Background: The skills and competencies of the professionals in the supply chain sector have been highlighted since the 1960s as an area of academic interest. In modern days there are reports and articles highlighting a “skills-gap” between employers’ requirements and business graduates. In the meanwhile youth unemployment is a contemporary, acknowledged European problem and therefore there shouldn’t be a gap between supply and demand of young talents. Therefore it raises questions as to why employers report lack of young talents and at the same time youth unemployment is on the rise. Purpose: The present thesis will answer part of the abovementioned questions. More specifically it will measure the part of employers’ expectations. For that reason it will investigate in a transparent and systematic way, the requirements that employers state they expect from business graduates within the supply chain function through published job advertisements. Method: Empirical data consist of 60 publically available job advertisements aiming at supply chain graduates. The collected empirical data were analysed by the means of quantitative content analysis and then cluster analysis.Results and conclusion: The contemporary supply chain graduate is expected to demonstrate an all-around personality. The most frequently requested skills were teamwork, problem-solving ability, effective communication, English, and having a responsible, mature and professional attitude. Suggestions for future research: A longitudinal study in a broader linguistic context would raise awareness on emerging skills and track changes over time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-37173 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Grigoriadis, Nikolaos |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för ekonomistyrning och logistik (ELO) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.1388 seconds