DESIGNING “BETTER” GLOBAL PURCHASING AND SUPPLY MANAGEMENT TEACHING PROGRAMMES BY UNDERSTANDING CROSS-CULTURAL CHALLENGES AND DIFFERENCES: THE BI-CONTINENTAL APPROACH EUROPE-ASIA

Purchasing and supply management (PSM) professionals frequently work in a global business context. Understanding cultural differences can help professionals communicate appropriately with people from different cultural backgrounds. The successful use of cross-cultural teams provides different insights into the “inner“ and “outer” world and avoids cultural misunderstandings, allowing organizations to achieve competitive positions in a global setting. The impact of national cultures on the success of operation practices and the firms’ performance in certain countries is significant. Differences in operational decision-making can be explained by differences in cross-cultural issues and how they arise, and national culture is a key factor that influences PSM performance. With the increasing economic globalisation, many Europe-based, multinational companies have integrated themselves into global sourcing, and a majority of them are targeting the Asian market. The PSM functions in European firms have become more global and connected within the Asian market, because these firms have outsourcing to countries like China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Consequently, it is necessary for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to provide a framework for teachers and professors that allows to train and enable their students to respond to future cross-cultural challenges the job market is asking for. However, not all teaching activities of professors at HEIs and outsourcing activities of firms lead to success. This study was conducted to explore the differences in PSM job advertisements published in European countries (Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands) and three regions of Asia, namely, China, Hong Kong and Singapore in order to draw conclusions for job profiles as well as PSM teaching programmes. To achieve this, a bi-continental approach was taken as part of this research to compare online PSM job advertisements from these regions. The European advertisements had already collected as part of earlier research from online job platforms for three European countries with similar GDPs per capita, but with distinctively different cultural profiles: Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. The Asian societies sample is an exact replication of the European set. The advertisements were collected from online job platforms for jobs in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong and Singapore. To distinguish the national and cultural differences, the four cultural dimensions of Hofstede were applied. Authors of the current literature view the results of secondary data analysis, like the requirements mentioned in online job advertisements, as important sources of state-of-the-art and practically available information that provide readers with a good understanding what the employers’ requirements. This research contributes to the literature in that PSM (or SCM – Supply Chain Management) job ads published in these regions will be compared for the first time and described on the basis of their common grounds and cultural and structural differences. The findings may help HEIs to modify their PSM study programs regularly to react to the different requirements for graduates in terms of the demands of the global job market.