Supply chain management competencies: Proposal of a competency framework for job posting analysis

The search for skilled people in the field of Supply Chain Management is increasing, being widely recognised that people’s competences and ability, as well as knowledge and expertise, are the main success factors for a company. At the same time, notwithstanding the recent academic attention on this issue, is not simple to define which personal abilities are needed for a professional in this field: the nature of competence itself is multidimensional and there is no consensus among researchers on which one of these dimensions, if one, is most important. This work aims precisely at recognise which are the most important competencies in the field of SCM: taking clue from a number of reference frameworks, and after the identification of the main competencies, a comprehensive framework has been conceived, which has been used to analyse a set of job postings for SC manager job positions, in order to gain insight about the real/declared/perceived company needs. More precisely, the authors are interested in highlighting the difference in terms of needs between the so-called soft skills – as attitudes, behaviour, traits and motives – and the personal characteristics linked to technical knowledge and expertise in the SCM field. The objective is achieved through contentbased analysis of the selected job postings, leveraging on the proposed framework. Results show that, in a generic job description for an open job position in SCM, soft skills are often better detailed than hard skills; this suggest that the first ones are believed to be more important than the second. This study and the framework proposed may help HR managers in a more precise definition of the competencies required for a certain professional.