BOOK REVIEW

KIM SUNDTOFT HALD

John Gattorna and Friends (2009). Dynamic Supply Chain Alignment: A New
Business Model for Peak Performance in Enterprise Supply Chains Across All
Geographies. Farnham, U.K.: Gower Publishing Limited. 420 pages.

upply chain management originated subjects covered in his books are of a broad

S in the early 1980s (Oliver & Webber,

1982). Since then, not much has
been said about how human re-
sources and human resource man-
agement professionals engage in activities in
the supply chain. Even today, we know little
about how human resources behave and how
they influence the efficient and effective
transformation and flow of goods from origi-
nal source until the products and services
reach end customers. This book is a notable
exception. Together with previous publica-
tions (Gattorna, 1998, 2003, 2006) the author
addresses a subject of high relevance and im-
portance to today’s management of complex
enterprise supply chains.
A notion shared across these publications
is strategic or dynamic supply chain align-
ment. Dynamic supply chain alignment is a
framework that integrates formulating strat-
egy with customer buying behavior and the
core capabilities inside the firm (Gattorna,
1998, 2006). It seeks to improve alignment
between end-customer markets, strategy,
culture, and leadership, on the premise that
more alignment produces better bottom-line
performance.
When I was asked to write a review of
Dynamic Supply Chain Alignment, I consid-
ered how to proceed. Gattorna’s work on his
dynamic supply chain alignment model is
comprehensive. The framework itself and the
nature covering many aspects of strategic
supply chain design. Although this material
in general is well written and of interest to
practitioners and students focusing on sup-
ply chain management, most of these sub-
jects draw no direct link between human
resource management (HRM) and supply
chain management (SCM). This review will
therefore focus on the chapter titled “People
Powering Enterprise Supply Chains.” When
a reference to the author’s other publications
can inform this review, I will include it in my
discussion.
In the noted chapter, the author argues
that we should put customers’ needs and
wants first in whatever the supply chain
does. According to the author, the problem is
that enterprises today have forgotten the real
“game”: that the “only focus that is impor-
tant” is the customer. Instead they have be-
come smitten with a technology focus rather
than a customer focus. “The real villains are
marketing and sales personnel who are not
doing enough to translate their sometimes
intimate knowledge through to other parts of
the enterprise” (p. 46). The author continues,
“I see very few enterprises in my travels that
genuinely understand and have an in-depth
knowledge of their customers” (p. 46). Talk-
ing about customer focus as a prerequisite for
SCM is certainly nothing new (Mentzer et al.,
2001). This is so important to the philosophy

