Logistics manager skill requirements: Comparing international practices

In this era of globalisation, market forces dictate that contemporary supply chains are demand-driven, time-compressed and volatile. Yet many logistics supply chains span continents. This creates complexity for the people who manage them. Hence logistics operations require managers with a broad range of skills to cope with the challenges these supply chains bring [1]. As such the area of logistics management skills has recently received some attention from the academic community. Here we contribute to this emerging debate, offering a comparison of practices in different contexts. The findings from a survey of 54 Chinese logistics managers are compared and contrasted with four case studies of European logistics managers to identify the skill requirements in each context and offer propositions for further research. The results indicated that although there is some concurrence between supply-side and demand-side logistics requirements, there are also distinctive differences in foci at each end of the supply chain. Our research ultimately has implications for practitioners, educators and trainers.