Towards a European Standard for an Operations & Supply Chain Management competence framework: evidence and learnings from the European ICT competence ecosystem

The rising complexity of Operations Management (OM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) dynamics is dramatically impacting the organizational practices concerning the selection and procurement of resources, either tangible (e.g., raw materials) or intangible (e.g., competences). Major factors generating this effect are identifiable as the rapid operations and supply chain development, new technological advancements, and the current global pandemic, which are making the competition harder. In this landscape, identifying the right competences becomes one of the organizational critical success factors for operational excellence and is now a compelling need for most industries. Among those, during the last decades, the European Commission has been promoting the development of a European Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competence ecosystem, through the standardization activities performed by the “Comité Européen de Normalisation” (CEN) experts. This pioneering work carried out by the “CEN/TC 428” Technical Committee led to the definition of several standards, technical reports, and technical specifications. Among these, the EN 16234-1 (“e-CF”) is the most notable one and is shaping the European competence landscape, also by providing guidelines for the potential application of this framework to other industries. For this reason, this research paper aims to investigate the evidence and lessons learned from the CEN/TC 428 standardization process and the European ICT competence ecosystem and to propose a methodology and guidelines for the deployment of this approach in the OM and SCM field. This would provide a common European language for the OM and SCM professionals and improve European OM and SCM HR-related processes. To our knowledge, this research represents the first contribution advancing the proposal for a shared and harmonized European competence standard for Operations and Supply Chain Management, and lays the foundation for widening the competence ecosystem at EU and worldwide level.