Can you grow your supply chain without skills? The role of human resource management for better supply chain management in Latin America

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-11-2020-0426
• Published date: 13 July 2021
• Date: 13 July 2021
• Pages: 53-78
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics
• Author: Andrea Stefano Patrucco,Liliana Rivera,Christopher Mejía-Argueta,Yossi Sheffi

Can you grow your supply chain

without skills? The role of human

resource management for better

supply chain management in

Latin America

Andrea Stefano Patrucco

Department of Marketing and Logistics, College of Business,

Florida International University, MIAMI, Florida, USA

Liliana Rivera

Center for Transportation and Logistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Christopher Mej



ıa-Argueta

Food and Retail Operations Lab, MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and

Yossi Sheffi

Center for Transportation and Logistics and Civil and Environmental Engineering,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

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

HRM and SCM

in Latin

America

53

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.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0957-4093.htm

Received 10 November 2020

Revised 15 April 2021

16 June 2021

20 June 2021

Accepted 21 June 2021

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 33 No. 1, 2022

pp. 53-78

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-11-2020-0426

emphasis on developing countries where these HRM-to-SCM performance relationships have not been studied

before.

Keywords Knowledge-based view, Supply chain management, Skills, Latin America, Survey

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Supply chain management (SCM) impacts directly the competitiveness of companies,

economic sectors and countries (D’Aleo and Sergi, 2017). The global economy is increasingly

structured around global supply chains (SCs) that link firms, workers, governments and

consumers worldwide through complexsupply, production and distribution networks across

different countries(Mentzer et al., 2001). SCs place a high demand on firms and their workforce

to continuously reduce costs, improve quality and delivery, and increase productivity

(Leon and Uddin, 2016;Bergstrom et al., 2020). In addition, companies are required to reduce

emissions, avoid social injustice and build in resilience, all of which are SC issues. In this

challenging context, a prerequisite for the SCM successis the people in the organizations, also

called the “soft side”of organizations (Dubey and Gunasekaran, 2015a,b).

A study by Deloitte shows that90% of the most effective corporate leaders appoint an SC

expert to lead the SCM function and hire the most technically competent people. Then, they

invest in training them in leadership and advanced SC competencies (Marchese and Dollar,

2015). In a more recent study, Bergstrom et al. (2020) further highlight the importance of

recruiting, empowering and retaining human talent to boost the performance and agility of

organizations.Several studiesconclude that the effectivenessof human talent positively affects

firms’and SC productivityand competitiveness (Kilubi and Rogers, 2018;Gammelgaard and

Larson, 2001;Fawcett and Waller, 2013;Barnes and Liao, 2012;Fl€

othmann et al.,2018b;

De Camargo Fiorini et al.,2021).

Thus, proper human resource management (HRM) is critical to enhancing employees’

ability to acquire and utilize knowledge, and contribute to the organization’s goals (Kianto

et al., 2016). This perspective is in line with the knowledge-based view (KBV) of organizations

(Grant, 1996;Crook et al., 2011), which establishes a strong interconnection between SCM

and HRM.

HRM involves a range of human resource policies, including recruitment, selection and

talent management (Krishnan and Scullion, 2017). So far, the SCM literature has primarily

focused on what competences and skills are needed for successful SCM (Shub and

Stonebraker, 2009;Fl€

othmann and Hoberg, 2017), rather than exploring how human

resources and HRM practices contribute to SC at different levels.

The KBV theory of organizations has emphasized that certain human resource aspects

may contribute to organizational competitiveness. These aspects include the need for

companies to encourage employees to develop a deep network of relationships (Sohal, 2013);

to cultivate job skills through training (Derwick and Hellstr€

om, 2017;Fl€

othmann et al., 2018b);

and to keep the level of job satisfaction of their talent up (Nyberg, 2010). The role played by

these factors is relatively unexplored in the SCM literature (Swart et al., 2012;Lengnick-Hall

et al., 2013;G

omez-Cede~

no et al., 2015). The existing literature is focused on the characteristics

of SC relationships –rather than those of internal SC employees –to explain companies’

success.

This study focuses on specific human resource constructs (including the professional

networking of the individuals, the level of job competencies and the level of investment in

training) in order to analyze how they influence SC competitiveness. In particular, we aim to

answer the following research question:

How do human resources and HRM contribute to long-term SC growth?

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