Human Resource Management, September–October 2010, Vol. 49, No. 5, Pp. 969–973
© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).
DOI: 10.1002/hrm.20383
970 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2010
of SCM, however, that we might argue that
such a focus is foundational.
Consistent with the theme, the author
advances the construct of “alignment” be-
tween generic supply chain design and end
customers’ needs and wants. “Once you pin
down the structure of your marketplace, it
is possible to develop a corresponding range
of responses that align with the different
customer buying behaviours you have iden-
tified” (p. 47). It is about designing service
packages or “value propositions” that are
aligned with or that will fit the individual
customers’ needs at that particular place and
time. Alignment, then, in the vocabulary of
the author, appears to be a constant striv-
ing for fit among customer desires, system
outcomes, and system capabilities. “The dy-
namic alignment concept requires that four
levels of human endeavour be aligned—mar-
ketplace, response(s) to customer demands,
internal cultural capabilities, and leadership
style—all held together primarily with lead-
ership, organizational structures, processes
and technology” (p. 47).
Such a concept builds on a contingency
paradigm where it is assumed that the opti-
mal system configuration (i.e., the one lead-
ing to the highest performance) will vary
over time and depends on a range of factors
internally in the system and externally in
the system environment (Luthans & Stew-
art, 1977). In this case, the system that has
to find its optimal configuration is the enter-
prise supply chain; the factors internal to it
are cultural capabilities and leadership style,
and the factor externally in the environment
is end customer marketplace behavior.
The ranges of responses to customer de-
mands the author proposes are based on the
author’s own empirical experience and clus-
tered in four generic types of supply chains:
(1) continuous replenishment supply chains,
(2) lean supply chains, (3) agile supply
chains, and (4) fully flexible supply chains.
The idea of aligning supply system capabili-
ties with intended system outcomes to serve
a particular market segment is well inte-
grated with research on lean/agile or le-agile
supply chains as well as how such different
supply chain process configurations should
be matched with product, service, or market
characteristics (Christopher & Towill, 2002).
Fisher (1997), for instance, in his seminal
publication “What Is the Right Supply Chain
for Your Product?” argued that supply chains
serving end-customer markets demanding
innovative products should be designed as
agile supply chains, whereas supply chains
serving end-customer markets demanding
few new innovations should be designed as
efficient supply chains. Thus, the proposi-
tion Gattorna poses on aligning supply chain
systems with end-customer market demands
or behaviors is well integrated with previous
and current research and thinking on supply
chain design.
Of more interest to this special issue is
the author’s proposition that customer buy-
ing behavior should be aligned not only with
processes and technology, but also with sup-
ply chain sub-culture and leadership style.
It is interesting that the author proposes to
align supply chain system design and end-
customer markets on more dimensions than
what has been proposed in previous litera-
ture on supply chain design. In the contin-
gency paradigm, it seems valuable to make
the supply chain system representation more
detailed and include in its design considera-
tions on team and job structures, human re-
source capabilities, human resource behavio-
ral design mechanisms, and communication
forms and modes.
The author proposes that supply chain
sub-culture is formed by a list of “cultural
capabilities,” but both “sub-culture” and
“cultural capabilities” remain unexplained
and no argument why and how one leads to
the other is provided. As a consequence, we
should ask to what extent the components in
the list of cultural capabilities (organization-
al design, process, IT, KPIs, incentives, job de-
sign, internal communication, training and
development, and recruitment) are culture
enforcing mechanisms. To what extent do
they lead to “the collective programming of
the mind, which distinguishes the members
of one group from that of another” (Hofst-
ede, 1980)? How do they lead to the pres-
ence of shared values, beliefs, assumptions,
and patterns of behavior (cf. Schein, 1992) in
Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

the four generic supply chains proposed by
the author?
Four generic sub-cultures are proposed;
each one should, according to the author,
uniquely match one of the generic sup-
ply chains. In a continuous replenishment
supply chain focusing on relationship de-
velopment with key customers, a “group
sub-culture” should be constructed. In a lean
supply chain focusing on high volume, low
variety, and low cost supply, “a hierarchical
sub-culture” should be enforced. Finally, an
agile supply chain focusing on responsiveness
and a fully flexible supply chain focusing on
hedging and deploying resources should be
matched with a “rational sub-culture” and
“an entrepreneurial sub-culture,” respective-
ly. No definitions of these arguably differ-
ent sub-cultures and no arguments why they
should be aligned and designed as proposed
are provided, however. As a consequence,
the reader stands back with a range of ques-
tions. What is meant by these different sub-
cultures? Why should they be aligned and
designed as proposed? Why should design of
incentives in an agile supply chain be guided
by “achieve targets; cash and in-kind bonus-
es” (p. 50)? Why should training and devel-
opment in a lean supply chain be made with
an “emphasis on analysis and measurement”
(p. 49), and what does such an emphasis
exactly mean?
Both deficiencies are to some extent
avoided in a previous publication (Gattorna,
2006). What remains, however, is an impres-
sion of a well-thought conceptual idea, but
no real evidence of how and if sub-culture
can be constructed, shaped, or mingled in
the manner and with the mechanisms the
author proposes.
An example of a mechanism presum-
ably able to shape supply chain sub-cultures
is the use of key performance indicators or
performance measurement as introduced in
chapter 14. The overall argument presented
in this chapter is that “performance measure-
ment ‘done right’ will also be a major facili-
tator and shaper of culture and subcultures
within the organization” (p. 207). Perform-
ance measurement is even elevated to “the
primary tool at management’s disposal for
Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm
BOOK REVIEW 971
directing the behaviors within the organiza-
tion” (p. 208). Although this chapter is well
written and will inspire practitioners on how
to proceed with performance measurement
in their own organizations, from an academ-
ic point of view it is uncritical. The author
seems to assume that if measures that fit the
focus of the organization or supply chain
are selected, then more or less automatically
the desired sub-culture will emerge. Such a
straightforward argument is much too hasty
(Bititci, Mendibil, Nudurupati, Garengo, &
Turner, 2006). Does it in fact require a cer-
tain organizational culture for performance
measurement to work as intended in the first
place (Bourne, Neely, Platts, & Mills, 2002;
Franco & Bourne, 2003)?
A constant theme throughout the chap-
ter under consideration, but most forcefully
so in the beginning, is the criticism of HRM
professionals. “The number of HRM profes-
sionals is increasing, but their impact is get-
ting less” (p. 45). The argument appears to
be that HRM professionals are supposed to
advise and assist top management to shape
the people power of the enterprise and not
only preoccupy themselves with administra-
tive, reactive, and routine tasks such as per-
sonnel administration, recruitment, wages
and awards payments, health and safety, and
pensions (p. 45). Instead, HRM professionals
should aim to understand and address the
interface between strategies or enterprise in-
tensions and the internal cultural capabilities
of the enterprise. The author continues that
this interface reveals the reasons why most
plans are never delivered and supply chains
underperform.
It makes sense to ask HRM professionals
to adopt a more proactive role in shaping cor-
porate culture and overcoming supply chain
implementation barriers (Gowen & Tallon,
2002). Such a recommendation is further in
line with the symbiotic relationship between
a firm’s culture and its HRM policies discussed
by other scholars within the domain of SCM
(McAfee, Glassman, & Honeycutt, 2002)
and HRM (Ogbonna & Whipp, 1999; Ulrich,
1984). McAfee et al. (2002), for instance,
point toward four human resource policy
areas—staffing, training, compensation, and
972 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2010
evaluation of employees—and claim their
execution has significant effects on organiza-
tional culture.
But is it really so bad or negative as Gat-
torna leads us to believe? Is the involve-
ment of HRM professionals in cultural and
human resource design issues totally absent
in all organizations? We do not know since
arguments are based on the author’s travels
around the world and his personal engage-
ment with major corporations.
Finally, we should ask, Why is this prob-
lem of special interest to supply chain man-
agement? Gattorna talks about organization-
al, not supply chain, inefficiencies, strategies,
and plans, but isn’t this a chapter dedicated to
supply chain practices? Where are the unique
supply chain issues, the issues cutting across
multiple companies in a chain or a network?
Organizational culture must be shaped ac-
cording to end-customer market buying pat-
terns (p. 47). But why are cultural implica-
tions for suppliers not discussed? Adopting
a holistic supply chain management view,
all participating actors in the chain should
shape their internal culture and leadership
style to fit end-customer buying behavior.
In summary, this book is a well-written
collection of interesting and topical chapters.
The chapters are bound by a common refer-
ence to supply chain management and pack-
aged nicely into the dynamic supply chain
alignment framework developed by Gattorna
in previous publications (1998, 2003, 2006).
From this perspective, I would recommend
that practitioners who have an interest in one
or more of the topics buy and read this work as
a sort of inspiration for their own practices.
Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and
especially the chapter on people powering
supply chains. Yet important discussions of
culture and leadership are left out of this chap-
ter; therefore, it is best read together with the
author’s other publications. The treatment
of “sub-cultures” and “cultural capability”
and the severe critique of HRM professionals
raise some questions. Why limit the frame-
work to a focus on how internal company
sub-cultures can be shaped, when the book
deals with supply chains? Can, in fact, sub-
cultures be shaped with the mechanisms and
cultural capabilities suggested in the book?
Is the involvement of HRM professionals in
cultural and human resource design issues
totally absent in all organizations, and if so
what are the consequences? Is a contingency
approach, as suggested in the book, the best
approach for us to apply when we study HRM
practices in the supply chain? This aside, we
should recognize Gattorna as one of the few
early contributors adding to an emerging dis-
cussion on synergies and dynamics between
HRM and SCM practices.
Kim Sundtoft Hald (Ph.D.) is an assistant profes-
sor in the Department of Operations Management
at Copenhagen Business School. His research
interests focus on supply chain management,
performance management, and social behaviors
in inter-organizational space. His work has ap-
peared in journals such as Industrial Marketing
Management and Management Accounting
Research. Recently, he authored two chapters in
the book Leading in the Top Team: The CXO
Challenge, focusing on leadership roles and lead-
ership challenges within supply chains.
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