In this essay, our analysis takes important insights on diversity and inclusion from the behavioral literature but critically contextualizes them against the reality of humanitarian operations. Humanitarian operations are characterized by system immanent diversity, particularly between local and expatriate aid workers, who not only bring valuable different perspectives to the table but also differ along multiple dimensions of diversity into a so-called diversity faultline. Such a faultline, however, provides fertile ground for continued conflict resulting in relational fractures and, ultimately, inefficient collaboration. While, in theory, inclusion could help overcome the negative effects of faultlines, in practice, the time pressure for humanitarian organizations to quickly respond to disasters makes it effectively impossible to engage in it. Against this background, we argue, humanitarian organizations should take preemptive action before disaster strikes. Specifically, we posit that the pre-disaster phase presents an opportunity to engage in inclusion in order to cultivate relational resilience between local and expatriate aid workers. Such resilience would enable them to not only better weather the inevitable relational fractures during a disaster response (and thus stay more functional throughout), but also quickly realign with each other in the post-disaster phase. We conclude with a set of concrete recommendations for practicing inclusion in the pre-disaster phase.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to draw insights from the rich literature on humanitarian operations efforts to combat human trafficking; second, to inspire humanitarian operations researchers to work more on human anti-trafficking.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper inspired by recent relevant reports, the academic literature and the authors’ years of involvement in both humanitarian operations and anti-trafficking.
Findings
Humanitarian supply chains and human trafficking supply chains very often operate in the same environments and hence face similar challenges. The paper highlights the overlaps between the two domains and demonstrates how two decades of learnings from humanitarian supply chain literature can help improve the understanding of the more recent academic field of human trafficking supply chains significantly.
Research limitations/implications
This study is conceptual and illuminates numerous opportunities for research in anti-trafficking.
Practical implications
By inspiring more research on anti-trafficking, this paper hopes to facilitate enhancements to human trafficking operation to prevent more cases and protect victims.
Social implications
There is an opportunity to increase the effectiveness of anti-trafficking activities, disrupt human trafficking and enlarge the “humanitarian space.”
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to discuss human trafficking operations in relation to humanitarian supply chains.
This paper aims to provide a discussion on the interface and interactions between data, analytical techniques and impactful research in humanitarian health supply chains. New techniques for data capturing, processing and analytics, such as big data, blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, are increasingly put forward as potential “game changers” in the humanitarian field. Yet while they have potential to improve data analytics in the future, larger data sets and quantification per se are no “silver bullet” for complex and wicked problems in humanitarian health settings. Humanitarian health supply chains provide health care and medical aid to the most vulnerable in development and disaster relief settings alike. Unlike commercial supply chains, they often lack resources and long-term collaborations to enable learning from the past and to improve further.
African logistics and supply chain management capabilities are essential to the performance of the continent's commercial and humanitarian supply chains. This study reviewed the challenges for researchers and practitioners in advancing logistics and supply chain performance through developing appropriate capabilities. A literature review and landscape mapping were followed by semi-structured interviews with 45 stakeholders from industry bodies, academia, funding bodies, consultants, specialists, and academics, confirming the capability and opportunity gaps in the current landscape. A meta-framework for sustainable institutional capacity development was constructed based on the empirical data that was gathered, and supply chain capacity development recommendations were proposed.
In 2020, the world started a fight against a pandemic that has severely disrupted commercial and humanitarian supply chains. Humanitarian organizations (HOs), like the World Food Programme (WFP), adjusted their programs in order to manage this pandemic. One such program is cash and voucher assistance (CVA), which is used to bolster beneficiaries' freedom of choice regarding their consumption. In this vein, WFP supports local retailers to provide CVA to beneficiaries who do not have access to a functioning market. However, the operations of these stores can suffer from a very high transmission risk of COVID-19 unless preventive measures are put in place to reduce it. This paper discusses strategies that retailers and HOs can enact to maximize their service and dignity levels while minimizing transmission risk under a CVA program during a pandemic. We argue that HOs providing CVA programs can improve their assistance during a pandemic by implementing strategies that impact the retailing operations of their retailers.
