Mangers In Supply Chain Managemen

Research note Managers in supply chain management, the critical dimension
Remko I. van Hoek Robina Chatham and Richard Wilding
The authors Remko I. van Hoek is with the Corporate Executive Board, Washington DC, USA. Robina Chatham is Senior Lecturer and Richard Wilding is a Lecturer, both at Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield, UK. Keywords Supply-chain management, Managers, Education,Effectiveness Abstract Attracting and educating the right supply chain managers are a critical challenge to the realization of most supply chain objectives irrespective of the state of the economy (shortage of personnel several months ago or increasing lay-offs currently). This is because of the richness of capabilities required to do the job well. Much of our teaching in logistics and supply chainmanagement focuses on the technical aspects of the role. However, the importance and criticality of the human aspects are becoming increasingly apparent. A new approach to the people dimension is called for. This paper uncovers a set of emotional capabilities, which, if combined with the technical capability that is undoubtedly needed as well, would transform the industry. One emotionalcapability, the ability to influence, is examined by way of illustrating what we mean by emotional capability. Suggestions are offered for furthering managerial capabilities in supply chain management. Electronic access The research register for this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available athttp://www.emeraldinsight.com/1359-8546.htm
Supply Chain Management: An International Journal Volume 7 . Number 3 . 2002 . pp. 119±125 # MCB UP Limited . ISSN 1359-8546 DOI 10.1108/13598540210436568

Introduction
Looking at the average logistics and supply chain textbook, it shows the heritage of decades of the field developing with a large bias towards technical-, modeling-, even ORbased work. We teach ourstudents MRP, inventory allocation and positioning formulas, in a very formalized, sometimes mathematical manner. Even though the management dimension is usually covered to some extent in these books, one could pose the question ``Is this really enough to prepare people for supply chain practice?'' Looking at practice, it is a well-known problem, for example, in the third-party logistics sectorthat the upgrading of the sector to supply chain partners inevitably fails or is compromised by workforce issues. A manager of Schenker BTL explained at a recent conference how clients are asking for smarter solutions to supply chain problems and how they are requiring third parties to contribute to supply chain engineering based on their operational experience. This, however, is difficult for thirdparties to realize, given that most people on their staff have a purely operational focus on blue-collar work (``moving goods''), rather than a strategic focus. In addition, people skills are in short supply. Apparently the challenge is there. Consider David Bradley, logistics director of Monsanto, Brussels, Belgium, who states that:
A logistics executive should have, in addition to logisticsexpertise, communication abilities and the ability to work with people. To look at a problem from a different point of view and come up with a simple solution requires creative skills. At Monsanto my incentives are the management of change, variety in my job and teamwork. In our cross-functional organization, logistics requires cutting across vertical borders, which enables me to work with manypeople in different disciplines.

This indicates that the textbook knowledge (the logistics expertise), as mentioned above, is just a qualifier, not a differentiator, and that a wide range of other human resource capabilities is needed as well. Research has shown that human resource approaches are related to performance. Harrison (1999), for example, studied the human resource approaches used in...