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The purpose of this paper is to build a supply chain talent framework and test it empirically.

The present study adopts extant literature to understand current state of supply chain talent literature and used knowledge and skill constructs and their items from comprehensive literature review to develop an instrument to gather data. The data are further checked for assumptions and further examines the framework using confirmatory factor analysis.

The findings support previous studies and establishes that knowledge-skill framework is scientifically a strong framework which can help to build current supply chain competencies among future supply chain managers.

This study considers only a limited number of variables that define the supply chain talent. The framework can be further developed and extended to different industries and countries.

The study identifies knowledge-skill framework which can help to develop a training module for current or aspiring supply chain managers. It also can provide significant input to design university supply chain management program to meet future supply chain manager’s requirements.

Include providing the right education and training in support of supply chain operations and in turn serving the community with products and services on time and that too in a most cost effective manner.

This paper develops a new framework for supply chain talent development. This framework has been empirically tested, and major findings and future research directions are highlighted.

This paper aims to fill a void in existing research by focusing on in-company efforts to develop supply chain (SC) talent, with a specific focus on the role that executives can play in this process. This study uses the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and theory of training motivation as theoretical background for the exploration. In addition to that, this paper provides meaningful information for executives aspiring to contribute to the development of supply chain management (SCM) talent including the primary drivers, benefits, barriers and bridges (Fawcett et al., 2008). Using this framework will lead to the development of a conceptual model to facilitate future research efforts.

This paper studies three case companies where there was an active executive engagement in the recruiting, on-boarding and ongoing development of SC talent.

In all three case companies’ executive engagement was high and the executives acted as champions of the SC talent development program including designing and stewardship of the program. They also got personally involved in recruiting, training and mentoring. In alignment with the RBV of the firm, all three case companies were strongly driven by a need to improve the competitive advantage of their firm through the SC competencies and capabilities. This strategic directive is driven by the executive suite and typically involved a combination of goals including improving functional capability development, internal stakeholder relationships and growth in business value contributions. This leads to the need for attracting new talent, due to talent shortages and developing more future-proof capabilities of the SC talent. Talent that is future-proof can effectively handle the current scope of work and successfully implement changes that the SCM strategy aspires to. Hence, the executive ownership is very much driven by a strategic imperative to improve the knowledge, skills and abilities and critical realization of the importance of talent recruitment and development. This study also finds that there are very specific SCM drivers, benefits, barriers and bridges in play making it important for SCM executives and teams to engage and not rely on generic human resource (HR) processes and frameworks only.

We found that in the three case companies’ executive engagement in talent development had a positive impact. We also identified specific roles of the executives such as, the benefit of engagement across multiple hierarchical layers of the organization and, the risk of programs being shorter lived when focused on a narrower talent issue. Our research focus contributes to the existing supply chain literature involving talent management. It also suggests actions for supply chain executives, for the educational provision of universities and multiple research opportunities.

There is no evidence of prior research in fields of HR management, talent development or SCM related to the impact of executive engagement in this process. This paper studies three case companies where there was an active executive engagement in the recruiting, on-boarding and ongoing development of SC talent. Findings show the critical impact of personal and extended engagement of senior-level executives and their leadership teams, in SC talent development. This paper offers specific techniques and approaches, generates suggestions for further research, managerial action and university implications.

Talent management and its associated issues are a perennial concern for human resource management (HRM) practitioners and HR professional bodies. The disruption of the gig economy has exacerbated these concerns in multiple ways. This chapter seeks to interrogate this arena, its drivers and in particular the onward impacts on HRM practice and direction at the wider organisational level. The conceptual lens of Critical HRM has been selected for this analysis to examine how a variant of neoliberalism, that of human capital theory, has exuberated and legitimised a shift from an inclusive human relations approach to talent management to an exclusive individualised one with onward impacts on the talent development opportunities for individuals inside and outside of the organisation. This chapter also considers the reemphasis on the role of ‘strategic planning’ and the rise of supply chain management discourses in the context of managing atomised talent. It is argued that in the absence of mutuality in the gig economy espoused talent management strategies can create a conflict between the agendas of giggers, platforms and agencies and wider stakeholders in organisations. These issues are examined through an in-depth case study of gig-based contracts in the higher education and their impact on talent management and associated goals of innovation and creativity.