Supply chains are dynamic and complex systems. This holds particularly true for humanitarian supply chains that operate under strong uncertainty. In view of an ever-growing gap of unmet humanitarian needs, it is essential to gain a better understanding of the behavior of humanitarian supply chain systems. Despite a growing academic output in this field, there is a lack of empirical studies that take an integrated view on humanitarian supply chains and support decision makers with fact-based evidence. Based on four extensive case studies and existing literature, we developed a system dynamics model that reflects the operational reality of humanitarian organizations in form of their centralized, hybrid and decentralized settings. The model provides a holistic supply chain view and measures the operational performance with regard to response cost, delivery lead time and impact on the local economy. Furthermore, we studied the impact of preparedness investments to enhance operational performance in the supply chain and deliver more humanitarian assistance with the limited resources available. Finally, we used our model to analyze the impact of major shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic to assess the vulnerability of humanitarian supply chains. The results indicate that operational settings, product and disaster characteristics have a major influence on the supply chain performance both in the noninvestment case as well as in the case where preparedness investments have been made. Specifically, for low-value items, we find that decentralized settings have the lowest supply chain costs while for high-value items the price difference between local and international procurement determines which setting is the most cost-effective one. The preferability of the supply chain setting strongly depends on the indicator chosen. Hence, ultimately, the findings emphasize the need to apply appropriate indicators and identify their trade-offs to comprehensively analyze the performance of humanitarian supply chain settings. The newly introduced Humanitarian Return-on-Investment concept can play an important role in this context.
The present study focuses on the Mediterranean Sea migration crisis and investigates the effectiveness of search and rescue (SAR) operations alongside measures to reduce the number of deaths of migrants at sea. It also describes the stakeholders involved in SAR activities. The paper first analyzes secondary data and the results of 24 in-depth interviews in order to develop an analytical framework, which is then complemented by a system dynamics model to explore the complexity and interactions among stakeholders in SAR operations. The study shows that the death toll at sea can be reduced by enhancing cooperation among stakeholders by providing legal migration pathways under certain conditions and by engaging in more effective migrant detection and interception at sea. Lastly, raising potential migrants’ awareness about the risk of death during the sea crossing should be seen as an additional measure, while SAR activities should be maintained to prevent loss of life at sea.
Disasters mobilize hundreds of humanitarian organizations. Despite the common aim to assist beneficiaries, coordination among humanitarian organizations remains a challenge. This is why the United Nations has formed clusters to facilitate information and resource exchange among humanitarian organizations. Yet, coordination failures in prior disasters raise questions as to the effectiveness of the cluster approach in coordinating relief efforts. To better understand barriers to coordination, we developed a grounded theory and augmented the theory with an agent-based simulation. Our theory discerns a cluster lead’s roles of facilitating coordination but also investing in its own ground operations. We find that specifically serving such a dual role impairs trust and consequent coordination among cluster members. The additional simulation findings generalize the detrimental effect of the cluster lead’s dual role versus a pure facilitator role and specifies it against various boundary conditions.
Many field office leaders contend that authoritarian leadership improves the performance of humanitarian operations. The common narrative is that authoritarian leadership helps aid workers more quickly adapt to changes and thus deliver better job performance (e.g., by improving operations in their field office). However, given that field reports often highlight extant leadership as the source of serious operational failures, could leaders with an authoritarian style be part of the problem? We draw on psychological theorizing on the nature of human motivation to address this question. Specifically, we note that many aid workers primarily join humanitarian operations with the prosocial motive to help beneficiaries. While proactive adaptability is inherent to prosocial motivation, we hypothesize that authoritarian leadership may curtail the relationship by impeding aid workers’ autonomy. We find support for our theorizing in a sample of 299 humanitarian aid workers from the field. Additionally, we conducted 31 expert interviews to contextualize and validate our empirical findings. The paper concludes by discussing the findings’ theoretical and managerial implications for humanitarian operations.
