Digitalization and its Impact on the Future Role of SCM Executives in Talent Management – An International Cross‐Industry Delphi Study

• Author: Evi Hartmann,Heiko A. von der Gracht,Sabrina Lechler,Manuel Wehrle
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jbl.12259
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Published date: 01 December 2020

Digitalization and its Impact on the Future Role of SCM Executives

in Talent Management –An International Cross-Industry Delphi

Study

Manuel Wehrle

1

, Sabrina Lechler

1

, Heiko A. von der Gracht

2

, and Evi Hartmann

1

1

Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg

2

Steinbeis University School of International Business and EntrepreneurshipOpen access funding enabled and organized by Projekt

DEAL.

In the f‌ield of supply chain management (SCM), attracting and developing appropriate talent is critical for achieving most SCM goals, as

extensive skills are necessary to do the job properly. In order to ensure that future-proof talent can continue to emerge in this discipline, the

role of SCM executives is extremely important. Although many studies have been conducted in the f‌ield of talent management (TM), the future

role of SCM executives has been mostly neglected in research. The present empirical study addresses this gap, taking into consideration the

fourth industrial revolution, as innovation in technology continues to drive signif‌icant changes in the SCM f‌ield. Aiming to investigate the

extent to which increasing digitalization is inf‌luencing the future role of SCM executives, a Delphi study with 103 experts from industry, aca-

demics, and politics/associations was carried out. In order to identify meaningful topic clusters from the data, fuzzy c-means clustering was

used. From an actor-network theory perspective, our results show that in some areas of TM, digitalization is leading to a strong fusion of SCM

executives and digital technologies, as well as to a clear division of roles, in which either SCM leaders or technology will dominate in the

future.

Keywords: talent management; digitalization; Delphi method; supply chain

INTRODUCTION

With the introduction of the term "the war for talents" by some

McKinsey consultants in the late-1990s (Collings and Mellahi

2009), the concept of talent management (TM) has become one

of the most widespread topics in the discipline of human

resource (HR) management for both practitioners and academics

(Collings and Mellahi 2009; Collings et al. 2011; Collings 2014;

Al Ariss et al. 2014). In recent years, many research contribu-

tions have been made in the f‌ield of TM, as it has been seen as

an increasingly important f‌ield for organizations across the world

(Iles et al. 2010; Pandita and Ray 2018; Gallardo-Gallardo et al.

2013). The reason for this growing awareness is the continued

shortage of talent, which is inf‌luenced by various trends, includ-

ing changes in demographics, globalization, rising mobility

(Thunnissen et al. 2013; Beechler and Woodward, 2009), and

major career shifts (Goffnett et al. 2012). However, the inf‌luenc-

ing factors for a lack of talent are not only external in nature.

Indeed, executives must also play their part (Joyce and Slocum

2012) in one of the most important strategic issues of the

twenty-f‌irst century (Dries 2013; Collings and Mellahi 2009;

Mellahi and Collings 2010). The debate surrounding TM has

attracted the attention of senior management to a much stronger

extent than in the past (Collings 2014). However, executives rec-

ognize the signif‌icance of TM (Collings 2014), but often do not

assign talent the necessary priority on their to-do list (Joyce and

Slocum 2012; Schuler et al. 2011; Tafti et al. 2017) and fre-

quently do not manage it in an effective way (Collings 2014;

Collings et al. 2011). This is by no means surprising given that

the role of executives in TM remains a largely unexplored

research area.

In the f‌ield of supply chain management (SCM), attracting and

developing suitable talent are critical for achieving most SCM

goals as extensive skills are necessary to do the job properly

(van Hoek et al. 2002). In order to ensure that “future-proof”tal-

ent can continue to emerge in this discipline, it is important to

examine the research gap of the "future role" of SCM executives

in TM. To this end, it is essential to consider the fourth indus-

trial revolution, as innovation in technology continues to drive

signif‌icant changes in the SCM f‌ield (White et al. 2008; Goldsby

and Zinn 2016; Min et al. 2019; Waller and Fawcett 2013).

Industry 4.0 solutions are expected to signif‌icantly impact all

facets of the organization and operation of a f‌irm’s supply chain

(Sanders et al. 2019; Klumpp and Zijm 2019). Digital technolo-

gies such as additive manufacturing, with its ability to complete

production in one step, can result in increasingly decentralized

production (Kurpjuweit et al. 2019), revolutionized inventory and

warehouse management strategies (Goldsby and Zinn 2016),

fewer logistical requirements, and reduced need for different ven-

dor levels as well as the required amount of suppliers (Ivanov

et al. 2018). Furthermore, improvements in IT technology such

as blockchain technology, big data, or artif‌icial intelligence (AI)

applications including the Internet of Things have already auto-

mated certain activities in SCM (Dash et al. 2019; Klumpp and

Zijm 2019; Min et al. 2019) and have given executives the

Corresponding author:

Evi Hartmann, Chair of Supply Chain Management, Friedrich-

Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Lange Gasse 20, 90403

Nuremberg, Germany; E-mail: evi.hartmann@fau.de

Journal of Business Logistics, 2021, 41(4): 356–383 doi: 10.1111/jbl.12259

© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Business Logistics published by Wiley Periodicals LLC

on behalf of Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and

distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modif‌ications or adaptations are made.

opportunity to focus on strategic considerations (Sanders and

Premus 2002). This trend is conceivable in a similar form in the

area of SC talent management. We assume that only by taking

this central aspect into account it will be possible to develop a

sustainable understanding of the SCM executive role. This work

aims to investigate the extent to which increasing digitalization is

inf‌luencing the future role of SCM executives in TM and giving

decision makers’orientation on how to prepare SCM leaders for

the future. Following Fl€

othmann and Hoberg (2017), in this

study, we focus particularly on the "executive" level, considering

SCM managers with a team responsibility. In particular, we

focus on two research questions in this study:

RQ1: How will digitalization inf‌luence the role of supply

chain executives in talent management?

RQ2: Which meaningful topic clusters can be derived to

provide guidance for decision makers in developing robust

and promising strategies to prepare supply chain execu-

tives for the future?

The Delphi methodology has proven its worth in the assess-

ment and evaluation of future events, and it has been used suc-

cessfully in various disciplines, such as the social sciences

(Strauss and Zeigler 1975; Guglyuvatyy and Stoianoff 2015;

Mukherjee et al. 2015; Ocampo et al. 2018), business (Huber

and Delbecq 1972; Czinkota and Ronkainen 1997; Hsiao 2006),

education (de Villiers et al. 2005; Calabor et al. 2019), informa-

tion systems (Brancheau et al. 1996; Schmidt et al. 2001; Turoff

2002; Akkermans et al. 2003; Rowe and Wright 2011), as well

as logistics and SCM (Ecken and Pibernik 2015; Hirschinger

et al. 2015; Richardson et al. 2016). For example, in the f‌ield of

logistics and SCM, Richardson et al. (2016) recently published

an original research article in the Journal of Business Logistics

on factors inf‌luencing the prepositioning of global inventory.

This piece held strong relevance to the authors when designing

the study at hand. Richardson et al. (2016) conducted a Delphi

survey among various experts. Similarly, we identif‌ied subject

matter experts in SCM and TM and invited them to take part in

our Delphi panel. Finally, 103 experts shared their assessments

in the study.

Our manuscript is structured as follows. First, relevant litera-

ture regarding TM is presented, and the actor-network theory is

described. Next, a detailed description of the research methodol-

ogy is provided. Subsequently, the quantitative and qualitative

results of the real-time Delphi study are discussed, and potential

future topic clusters of the role of SCM executives in TM are

presented. Finally, the paper closes with a summarizing conclu-

sion and identif‌ies implications, limitations, and potential ave-

nues of future research.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORY

Talent management in the area of HR and SCM

Since the concept of TM emerged in the 1990s (Collings 2014),

one of the most foremost topics of research has been the debate

on def‌initions (Collings 2014; Thunnissen et al. 2013; Cappelli

and Keller 2014). An analysis of TM def‌initions developed over

the years revealed that the global view of TM is now one of the

most frequently used perspectives in the literature (Gallardo-Gal-

lardo and Thunnissen 2016). The driving forces behind this

approach includes changes in global demographics leading to tal-

ent supply problems (McDonnell et al. 2017) and the increasing

internationalization of companies over time (Al Ariss et al.

2014). In this context, Mellahi and Collings (2010) def‌ine global

TM as “the systematic identif‌ication of key positions which dif-

ferentially contribute to the organization’s sustainable competi-

tive advantage on a global scale, the development of a talent

pool of high potential and high performing incumbents to f‌ill

these roles which ref‌lect the global scope of the multinational

enterprise (MNE), and the development of a differentiated human

resource architecture to facilitate f‌illing these positions with the

best available incumbent and to ensure their continued commit-

ment to the organization”(Mellahi and Collings 2010, p. 143).

However, Al Ariss et al. (2014) state that many corporations fail

to f‌ill strategically critical positions due to an inadequate supply

of talents (Ready and Conger 2007; Al Ariss et al. 2014). Sev-

eral researchers highlight diff‌iculties such as f‌illing vacancies due

to issues such as the lack of talent possessing the necessary skills

(Makarius and Srinivasan 2017; Whysall et al. 2019) or insuff‌i-

cient capabilities of talent to keep pace with technological

change (Tatoglu et al. 2016). According to Al Ariss et al.

(2014), others argue that companies fail to seize the possibility

for strategic success by underestimating the relevance of TM

(Joyce and Slocum 2012; Al Ariss et al. 2014). In this regard, Al

Ariss et al. (2014) emphasize the insights of Joyce and Slocum

(2012) on the crucial role that executives play in building and

sustaining talent in order to realize maximum performance (Joyce

and Slocum 2012; Al Ariss et al. 2014).

While digitalization challenges existing SCM principles (San-

ders et al. 2019; Klumpp and Zijm 2019), such as the necessity

for human involvement as well as interpersonal conf‌idence in

any buyer and supplier interaction (Schmidt and Wagner 2019),

researchers also assume that several trends will impact the future

development of TM (Wiblen et al. 2012; Morgan 2014; Barley

et al. 2017; Collings and Isichei 2018). Following Collings and

Isichei (2018), these trends include (1) collaboration platforms

allowing talent to connect at anytime, anywhere (Collings and

Isichei 2018); (2) big-data analytics improving talent identif‌ica-

tion (Wiblen et al. 2012) and decision making (Morgan 2014)

and (3) the growing mobility of work facilitating more project-

based work (Barley et al. 2017). In this context, Whysall et al.

(2019) examine the transformational changes of digitalization

and their impact on TM. They state that in the context of digital-

ization, it is no longer suff‌icient to use classical TM methods

such as poaching ready-made talent from other companies, as the

skills for taking on future roles are not yet suff‌iciently available

in the talent education system (Amankwah-Amoah et al. 2017;

Whysall et al. 2019). Consequently, the authors claim that there

is a need for more dynamic and evolutionary procedures to

address talent development (Whysall et al. 2019).

However, TM is omnipresent not only in the discipline of

HR research, but also in specialist research f‌ields such as SCM.

The importance of people in SCM and the criticality in the

development of SCM talent is highlighted in various research

The Future Role of SCM Executives in TM 357