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Food banks are humanitarian aid organizations that collect, organize, and deliver food to nonprofit member agencies and also to individuals to help alleviate the society's hunger problem. The supply chain of food banks is characterized by private sector companies, individual donors and governmental agencies providing monetary support and food inventory on the supply side, and the member agencies such as food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and volunteers delivering support on the demand side. Within the purview of this supply chain, food banks strive to improve their performance, which is commonly measured in terms of the amount of food delivered to the communities in need. Food banks rely on managerial talent that is relatively more constrained than the private sector and also use a voluntary workforce for attaining their performance goals. Considering the unique yet pertinent role of human assets in food banks to manage their supply chain integration initiatives, we employ an intellectual capital framework to analyze the human, organizational, and social capital antecedents of supply chain integration in food banks. Specifically, we suggest that intellectual capital drives supply chain integration in humanitarian organizations. Moreover, we propose specific relationships between the dimensions of intellectual capital. A carefully crafted survey is used to inform our results. The results indicate that human capital significantly impacts social capital, which, in turn, drives all supply chain integration dimensions. We discuss the implications of our findings for managing intellectual capital in the not‐for‐profit sector and offer directions for future research.

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PurposeThis paper investigates the inter-relationships among supply integration, demand integration and internal integration in the context of food banking.Design/methodology/approachThis study utilizes survey data from managers at 71 different food banks in the US combined with secondary data gathered from Feeding America's website to provide model controls and an objective measure of food bank performance. The performance metric is the amount of food distributed per food insecure individual in the food bank's service area. Theoretically developed hypotheses were tested using seemingly unrelated regression techniques and a Monte Carlo simulation-based mediation analysis.FindingsWhile the previous research on integration relationships on for-profit supply chains has shown that managing internal integration forms the foundation for integrating with suppliers and customers, the findings indicate that, for not-for-profit food banks, external integration should precede internal integration and that demand integration has a stronger influence on performance than supply integration.Research limitations/implicationsThe heavy reliance of food banks on external partners necessitates an internal integration structure that supplements and builds upon these external relationships. The basic programs thus developed have a direct impact on the amount of food distributed per food insecure individual.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the humanitarian supply chain management literature by analyzing supply chain integration and its performance implications in a slow onset disaster setting.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to verify whether product orientation (make-to-order versus make-to-stock) affects how coordination mechanisms combine to influence quality performance in total quality management (TQM). Design/methodology/approach -The authors used survey response data from a large sample of single industry respondents (auto supplier industry) to test the research model. Findings -The study found support for the idea that organizational and inter-organizational coordination mechanisms influence product and process quality performance. Moreover, significance of many of these linkages varied according to whether the product orientation was make-to-order or make-to-stock. The study is one of the first to suggest that the influence of select coordination factors on performance can vary according to product orientation.Research limitations/implications -The study suggests that plant managers may pursue different approaches to implement select coordination factors (not all) according to whether their product focus is make-to-stock or make-to-order. Practical implications -The research isolates those select coordination mechanisms which have significantly different performance effects in one product orientation environment (make-to-order) versus another (make-to-stock). Managers interested in TQM implementation can gain insights into those select coordination mechanisms identified in this study that could positively enhance product quality and process quality performance. Originality/value -To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first study that has examined the contextual influence of product orientation on the relationships between select coordination mechanisms in TQM implementation and their impact on process and product quality.