Purpose The research objective is to study the relevance of supply chain management in the humanitarian context, analyze supply chain expenditures and identify major cost-saving potentials and future research directions. Design/methodology/approach Our research design integrates exploratory and inductive research approaches that are based on existing literature, discussions with supply chain leaders and extensive financial data collected through field studies. Findings Supply chain management is increasingly considered as a critical success factor for humanitarian operations and amounts on average to around 75% of the total response cost. Based on our findings, humanitarian supply chains bear tremendous potential for further improvements to provide more assistance with limited resources available. Research limitations/implications In particular, humanitarian supply chains in conflict situations and procurement processes offer potential for impactful and relevant research. Whilst our study focuses on international organizations, future research should give more attention to supply chain cost structures of local actors to reveal further untapped potential. Practical implications Our findings equipped supply chain leaders with fact-based evidence of the value of supply chain management and supported them in strategic meetings with their executive management and donors. Furthermore, we identified major cost-saving potentials. Social implications For researchers (and practitioners), our findings serve as motivation to intensify their efforts in studying and enhancing supply chain management in the humanitarian context. Originality/value This paper fulfils an identified need to study and provide empirical evidence of the value of supply chain management in the humanitarian context.
During emergencies humanitarian supply chains need to respond swiftly, very often without time for good planning. That may end up in excessive waste and emissions. This short-term focus on saving people’s lives during disaster responses may harm communities and the planet in the long-run. Even long-term (development) focus on improving the life conditions of the poor may be either unsustainable due to the lack of community involvement or inequitable due to lack of resources. At the same time, countries closer to fulfilling the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) suffer less from disasters but still struggle with issues such as social equity. There appears to be an important link between humanitarian operations and sustainable development goals. This special issue focuses on this interaction through a rich variety of contributions using different methodologies, data and lenses, while proposing ways to advance the SDGs. The special issue clearly shows the value operations management can bring to short-term and long-term problems society faces.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to show that the current complexity of humanitarian operations has only increased the usefulness of system dynamics (SD) in helping decision-makers better understand the challenges they face.
Design/methodology/approach
A critical analysis to evaluate how SD methodology has been applied to humanitarian operations.
Findings
Today's humanitarian operations are characterized by huge complexity given the increased number of stakeholders, feedback loops, uncertainty, scarce resources and multiple objectives. The authors argue that SD's tools (causal-loop diagram, data layer, simulation model) have the capacity to appropriately capture this complexity, thereby enhancing intuition and understanding.
Originality/value
Researchers and practitioners hesitate to use system dynamics when data is missing. The authors suggest alternatives to deal with this common situation.
The number of people affected by disasters has increased over the past decades, whereas funding has declined. The need for effective humanitarian aid is, therefore, larger than ever. Humanitarian organizations have recognized the critical role of supply chain management in reaching beneficiaries, and they have introduced commercial routines and best practices. Academics realized that humanitarian operations constitute a fruitful new research area and adapted solution techniques developed for commercial operations to disaster situations with mitigated success. Meanwhile, the problems that humanitarian practitioners face quickly evolve. In this paper, we highlight challenges in matching practitioner needs with academic publications and outline the great opportunities for impactful and relevant research.
The purpose of this paper is to review the current application of organization theory (OT) in the humanitarian supply chain (HSC) and identify the future OT-based research opportunities that can advance knowledge of humanitarian operations.
The study uses a systematic literature review methodology to identify the current status and future direction of the OT-based study in HSC literature. The applied theories are those that have been mentioned in at least two research articles in the HSC literature. The proposed theories are either adopted from the top four referred organizational theories in the supply chain literature or those that can explain the issue of information asymmetry in HSC.
The study identifies and describes eight organizational theories and their possible future research questions in HSC. Among these, the first four theories (i.e. resource-based theory, resource dependence theory, social exchange theory and contingency theory) have already been initially applied in the humanitarian field, while the remaining theories (i.e. institutional theory, stakeholder theory, transactional cost theory and information theory) have potential for future application.
Funding for international humanitarian aid falls far behind demand for disaster response, hampering the operations of international humanitarian organizations (IHOs). One remedy to close this gap is to increase the effectiveness of fundraising activities for IHOs. This remedy means spending as little as possible in fundraising activities but, at the same time, still receiving sufficient donations to implement disaster response programs in response to the needs that arise when disasters occur. We contribute to the literature by theoretically developing and estimating a conceptual framework that links donation behavior to the operations that IHOs aim to pursue; the framework incorporates operational costs communicated in appeals, fundraising efforts, and media attention. We argue that effects are not homogenous across disasters but that IHOs can leverage public attention and disaster and appeal characteristics, such as operational costs, to increase donations. We test the framework on a unique data set for disaster response programs operated by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), covering 174 disasters to which the IFRC responded between 2010 and 2017.
