To Örebro University

This paper explores the use of gendered language in purchasing and supply management job advertisements across three English-speaking countries. We use secondary data from a global job advertisement website to analyse the extent to which gendered language is used. We explore if agentic, traditional masculine wording, or communal, traditional feminine wording, is used at different hierarchical levels of advertising for purchasing and supply management jobs. Our findings show that there is no significant evidence of a glass-ceiling effect. However, there may be evidence of a sticky-floor effect due to the communal language used in the assistant buyer and buyer job advertisements, which decreases significantly at higher levels. Agentic language use remained constant across the levels. We also found that certain agentic words are more often featured in senior-level advertisements.

There is a growing call for more network-level research on sustainability within marketing that avoids a narrow interorganisational focus. Business networks have a crucial role to play in reorganising and innovating to achieve sustainability and are met with significant challenges because of the scale and scope of changes necessary. We propose connectedness as central to understanding networked, interorganisational responses to the sustainability shift. We contribute by highlighting how systemic interdependence across organisations, which is developed through business network connectedness, is core to achieving sustainable networks and sustainable markets. The text provides an overview of current research on sustainability in business networks before synthesizing six new articles that address multiple sustainability challenges. The editorial concludes with an agenda for further research arranged around four main themes, including network dynamics and measuring and valuing in investigating the transformative change needed by all business sectors.

This study explores the future of Sweden's electric utility network and its transition towards sustainability and resilience by combining traditional scenario analysis with foresighting, an anticipatory, non-predictive approach. The research focuses on potential disruptive innovations and changes within the industry, such as increased electrification, electromobility, and advances in grid infrastructure, using a Delphi study. This approach involves gathering expert opinions from various stakeholders, including industry, academia, and government experts, to anticipate multiple future scenarios and better prepare for potential challenges and opportunities. The interconnected nature of the electric utility network and the relationships between various actors play a critical role in shaping the industry's future. Foresighting allows stakeholders to anticipate and prepare for disruptive changes, such as the increasing role of prosumers, local microgrids, and novel value propositions. By employing the Delphi methodology, the study systematically gathers and synthesizes expert insights, offering a comprehensive understanding of the electric utility network's future development. The findings highlight the importance of improving end-customer relationships and enabling the use of prosumer products and services. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the need to address existing challenges within the Swedish power grid and increase transmission capacity to support the introduction of new technologies and a more efficient and sustainable energy system. By integrating the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) network perspective, the study demonstrates that foresighting is more effective in accounting for exceptional events and non-linear growth patterns in the electric utility market. The results also provide insights into the emergence of new business models and the role of emerging technologies, such as energy storage, in shaping the future of the electric utility network.

Global public procurement spend is significant and although its central goal is essentially the acquisition of goods and services for governments at the best possible value, it must also serve to promote equal treatment of all interest groups in the process. Although a number of different policies and measures have been adopted to increase access for female-led companies to successfully bid for public sector contracts, progress has been slow. This suggests that barriers exist that are preventing the full implementation of gender-responsive procurement and this paper explores the possibility that there is gender-biased language in a range of public sector Invitations to Tender. 

This paper investigates how gendered language is used in purchasing and supply management (PSM) advertisements.  In our initial exploration of this phenomenon, we examined 83 job advertisements and analysed them against gender-based agentic and communal language dictionaries to understand if, where and how gendered language is used in PSM job advertisements. Surprisingly, we did not find national culture differences across three different countries: Austria, Belgium and the UK, however, we did find that agentic language is used most prevalently at the Buyer position and could be causing the glass ceiling effect at this level.