Global organizations and supply chain

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to aim at proposing a research agenda in the intersection of strategic supply chain management and logistics (SCML) of global organizations from the perspective of international human resource management (IHRM). Design/methodology/approach – To disclose the intellectual structure of research to date across both fields, the content of up to 280 articles dealing with IHRM and 174 papers addressing challenges in SCML in global organizations from a human resource management (HRM) viewpoint were analyzed. A stepwise hierarchical cluster and discriminant analysis were conducted to map a joint research agenda. Approaches from Upper Echelons theory and Co-Evolutionary theory of global organizations were adopted. Findings – Top management teams (TMT) are crucial to manage SCML successfully in today’s global organizations. Research on this intersection should draw attention to find antecedents, consequences and the process showing how those talented people grouped in dispersed teams can be a source of competitive advantage. Six different areas of research are proposed. It is proposed that future research should focus on the human capital (HC); meaning those key individuals of an organization that make things happen. In the near future, the global organization’s competitiveness will be shaped by how the organization manages its HC in SCML. Methodologies such as meta-analysis are suggested to summarize the extant literature on IHRM when applied to SCML in global organizations. Research limitations/implications – The search was conducted in SSCI-ISIWoK and Scopus databases. As a limitation, some articles and other scientific contributions not abstracted there were not included. Nevertheless, both searches enabled obtaining balanced results between scope and richness of content. Originality/value – Only a marginal portion of literature reviews have been conducted by using mixed methods in the fields of IHRM and SCML. The results will be useful for scholars of both fields in their attempts to enlarge the knowledge boundaries in these areas. From a practitioner’s viewpoint, this research may provide an integrative framework for global organizations to build a competitive advantage based on managing HC and its SCML strategically.

Leadership and supply chain management: a systematic literature review

“…Arguing that supply chain managers act as “integrators,” these studies provide evidence for a positive relationship between supply chain manager representation in TMT and the firm’s environmental performance (Kumar and Paraskevas, 2018; Villena et al , 2018). While Thomas et al (2011) concluded that the most impactful areas of supply chain management research are internal organization structure, communication and information technology, forecasting, operations planning and leadership, González-Loureiro et al (2014) stressed for more research at the intersection of supply chain and human resource management stating that TMTs play a significant role in managing the supply chain. Fawcett and Rutner (2014) highlighted the growing gap between universities and industries on the supply chain education front.…”

“…The recent literature reviews on supply chain management have focused on the contemporary issues and challenges such as disruptive technologies, including big data analytics, the Internet of Things (Aryal et al , 2018; Bălan, 2018), blockchain (Van Hoek, 2019; Queiroz et al , 2019) and extension of Industry 4.0 (Frederico et al , 2019; Liboni et al , 2019). Nevertheless, the classic theme of the role of leadership even in the supply chain management is gaining ground (Mokhtar et al , 2019), with a particular highlight on the role of top management in the context of international human resource management (González-Loureiro et al , 2014), change management (Frederico et al , 2019), sales and operations (Tuomikangas and Kaipia, 2014), supply chain quality management (Foster, 2008), transformational leadership in the supply chain (Mokhtar et al , 2019). The supply chain is becoming more critical for firms’ competitiveness (Gosling et al , 2016; Lockström and Lei, 2013).…”

“…While studies are exploring the impact of leadership style on firm performance (Chen et al , 2015; Obeidat and Tarhini, 2016; Srinivas Rao and Kareem Abdul, 2015), there is a lack of literature reviews on the role of leadership in the supply chain. The past reviews have discussed issues related to supply chain management in global organizations (González-Loureiro et al , 2014), leadership in supply chain research in Europe and Asia (Babbar et al , 2018; Behara et al , 2014), implementing quality management practices in supply chain and supply chain resilience (Kamalahmadi and Parast, 2016; Robinson and Malhotra, 2005). Mokhtar et al (2019) recently conducted a literature review on supply chain leadership mainly limited to leadership style.…”

Development of human capital management system in the transportation industry

“…Leading companies want to attract and retain the top talent employees from around the world to ensure that their businesses continue to grow and prosper and are able to adapt swiftly to change. As getting the right people is so crucial to ongoing commercial success, human resources (HR) is considered as a key business function [1][2][3].…”

Management of language diversity in international supply chain relationships of UK SMEs

“…This is, as will be later addressed, a primarily functionalist, technicist literature which has been largely unaffected by the "linguistic turn" (Deetz, 2003) of organisation studies or even the "cultural turn" of international management. However, there is increasing interest within the discipline for a greater focus on social networks and relationships (Connelly, Ketchen and Hult, 2013;González-Loureiro, Dabic and Puig, 2014), and it is these areas which are addressed within this literature review.…”