Looking back & looking forward

A sustainable sourcing competence model for purchasing and supply management professionals

In order to implement sustainability standards in practice, capabilities are needed at the organizational level as well as at the individual level. The presented sustainable purchasing and supply management (SPSM) competence model is based on the combination of a systematic literature review (SLR) and a Delphi study. The competence model outlines specific SPSM competences which are divided into functional-oriented, cognition-oriented, social-oriented and meta-oriented competence clusters. We also discuss their applicability during typical purchasing and supply management processes. Each of the 26 competences is presented with a short definition as well as exemplary behaviors. For research on SPSM from an organizational point of view, the analysis of the relevance of competences with regard to purchasing process stages offers a conceptual basis for bringing sustainability into overall PSM models, instead of positioning sustainability as an ‘add-on’ activity, which risks the potential of sustainability issues becoming marginalized. The resulting SPSM competence model can serve as a basis for improving teaching and training in both higher education and professional training contexts. In practice, it can also serve to aid the selection of new employees, evaluate employee performance, create development plans or build HR systems.