The conventional talent management approach views human relationships as transactional, akin to the commodities that traverse through the supply chain maze. In short, there is a quid pro quo relationship between wage and services, depriving any role for other non‐monetary influences on this relationship. This naïve view of human behavior has distracted the fundamental purpose of talent management – to unlock the value of talent to organizations. Two fundamental drivers that have challenged this transactional view espoused by HR include technology and advances in neuroscience. The technological advancements have created a demand for highly skilled professionals who value autonomy and meaningful engagement. This has brought employee engagement within the focus of managers – a topic that had less significance in earlier decades. The transactional view of workplace relationships has been challenged by discoveries of human behavior by neuroscience. Human beings are wired to have emotions and perceptions, and a workplace is no exception. Reframing the issue through a simple‐yet‐powerful framework, fundamentals of talent management can be restored, paving the way for a meaningful design of organizations. This paper seeks to address these issues.

Using rigorous in‐depth secondary research about current talent practices, the report offers a novel framework to unlock the drivers of employee's motivation and performance. The framework serves as a diagnostic leadership tool to identify breakdowns and foster a meaningful conversation to restore the organization back to equilibrium. A holistic alternative that is agnostic to the rank of the employee, job role, and geography offers promise over the current practice of dealing with employee issues in fragmented manner.

The proposed framework helps identify the sweet‐spot that lies at the intersection of three fundamental drivers; employee's preferences on the type of work, employee's core competency and activities that are value‐adding to the organization. The sweet‐spot is the employee's emotional wallet that the organizations must proactively capture to unlock the true drivers of motivation and performance. The proposed framework serves as a diagnostic tool to meaningfully tackle breakdowns and restore organizations to equilibrium. The sweet‐spot provides the clue to design an effective organizational structure, identify the enablers and catalyst that can unlock employee motivation and performance.

There is a compelling need for today's organizations to refocus their energies to unlock the value of their talent to drive higher performance and motivation. Deploying the proposed framework will empower organizations to capture the “share of emotional wallet” that is critical to drive higher levels of employee engagement and motivation. Smarter organizational structures and job role can be meaningfully designed.

The proposed framework challenges conventional talent management views of human relationships as transactional akin to the commodities that traverse through the supply chain maze. This blind spot has deprived the organizations in unlocking the drivers of employee motivation and performance. Overcoming this blind spot empowers talent management to capture the emotional share of wallet instead of trying to perfect the delivery supply chain.

Despite new organizational complexities, the fundamental focus for talent management is to unlock the value of its resource. Despite the pristine appeal of this fundamental tenet of talent management, it is ironic that HR has drifted its focus from its core. Reframing the issue through a simple‐yet‐powerful framework, fundamentals of talent management can be restored, paving the way for a meaningful design of organizations. This is a paradigm shift for talent management to get back to basics of what really matters to the organizations.

This paper aims to provide the results of a survey of courses dedicated to the field of supply chain management in higher education. This research is unique because it represents the first large-scale study of graduate supply chain management courses taught at universities globally.

Content analysis was performed on each syllabus to identify the actual course content: requirements, pedagogy and content emphasis. This aggregated information was used to compare historical research findings in this area, with the current skills identified as important for career success. This data provides input for a gap analysis between offerings in higher education and those needs identified by practitioners.

Data gathering efforts yielded a sample of 112 graduate courses representing 61 schools across the world. The aggregate number of topics covered in graduate courses totaled 114. The primary evaluation techniques include exams, projects and homework. Details regarding content and assessment techniques are provided along with a gap analysis between the supply chain management course content and the needs identified by APICS Supply Chain Manager Competency Model (2014).

The goal is to use this data as a means of continuous improvement in the quality and value of the educational experience on a longitudinal basis. The findings are designed to foster information sharing and provide data for benchmarking efforts in the development of supply chain management courses and curricula in academia, as well as training, development and recruitment efforts by professionals in the field of supply chain management.

With today's increasing globalization and associated growing demand for talented supply chain managers, human resource management (HRM) in supply chain management (SCM) has emerged as a top priority for firms. However, a thorough analysis of HRM issues in SCM research has not been made so far. To address this gap this paper provides a systematic and comprehensive literature review. The purpose of this paper is threefold: to analyze HRM/SCM issues published in leading SCM journals, to identify different HRM research streams in the SCM literature and to propose areas for future research.

This paper employs a systematic literature review methodology. The selected journal articles are categorized on the basis of an analytical framework that contains seven HRM/SCM research streams derived from the extant literature.

