By Gyöngyi Kovács, Karen Spens and Mohammad Moshtari
Contents
1 Social Network Analysis in the Context of Humanitarian
Logistics 3
Natalie Simpson, Zhasmina Tacheva and Ta-Wei (Daniel) Kao
2 Deploying Collaborative Management Research
Approaches in Humanitarian Supply Chains: An Overview
and Research Agenda 41
Yasmine Sabri
3 Future Research in Humanitarian Operations: A Behavioral
Operations Perspective 71
Karthik Sankaranarayanan, Jaime Andrés Castañeda
and Sebastián Villa
Part II More Established Empirical Methods
4 Challenges and Opportunities for Humanitarian
Researchers: Dreadful Biases and Heavenly Combinations
of Mixed Methods 121
Pervaiz Akhtar
5 So Much of Research Is Context: Fieldwork Experience
in Humanitarian Logistics 149
Minchul Sohn
6 Conducting In-Depth Case Studies in Humanitarian
Logistics: The Case of MSF 179
Diego Vega
7 The Application of the Case Study Methodology:
Resilience in Domestic Food Supply Chains During
Disaster Relief Efforts in South Asia 203
Mark Wilson, Muhammad Umar and Jeff Heyl
Part III Collaboration – Variety of Methods
8 Towards A Better Understanding of Humanitarian Supply
Chain Integration 249
Jihee Kim, Stephen Pettit, Irina Harris and Anthony Beresford
9 An Empirical Investigation of Swift Trust in Humanitarian
Logistics Operations 279
Qing Lu, Mark Goh and Robert de Souza
10 Drivers of Coordination in Humanitarian Relief
Supply Chains 297
Rameshwar Dubey and Nezih Altay
11 Agility Learning Opportunities in Cross-Sector
Collaboration. An Exploratory Study 327
Alessandra Cozzolino, Ewa Wankowicz and Enrico Massaroni
Part IV Variety of Topics
12 How Flexibility Accommodates Demand Variability
in a Service Chain: Insights from Exploratory Interviews
in the Refugee Supply Chain 359
Kirstin Scholten, Carolien de Blok and Robbin-Jan Haar
13 Developing Individual Competencies for Humanitarian
Logistics 395
Graham Heaslip, Peter Tatham and Alain Vaillancourt
14 Governance of Service Triads in Humanitarian
Logistics 417
Graham Heaslip and Gyöngyi Kovács
15 Multimodal Logistics in Disaster Relief 445
Syed Tariq, Muhammad Naiman Jalil
and Muhammad Adeel Zaffar
Part V Applications – Most Typical
16 Structuring Humanitarian Supply Chain Knowledge
Through a Meta-Modeling Approach 491
Laura Laguna Salvadó, Matthieu Lauras, Tina Comes
and Frederick Bénaben
17 Decision Support Systems for Urban Evacuation Logistics
in Practice 523
Marc Goerigk, Horst W. Hamacher and Sebastian Schmitt
18 Advances in Network Accessibility and Reconstruction
after Major Earthquakes 547
Andréa Cynthia Santos
19 Information Technology in Humanitarian Logistics
and Supply Chain Management 567
Dorit Schumann-Bölsche
20 Bridging Research and Practice in Humanitarian
Logistics: A Diagnostic Tool to Assess Organizational
Agility 591
Cécile L’Hermitte, Marcus Bowles, Peter H. Tatham
and Benjamin Brooks
Part VI Conceptual, Future
21 The Evolutions of Humanitarian-Private Partnerships:
Collaborative Frameworks Under Review 627
Rolando M. Tomasini
22 Review of Empirical Studies in Humanitarian Supply
Chain Management: Methodological Considerations,
Recent Trends and Future Directions 637
Lijo John
23 Four Theories for Research in Humanitarian Logistics 675
Richard Oloruntoba
24 From Aid to Resilience: How to Bridge Disaster Resilience
and Humanitarian Supply Chain Management Research 713
Eija Meriläinen
Index 743
Introduction
Disaster trends show an increase in the impact of natural disasters, not to speak of man-made crises. At the time of finalizing this anthology, the disaster in the spotlight is Hurricane Matthew (2016), which is one of the larger hurricanes in the annual hurricane season, and which is mirrored with cyclone seasons in the Pacific, floods in Pakistan, and for years, erratic weather conditions in the Sahel. Adding to the demand of humanitarian aid are the various insurgencies and wars around the world leading to humanitarian crises in those regions, and refugee fluxes outside. In the spotlight are the wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, but there are many others that can be labelled the “forgotten disasters” in the world, whether in the Central African Republic or South Sudan. Other disasters trigger one another, as in the cascading events of Fukushima from earthquake to tsunami to a nuclear disaster in 2011. In parallel to natural disasters and wars are pandemic outbreaks – primarily cholera, yellow fever or ebola. Already since the Indian Ocean Tsunami 2004, the role of logistics has been highlighted in the support of disaster relief. Therefore, research within humanitarian logistics has increased particularly during the last decade.
This led to the establishment of the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, which now in 2016 is in its sixth volume. But also other journals have shown interest in this field. There have been over 15 special issues in international peer-reviewed journals that were dedicated to humanitarian logistics and/or humanitarian operations since 2009. In addition, universities across the world initiated teaching courses or running training programmes on humanitarian logistics. There are also more and more comprehensive literature reviews published in the field.
That said, humanitarian logistics, humanitarian operations and supply chain management literature has faced substantial criticism over the years for its lack of empirical studies. Conducting research in humanitarian logistics has its specific challenges, especially in terms of finding research questions that are relevant to the field and hence can contribute back to the development of humanitarian logistics at large. Further challenges relate to the use of appropriate methods, due to the combination of a lack of access to data, the need to develop robust field research and to capture the interest of humanitarians who would be willing to contribute with their knowledge and expertise.
This handbook, therefore, assembles a variety of research questions and types of studies in humanitarian logistics, and focuses on research methods as a cross-cutting theme. The aim of the book is to provide an overview of the state of the art of humanitarian logistics research, but also to help researchers identifying when and how to apply certain research methods. We have therefore asked authors to be very honest in their descriptions of their challenges and opportunities of conducting research in this field, describe their struggles with particular methods and also to give advice in how to overcome these struggles. Thereby, this book allows us researchers to share our knowledge and experience on teaching and research, to figure out further avenues for future research and to guide junior researchers conducting research projects within humanitarian logistics and supply chain management.