Inter‐Organizational Fit, Relationship Management Capability, and Collaborative Performance within a Humanitarian Setting

Abstract

D onors and governments are increasingly calling for more collaborative relationships between humanitarian organizations (HOs), to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian operations by exchanging information, knowledge, and resources. This study examines the relative efficacy of partners' characteristics (i.e., compatibility and resource complementarity) and partners' relationship management capability on collaborative relationships, incorporating mutual trust and reciprocal commitment as two mediator constructs. We use Partial Least Squares to examine the proposed hypotheses using a sample of 191 respondents. Data are collected through a web-survey of international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in countries across Africa, Asia, and South America. The results reveal that (i) resource complementarity and relationship management capability are significant factors influencing collaborative performance through their effects on partners' mutual trust and reciprocal commitment, and that (ii) partners' compatibility (i.e., missions, values, and operational methods) does not significantly drive success or failure of collaboration between international NGOs. These results suggest that given the present diversity of HOs' characteristics, the success of collaboration is associated with the partners' level of understanding of each other's objectives, operations, and values, and to the extent to which organizations efficiently communicate and coordinate their joint activities. The managerial implications of the findings are also discussed.

Secondary stakeholder pressures and organizational adoption of sustainable operations practices: The mediating role of primary stakeholders

“…To evaluate the explanatory power of the proposed models, we have examined the explained variance of the endogenous latent constructs through R 2 . The use of R 2 to assess the variance explained by the model (Moshtari, ). The structural model performance was analyzed using R 2 .…”

“…PLS-SEM modeling was chosen over covariance-based SEM for the analysis as the model is exploratory in nature rather than confirmatory and also because the sample size is small (Hair et al, 2012). The PLS SEM analysis was performed using SmartPLS 3.2.3 (Moshtari, 2016;Peng & Lai, 2012). Table 2 presents a summary of the means, standard deviations and correlations.…”

Intergroup Leadership: How Leaders Can Enhance Performance of Humanitarian Operations

“…To measure operational performance as the dependent variable, we developed a two-item measurement scale that indicates the extent of successfully helping beneficiaries (effectiveness) and running cost-efficient response operations (efficiency), which together form a measure of operational performance (e.g., Beamon andBalcik 2008, Gralla et al 2014). Since operational performance is assessed by a variety of different and context-specific metrics (Haavisto and Goentzel 2015), we followed Krishnan et al (2006) and Moshtari (2016) in relying on humanitarian workers' judgment regarding the level of operational performance (as they are directly involved in operations in the field). To collect and meaningfully analyze their judgments across IHOs, we required humanitarian workers to compare their own field office's operational performance with that of other IHOs in the region.…”

“…Therefore, our final sample size was reduced to 125 responses, indicating an effective response rate of 23%. This response rate seems acceptable compared with other studies that investigated relationships in operational contexts [e.g., 13% rate in Moshtari (2016) or 6% response rate in Cao and Zhang (2011)]. Additionally, we also checked if respondents chose the same answer option (e.g., 7, strongly agree) repeatedly for all measurement scale items.…”

Cross-sector humanitarian–business partnerships in managing humanitarian logistics: an empirical verification

“…This may hamper collaborative efforts. However, the fact that the two types of organisations are different may also prove to be beneficial since Moshtari (2016) suggests that resource complementarity is essential for successful collaborative efforts. The commercial sector may provide support in several areas.…”