Can you grow your supply chain without skills? The role of human resource management for better supply chain management in Latin America
The International Journal of Logistics Management
ISSN: 0957-4093
Article publication date: 13 July 2021
Issue publication date: 1 February 2022
Abstract
Purpose
In line with the knowledge-based view of organizations, this paper aims to analyze how supply chain (SC) employees contribute to the creation of competitive advantage through knowledge acquisition and utilization activities. The authors consider SC employees' skills and competencies, their external network of relationships, their job satisfaction and company investments in training and test how they relate to SC-level outcomes (i.e. SC growth).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors design a research model including the aforementioned variables, and the authors apply structural equation modeling (SEM) to survey data collected from 246 SC professionals in Latin America. The authors also use multi-group analysis to evaluate how the relationships between these variables change with different levels of company investment in training.
Findings
The results show that a broad professional network of relationships contributes to increasing the skills and competencies of SC professionals, which, in turn, impact job satisfaction and SC performance. This reinforces the value of investing in skilled human talent, who can contribute to knowledge acquisition, utilization, and, ultimately, to SC competitiveness. Companies that invest more in training to develop their SC employees benefit from stronger SC outcomes.
Originality/value
This study contributes to broadening the understanding of the impact of human resource management (HRM) on supply chain management (SCM). One of the added original foci of this research is the emphasis on developing countries where these HRM-to-SCM performance relationships have not been studied before.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank LOGYCA in Colombia for supporting the data collection during their events in 2018 and 2019. Likewise, the authors would like to acknowledge contributions from Alondra Trevizo-Salazar and Cristian Huicho-Alfaro.
The authors would also like to thank the Editor, Prof. Gammelgaard and the two anonymous reviewers, for their contributions to the improvement of this manuscript. All the errors must be considered the authors' sole responsibility.
Citation
Patrucco, A.S., Rivera, L., Mejía-Argueta, C. and Sheffi, Y. (2022), "Can you grow your supply chain without skills? The role of human resource management for better supply chain management in Latin America", The International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 33 No. 1, pp. 53-78. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-11-2020-0426
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited