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Article Excerpt
We analyzed the text of 704 online advertisements of supply chain management jobs for MBA graduates. The content analysis of these job advertisements provided us with a list of supply chain topics, such as inventory management and supply management, and general skills, such as communication and leadership; it also showed the proportion of advertisements requesting these skills. We measured the relative coverage of the same supply chain topics in MBA-level supply chain electives and operations management core courses in 21 of the top 50 business schools in the United States by analyzing the course descriptions and the cases used in these courses. This enabled us to compare the relative importance of supply chain topics to employers on the "demand" side with the relative importance of supply chain electives in MBA curricula on the "supply" side in these schools. Our analysis indicated that the supply usually matches demand; however, there may be an undersupply of practice- or process-oriented topics, such as forecasting, procurement, supplier and vendor management, and contracts and negotiation. In addition, there may be an oversupply of conceptual and strategy-oriented topics, such as product design, supply chain design, and emerging information technology and management information.
Key words: personnel; data analysis; inventory/production; education systems: operations; forecasting; manpower planning; professional.
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We analyzed the text of 704 MBA-level supply chain job advertisements (ads) to determine the skills that employers of MBA graduates want (from these graduates) in terms of both knowledge of specific supply chain topics and broad skills. Using statistical content analysis on the counts of relevant words and phrases that were present in these ads, we established the proportion of job ads requiring various supply chain topics (Johnson and Pyke 2000) and various skills (Sodhi and Son 2008).
Our results indicated that these employers demand knowledge of the following in decreasing order: sourcing and supplier management, inventory and forecasting, information and electronic mediated environments, marketing and channel restructuring, transportation and logistics, metrics and performance, and service and after-sales support. Likewise, in decreasing order, they also require communication, leadership, project management, and team-related and general analytical skills.
By analyzing online course descriptions and case study descriptions, we also explored the extent to which 21 business schools listed in the top 50 MBA programs in the United States (Appendix 5) cover these topics in their supply chain electives and operations management core courses. Our exploratory comparison of the proportion of job ads requiring each supply chain topic (demand) to the proportional coverage of these topics in these schools' elective courses (supply) indicated that there may be an undersupply of practice- or process-oriented topics, such as forecasting, procurement, supplier and vendor management, and contracts and negotiation. In addition, there may be an oversupply of conceptual and strategy-oriented topics, such as product design, supply chain design, and emerging information technology (IT) and management information. We did not investigate the reasons for oversupply or undersupply or whether they are inevitable or undesirable; at best, these results are indicative of the supply and demand for supply chain skills.
Our contribution is twofold. First, our work provides an empirical approach to investigating the knowledge areas and skills that employers require. This approach complements information gathered from employer-educator and alumni-educator forums. The results contribute to a growing list of empirical studies that explore the skill sets for supply chain management and logistics professionals (Murphy and Poist 1994, Giunipero 2000, Gammelgaard and Larson 2001, Handfield 2004, Myers et al. 2004, Mangan and Christopher 2005). The identified skills vary from sector-specific skills, such as warehousing, to general skills, such as communication. While these studies used focus groups or questionnaires, we took the empirical approach of analyzing job ads for supply chain topics and broad skills to complement these studies. Second, we extend and update the work of Johnson and Pyke (2000) in identifying how MBA programs are responding to industry needs. Our results might also be useful to educators and program directors of MBA and other programs who are preparing their students for the job market.
However, our work has limitations. Relative to jobs, our results are broadly indicative rather than definitive because our jobs analysis does not include on-campus recruiting or job ads posted on company websites or in printed media. Relative to MBA courses, the online course descriptions we used are typically quite short and general. In addition, discrepancies often exist between the course description and the material that is actually taught because the author of the online course description is frequently not the instructor. A case description may cover many topics; however, we cannot know which aspect of each individual case the instructor will choose to emphasize or ignore in a lecture. Still, our analyses of course descriptions and cases produced relatively consistent results. Finally, our study of MBA courses is limited to supply chain electives and core operations management courses at only 21 of the top 50 universities; it does not include core marketing or IT-related courses that, at these or at other schools, might also cover supply chain related topics.
Methodology
We acquired demand-side data by collecting MBA-level supply chain ads from Internet job sites; we acquired supply-side data by collecting and analyzing online descriptions of MBA courses and descriptions of cases used in supply chain electives and core operations management courses. We then used content analysis to understand the demand side in terms of the proportion of job ads requiring specific skills. We did the same to understand the supply side in terms of the proportion of elective courses or cases providing these skills.
Data Collection of Job Ads
We obtained job ads for MBA graduates from www. monster.com and www.hotjobs.com. These include ads in which an MBA preference is stated but an MBA degree is not required. We focused on the US job market to ensure consistency of use of words and phrases and to allow comparison with the supply from US business schools. We searched for supply chain management (SCM) and MBA ads posted between the beginning of April 2006 and the end of August 2006 by using the string (SCM and MBA) or ("supply chain" and MBA). We stored these posted ads in a database and deleted duplicate or irrelevant entries to...
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