Purchasing and supply management skills and personality traits across roles: a job advertisements perspective

Abstract

This paper contributes to a growing trajectory of research on purchasing and supply management skills and requirements and uses job advertisements as a novel source of data and research perspective. Our findings broadly corroborate the extant literature in showing which skills are required across different hierarchical organisational levels. Our analysis also identified the key and hitherto underexplored personality traits required by PSM professionals. At a holistic level, the findings show that employers have a clear and consistent view of PSM personality: being conscientious and able to work independently, willing to travel, flexible, proactive and stress-resistant. However, traits generally associated with innovativeness, such as intellectual curiosity, boundary spanning, sociability or teamwork and cooperation, were not found in the data. Although advertisements for junior buyers featured less combined skills, a higher number of advertisements than those for more senior jobs featured at least one personality trait and they were more heavily emphasised.