Culture’s Consequences for Purchasing: Comparing Purchasing Job Ad Requirements from Different European Countries with Cultural Models

This research analyses the cultural differences in purchasing and supply management (PSM) job requirements from three European countries. The PSM job requirements in job advertisements have been compared with two cultural models: GLOBE and Hofstede. The universalism claim is tested based on comparing requirements in job advertisements for purchasers from Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands. According to Hofstede, these three belong in different cultural clusters but just to one cultural area according to the GLOBE model. Results reveal that about 20 per cent of the observed requirements were shared and about 80 per cent were dissimilar. That cultural differences exist in job requirements has important implications for research and education practice, which may need to overcome this neglect to take cultural differences into account to come up with accurate and practically fitting results since the universal purchaser seem not to exist; country-specific cultural circumstances influence PSM job requirements.