The Palgrave Handbook of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management PDF by Gyöngyi Kovács, Karen Spens and Mohammad Moshtari

Contents

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.