention in the literature and rankings of the “top ten” P/SM skills. This paper provides a refined categorization of purchasing skills, which have merged recently with other discussed skills, such as political and entrepreneurial ones, into this categorization. This paper identifies factors that affect purchasing managers’ skills requirements.

This paper presents a structured overview of 57 peer-reviewed articles from high-quality journals about purchasing skills. The review contributes to the purchasing skills literature by showing the most relevant skills and the factors that influence skills requirements. These factors also provide arenas for further research related to purchasing skills.