The systematic literature review indicates a growing focus on HRM/SCM issues in recent years, a trend that is predicted to continue. Additionally, the study findings show that research has primarily emphasized certain popular categories while other crucial ones lack analysis.

This paper presents a structured overview of 109 peer-reviewed articles published in leading academic journals from 1998 to 2014. The review structures extant HRM/SCM literature and highlights its critical importance in SCM research. Topical gaps in the literature are identified as areas for future research.

There is an ongoing shortage of talented supply chain managers with the necessary skills and business-related competencies to manage increasingly complex and strategically important supply chain processes. The purpose of this paper is to propose that organizations can create and maintain competitive advantage by leveraging the expertise of human resource development (HRD) professionals to provide a range of developmental and change-oriented interventions related to critical supply chain manager skill sets that are currently in short supply.

This is a conceptual paper.

This is a conceptual paper.

Supply chain management (SCM) decisions significantly influence financial performance since firms expend up to 75 percent of their revenue on supply chain activities. HRD professionals' intervention capabilities in training and development, organizational development and change management uniquely equip them to disseminate a deeper and broader understanding of the SCM concept within organizations, to help prioritize the development of supply chain managers and to address the complex interpersonal issues associated with helping people to work together collaboratively to foster operational innovation and make increasingly complex supply chain processes function effectively.

The requisite skill sets for effective supply chain managers are described, linkages between HRD and SCM are highlighted, and areas of HRD professionals' expertise that can be exploited to better develop supply chain managers' skill sets and competencies are considered.

Despite a pervasive workforce shortage, existing research has provided limited guidance about job satisfaction and commitment of the supply chain workforce. Moreover, few studies explore the effects of workforce level on such satisfaction and commitment. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

To address this gap, the authors apply person-organization fit theory to study the critical work value drivers of supply chain job satisfaction and industry commitment across workforce levels through structural modeling of practitioner survey data.

Job satisfaction and industry commitment are impacted differently across workforce levels, particularly for executives, suggesting the potential for conflicts in the workplace and that a “one size fits all” approach for recruitment and retention will be ineffective.

The results reveal how proactive organizations can not only hire and retain the best people but also help employees at different workforce levels understand one another’s motivations, empowering these organizations to become employers of choice.

This study is among the first empirical papers to directly address the labor shortage in supply chain. It also strikes new ground by assessing differences in work values across workforce levels.

Effective educational methods are critical for successfully training future supply chain talent. The paper proposes a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making model to evaluate and select the best educational method for tomorrow's supply chain leaders integrating skill development priorities in an uncertain environment.

The Grounded theory scheme is used to identify SC leaders' skillsets criteria and educational method alternatives. Fuzzy step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis sets the priority and determines the weight of 17 criteria. Eight decision-makers evaluate 13 alternatives using fuzzy linguistic terms. Fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution ranks and shows the most effective educational method. Sensitivity analysis presents the applicability of this study.

Its implementation in a university-industry collaboration case in Brazil, Mentored learning from industry experts is the best educational method. The skill development priorities are data analytics ability, end-to-end supply chain vision and problem-solving. Technical skills are the most important criteria that influence the selection of the optimal option and educational methods related to learning from others rank in the top teaching pool, including multidisciplinary cross-cultural training.

This paper is among the first to evaluate educational methods with skill development priorities integration for supply chain students using fuzzy SWARA–fuzzy TOPSIS. It provides actionable insights: a decision-making procedure for educational method selection, a broad skills profile for supply chain professional success and educational methods that professors can bring to in classroom/virtual environment.

This study aims to enhance the understanding of competency requirements of supply chain planners and analysts (SCP&As) and identify different personal preferences of hiring managers toward job candidates’ competency profiles.

A total of 243 supply chain managers with hiring experience participated in an adaptive choice-based conjoint experiment to uncover the relative importance of six competency attributes, namely, analytical and problem-solving ability, interpersonal skills, general management skills, computer/IT skills, supply chain management (SCM) knowledge and industry experience.

SCM knowledge and analytical and problem-solving ability were identified as the most important competencies and were considered three times more important than general management skills. Based on convergent cluster and ensemble analysis, two types of hiring managers were identified. The first group is characterized by a pronounced preference for job candidates with extensive SCM knowledge. In contrast, the second group’s members prefer candidates with a more balanced competency profile.

The authors’ findings help companies to facilitate a better person–job fit, a key determinant of employee performance and job satisfaction.