We study volunteer management at a charity storehouse operated by a large faith‐based organization. The storehouse runs entirely on volunteer efforts. We investigate the role of volunteer experience and storehouse congestion in the preparation of orders using a multi‐method approach. First, we conduct a field study to explore these relationships and collect data at the level of volunteers’ teams. These teams can pair volunteers with either different levels of experience (mixed pairing) or equal levels of experience (no‐mixed pairing). Second, we estimate the effects of volunteer experience and storehouse congestion on the order processing times empirically. Third, we build a simulation model to study how operational decisions–volunteers’ pairing in teams and whether to allow or impede storehouse congestion–affect two performance metrics: on‐time order preparation rate and additional time to prepare the orders, in steady conditions. Then, we simulate disaster conditions at the storehouse, i.e. simultaneous surges in supply of volunteers and demand of orders. Contrary to extant literature on team collaboration, we find that no‐mixed pairing outperforms mixed pairing under disaster conditions with storehouse congestion. In fact, no‐mixed pairing improves the on‐time order preparation by 4.32% and the additional time to prepare the orders by 14.42% compared to mixed pairing. Moreover, under disaster conditions, a “controlled congestion” policy at the storehouse delivers the best performance metrics.
International humanitarian organizations (IHOs) always strive to improve their operational performance in the field. While anecdotes from practice suggest that IHO field office leadership plays a crucial role in this regard, these claims have not been deeply substantiated by primary data. In response, we collected survey data from 125 humanitarian workers, concentrated in disaster response and development programs, on the issues of field office leadership and operational performance. Building on the operations management and organizational behavior literature, we find that leaders who adopt an intergroup leadership style can significantly improve operational performance via enhancing cooperation between local and expatriate subgroups inside a field office. Notably, we find that the intergroup leadership style becomes more effective as humanitarian workers become more entrenched within cohesive subgroups. These results should help IHOs to better select and train their field office leaders and achieve higher operational performance.
The humanitarian caseload is growing rapidly while funds are declining. The sector clearly will have to do more with less. Optimizing constrained resources is the strength of OR. Our discipline can strongly support humanitarian practitioners provided it works on pressing real problems and translates its research into easily implementable tools whose effectiveness can be verified. This Special Issue gathers a very rich and varied collection of papers along those principles. It clearly shows the value of OR and the many exciting research problems in this important area of humanitarian operations.
Purpose
Following a large-scale disaster, medical assistance is a critical component of the emergency response. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Academic and practitioner literature is used to develop a framework studying the effectiveness of the humanitarian medical supply chain (HMSC). The framework is validated by using the findings of interviews conducted with experts and the case study of a serious humanitarian medical crisis (Ebola outbreak in 2014).
Findings
The factors affecting the effectiveness of the HMSC are identified.
Research limitations/implications
To get an expert opinion on the major logistical challenges of the medical assistance in emergencies only 11 interviews with practitioners were conducted.
Originality/value
While the existing academic literature discusses the distribution of various supplies needed by the affected population, limited research focuses specifically on studying the HMSC aspect of the response. This paper closes this gap by describing the HMSC in the case of disaster response, and identifying the factors affecting its effectiveness, especially focusing on the factors that are unique to the medical aspect of the humanitarian supply chain.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of the humanitarian supply chain (HSC) as the backbone of the humanitarian operations. It further proposes feasible ways to overcome some of the main supply chain challenges identified by practitioners to achieve cost efficient and effective operations. Design/methodology/approach The challenges that the HSC faces and proposed changes to overcome them are gathered from interviews with nearly 40 practitioners. Findings Five critical issues that affect the future of HSCs are identified along with recommendations to address them. Social implications It supports the fulfillment of the agenda for humanity’s five core responsibilities: global leadership to prevent and end conflict, uphold the norms that safeguard humanity, leave no one behind, change people’s lives – from delivering aid to ending need, and invest in humanity. Originality/value The original report was presented at the first World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May 2016.
