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This study aims to enhance the understanding of competency requirements of supply chain planners and analysts (SCP&As) and identify different personal preferences of hiring managers toward job candidates’ competency profiles.

A total of 243 supply chain managers with hiring experience participated in an adaptive choice-based conjoint experiment to uncover the relative importance of six competency attributes, namely, analytical and problem-solving ability, interpersonal skills, general management skills, computer/IT skills, supply chain management (SCM) knowledge and industry experience.

SCM knowledge and analytical and problem-solving ability were identified as the most important competencies and were considered three times more important than general management skills. Based on convergent cluster and ensemble analysis, two types of hiring managers were identified. The first group is characterized by a pronounced preference for job candidates with extensive SCM knowledge. In contrast, the second group’s members prefer candidates with a more balanced competency profile.

The authors’ findings help companies to facilitate a better person–job fit, a key determinant of employee performance and job satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the interplay between a firm’s financial situation and its inventory ownership in a single-firm and a two-firm perspective.

The analysis uses different secondary data sources to quantify the effect of both financial constraints and cost of capital on inventory holdings of public US firms. The authors first adopt a single-firm perspective and analyze whether financial constraints and cost of capital do generally affect the amount of inventory held. Next, the authors adopt a two-firm perspective and analyze the inventory ownership in customer-supplier relationships.

Inventory levels are affected by financial constraints and cost of capital. Results indicate that higher costs of capital are weakly associated with lower inventories. However, contrary to the authors’ expectations, firms that are less financially constrained hold less inventories than firms that are more financially constrained. Finally, the authors find that customers hold the larger fraction of supply chain inventory in supplier-customer dyads.

The authors’ results indicate that financial considerations generally play a role in inventory management. However, inventory holdings seem to be influenced only slightly by financing costs and inventory holdings between supplier and customer seem to be less than optimal from a financial perspective. Considering those financial aspects can lead to relevant financial advantages.

In contrast to other recent research, the authors study how the financial situation of a firm affects its inventory levels (not vice versa) and also consider inventories from a two-firm perspective.

Disruptions and shortages of drugs have become severe problems in recent years, which has triggered strong media and public interest in the topic. However, little is known about the factors that can be associated with the increased frequency of shortages. In this paper, the authors analyze the drivers of drug shortages using empirical data for Germany, the fourth largest pharmaceutical market.

The authors use a dataset provided by the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (Bundesinstitut für Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte [BfArM]) with 425 reported shortages for drug substances (DSs) in the 24-month period between May 2017 and April 2019 and enrich the data with information from additional sources. Using logistic and negative binomial regression models, the authors analyze the impact of (1) market characteristics, (2) drug substance characteristics and (3) regulatory characteristics on the likelihood of a shortage.

The authors find that factors like market concentration, patent situation, manufacturing processes or dosage form are significantly associated with the odds of a shortage. The authors discuss the implications of these findings to reduce the frequency and severity of shortages.

The authors contribute to the empirical research on drug shortages by analyzing the impact of market characteristics, DS characteristics and regulatory characteristics on the reported shortages. The authors’ analysis provides a starting point for better prioritizing efforts to strengthen drug supply as it is currently intensely discussed healthcare authorities.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of supply chain management (SCM) competencies by splitting them into individual and organizational components and measuring their impact on SCM performance.

Hypothesized relationships are tested using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping mediation analysis based on a multi-national survey with 273 managers while drawing on the theory of knowledge management and literature streams of individual competencies in the fields of SCM and human resource management (HRM), respectively.

The analysis reveals that individual SCM competencies and organizational SCM knowledge positively influence SCM performance to a similar magnitude. Moreover, organizational learning enhances individual competencies and organizational knowledge significantly and equally while corporate training programs fall surprisingly short of expectations. The disentanglement of SCM competencies renders HRM’s contribution to SCM visible by revealing the impact of HRM and learning practices on competencies, knowledge, and performance.

To validate the findings, future research could apply different research methods such as case studies and focus on more countries to reduce potential methodological and regional biases.

The results suggest that corporate training programs need further development. Organizational learning’s strong direct and indirect effects have two main implications: first, it should serve as motivation for organizations to constantly improve their learning capabilities. Second, these only tap its true potential for enhancing SCM performance if they first elevate individual competencies and organizational knowledge.

This is the first paper to distinguish between individual competencies and organizational knowledge on finely nuanced levels. While the organizational knowledge level effect on performance has been studied before, this paper extends this effect to also hold true for the individual level.

The purpose of this paper is to derive monetary benchmarks and managerial implications for omni-channel retailers’ B2C e-fulfillment strategies by investigating the trade-offs between lead time, delivery convenience and total price including shipment in the context of online electronics retailing.

Based on a choice-based conjoint analysis among 550 US online shoppers, the monetary values of lead time and convenience were calculated in a log-log regression model. In addition, latent class segmentation was applied to identify consumer segments according to their differing e-fulfillment preferences.

From a consumer perspective, the analysis suggests that price is the most important criteria in omni-channel retailer selection, followed by lead time and convenience. The value of time is, on average, $3.61 per day. Regarding convenience, the results indicate that delivery to the home is highly preferred over pick-up options. The value of the consumer’s travel time was estimated at $10.62 per hour. The latent class segmentation identified four segment groups with different preferences.

To validate the findings, future research could analyze real data from omni-channel retailers’ customers’ buying behavior. It should also be interesting to extend the research to other price ranges, market segments and e-fulfillment factors, such as return options, shop ratings and membership programs aiming for further generalization.

The findings guide omni-channel retailers to focus on efficient B2C e-fulfillment strategies. Considerable competitive advantages may be gained by reducing lead times and offering convenient delivery in line with the lead time valuation of the identified customer segment.

This study fills gaps in the academic research of consumer behavior in retailer selection, which has primarily concentrated on the choice between “brick-and-mortar” and online sales channels. It paves the way for a more service-oriented perspective in omni-channel retailing research.

The purpose of this study is use a bibliometric analysis to explore the relational nature of knowledge creation in WFM in operations. Companies live under constant pressure to find the best ways to plan their workforce, and the workforce emangement (WFM) is one of the biggest challenges faced by managers. Relevant research on WFM in operations has been published in a several range of journals that vary in their scope and readership, and thus the academic contribution to the topic remains largely fragmented.

To address this gap, this review aims to map research on WFM in operations to understand where it comes from and where it is going and, therefore, provides opportunities for future work. This study combined two bibliometric approaches with manual document coding to examine the literature corpus of WFM in operations to draw a holistic picture of its different aspects.

Content and thematic analysis of the seminal studies resulted in the extraction of three key research themes: workforce cross-training, planning workforce mixed methods and individual workforce characteristics. The findings of this study further highlight the gaps in the WFM in operations literature and raise some research questions that warrant further academic investigation in the future.

Likewise, this study has important implications for practitioners who are likely to benefit from a holistic understanding of the different aspects of WFM in operations.