The supply chain manager as political-entrepreneur?

a r t i c l e i n f o This paper explores the emerging role of the supply chain manager (scm) towards strategic supply chain relationship manager (scrm), where the emphasis moves from managing processes to managing relationships with suppliers. We posit that changes in role require changes in both management approaches and the skill requirement of role players. We review the literature related to both the supply chain manager and the key account manager because of the apparent similarity in the emerging boundary spanning nature of their roles and borrow the concept of the political-entrepreneur from the key account management literature and use this model to explore the emerging role of the scrm within the context of three case studies drawn from the aerospace industry. Our findings support the idea that the scm role is increasingly strategic but in addition we found that the role has moved from being that of boundary connector, to boundary spanner, where less formal mechanisms are employed to resolve problems or create value, using both political and to a lesser degree entrepreneurial skills. We believe that valuable insights are provided into the evolving role of scrms by the study with implications both for managers of scm programmes and for HR departments in terms of recruitment and development of supply chain relationship managers. This paper explores the emerging role of the supply chain manager (scm) towards strategic supply chain relationship manager (scrm), under the stimulus of changes in economic organization, where the emphasis moves from managing processes to managing relationships with suppliers. We posit that changes in role require changes in both management approaches and the skill requirement of role players, as such we are concerned with exploring the role of the scrm in order to deepen our understanding of how they manage networks informally in order to transcend the restrictions of formal contracts, processes, structures and relationships in the resolution of contractual and operational problems and in the realization of potential synergistic value. We begin our literature review by briefly outlining the changes in the organization of economic activity, the way in which companies configure to create value, that have necessitated changes in the way people manage. Two groups of managers whose emerging roles reflect these changes are supply chain managers (scms) and key account managers (kams). The apparent similarities between these roles provide opportunities for borrowing from the literature of each …