Soft Skills and the Supply Chain Manager
Liberty University
Author Note
Authors Purpose
In the article titled The adoption of soft skills in supply chain and understanding their
current role in supply chain management skills agenda: A UK perspective, the authors Bak et al.,
provides a solid argument that soft skills in the supply chain management career field have been
typically overlooked and a deeper dive into the topic is required (2019). The study of hard skills
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such as inventory management, transport management, and logistics service management has
been the norm for the past 20 years as the data is easier to pull and quantify but more companies
are looking towards manages that have soft skills (Bak et al., 2019). Throughout the article the
authors use the data pulled from their study to help shape the need for more soft skills oriented
hiring practices and rethink what makes a supply chain manager effective.
Background of the Issue
The issue at hand is the need for a business to review what type of manager is most
effective within their organization. In the past, most businesses hired on the technical aspect of
an employee’s skillset. This was effective for the business as the manager was operating in a
scenario where interactions were limited due to the speed of communication and lack of
globalization with the supply chain. With the rise of globalization and the changing of the
traditional supply chain, companies looked to managers to have more soft skills that increased
cross communication and decreased conflict amongst potential partners. Throughout the article
the authors quoted the phrase several times in regards to supply chain managers that they “must
be good managers first and logisticians second” (Bak et al., 2019). This mentality is a hard shift
from the viewpoints of the past and is the foundation of the authors desire to research more into
which soft skills makes a manager more effective than the other.
Application to Supply Chain Management
This study by Bak et al., has a direct application to the future supply chain management
as the industry is shifting more towards a digital supply chain. The digital supply chain is the
shift to where supply chain managers are connected through the collaboration of business
organizations and work more with marketing, manufacturing, and purchasing departments than
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ever before (Supply Chain Management, 2020). This creates a need for business schools to teach
more soft skills to their students and allow them a chance to practice these skills in order to set
students up for success in the workforce. In another article review the researchers found there
was a critical lacking in the supply chain career field in regards to human agency theory and
social capital theory (Dubey et al., 2018). The human agency theory is the skill in which a leader
is able to translate the mission and vision of a company into actions by the employees (Dubey et
al., 2018). Where the social capital theory is that human capital’s skill and abilities can be shaped
and change through the effects of human intervention (Dubey et al., 2018). The soft skills that
were brought up by Bak et al., and Dubey et al., show that supply chain management as a science
has a way go to understand what makes the best manager.
Managerial Implications
Advice to managers after reading the article regarding soft skills and how they took shape
in the modern supply chain is to suggest that managers of companies take a hard look at their
own managers and take an inventory of what skillsets they currently have. Most supply chain
managers in the past were hired on their hard skills as this was important pre-globalization.
Managers should push a personality survey out to the managerial team within their company that
grades their managers soft skills on a scale of one to ten on different soft skillsets the company
values. This will give the managers a good baseline of the different managers they have within
the company and how to direct future training. Soft skills are skills that need to be developed
within the workforce and without having a baseline of what skills are lacking in the supply chain
team it would be hard to tailor the training towards your managers. Once the baseline is
established managers should then hold workshops for managers to start practicing these types of
soft skills in controlled classes. This gives managers an opportunity to observe and influence the
SOFT SKILLS AND THE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGER 4
soft skills needed within your organization. This should work well for existing managers, but
when hiring new managers, you should focus on the type of language put in the job
advertisement.
The job advertisement is a good place to start narrowing down applicants before they get
inside the organization and require more training. Some words to include in the job
advertisement should read “member takes initiative when approached with a new challenge, and
collaborates well with others when completing complex tasks”. These are two of the highest
rated soft skills that were identified in the study of UK supply chain managers (Bak et al., 2019).
Managers should be selective with the type of managers they hire and managers should
look at starting a new on boarding process that develops soft skills desired at the organization.
The onboarding process would be a streamlined version of the classes that were held for the
existing managers at the organization. These three tactics should help managers have supply
chain managers that have the desired soft skills needed to operating in the modern supply chain.
Summary
In review the article provides important data points for managers to review when looking
at their supply chain department. The market is changing and so is the workforce that is currently
in it and show is the generation that is going to be entering into it in the future. The article said it
best with the quote that supply chain managers “must be good managers first and logisticians
second” and with focusing on soft skills that build teams, business can’t lose (Bak et al., 2019).
More companies need to focus on managers that have the soft skills that encourage cross
communication and innovative thinking to solve the complex supply chain problems of today
and the future, otherwise we will be repeating the failures of the past.
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References
Bak, O., Jordan, C., & Midgley, J. (2019). The adoption of soft skills in supply chain and
understanding their current role in supply chain management skills agenda: A UK
perspective. Benchmarking, 26(3), 1063-1079. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-05-2018-0118
SOFT SKILLS AND THE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGER 6
Dubey, R., Gunasekaran, A., Childe, S. J., & Papadopoulos, T. (2018). Skills needed in supply
chain-human agency and social capital analysis in third party logistics. Management
Decision, 56(1), 143-159. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-04-2017-0428
Supply Chain Management. (2020). McGraw-Hill Create.
https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781307611458
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