Perspectives on sustainability in humanitarian supply chains

Abstract

Purpose-The aim of this study is to develop a framework for analysing how humanitarian organisations address different expectations regarding sustainability. Design/methodology/approach-Quantitative and qualitative content analysis is used to assess the annual reports of humanitarian organisations for their discussions on sustainability overall, and in relation to contextual expectations, subsystems and supply chains, organisational structure and strategy. Findings-Humanitarian organisations address sustainability primarily from the perspective of contextual expectations from society and beneficiaries. Some fits between supply chain design and societal expectations are attended to, but fits between programmes and contextual expectations are not discussed explicitly. Research limitations/implications-Annual reports express what organisations want to portray of their activities rather than being direct reflections of what occurs in the field, hence the use of annual reports for the study delimits its findings. However, humanitarian organisations rarely publish sustainability reports. Practical implications-Even though there is a general pursuit of the elusive aim of aid effectiveness, organisational structures need to be further aligned with societal aims as to support these. Social implications-Beneficiaries are still seen as external to the humanitarian supply chain and humanitarian programmes, though their role may change with the introduction of more cash components in aid, voucher systems, and ultimately, their empowerment through these. Originality/value-The suggested conceptual framework combines elements of contingency theory with a prior four perspectives model on sustainability expectations. The framework helps to highlight fits between the humanitarian context, operations and programmes as well as misalignments between these.

Using life cycle sustainability assessment to trade off sourcing strategies for humanitarian relief items

“…In contrast, very little research has been conducted in the area of sustainable supply chain management in humanitarian supply chains (Haavisto and Kovács 2012;Haavisto and Kovács 2014). This is despite the fact that their processes for planning, implementing, and controlling the flows of goods and related information are similar to those used in commercial supply chain management (Thomas and Kopczak 2005).…”

“…A sustainable economic approach requires local rather than global partnerships in order to respect local businesses (Matopolous et al 2014). Regarding the environmental aspect, the greening of humanitarian supply chains is not straightforward and there is still a gap in this practice (Haavisto and Kovács 2014). Barriers to greening humanitarian supply chains include inadequate information, communication, coordination, performance management systems, resources, and funding; limitations on political activities; and demand uncertainty (Sarkis et al 2012).…”

Multi-Objective Optimization Model of Emergency Organization Allocation for Sustainable Disaster Supply Chain

“…Such topics solved by the OR/MS technique have been addressed in the literature, but are very limited [5,11,12]. Firstly, most of the researchers are dedicated to traditional disaster supply chain rather than SDSC.…”

“…Altay et al [1] highlighted that loose connection between amongst EOs lead to managerial confusions and ambiguity of authority. Particularly, Haavisto et al [5] addressed that enhancing the fit between EOs and their environment could benefit the improvement of performance of SDSC. Accordingly, it can be inferred that the need for modeling EO for not only traditional disaster supply chain but also SDSC is pressing.…”

“…Consequently, how to optimize the strategies for EOA is very significant. Particularly, the motivations or goals to optimize strategies regarding EOA are to Dubey et al [3] and Haavisto et al [5] pointed out that SDSC could be regarded as the result of combinations of philosophies of sustainable development and traditional disaster supply chain. Carter et al [6] elaborated clearly that sustainability was able to be characterized by the triple bottom line model regarding social, economic, ecological dimensions.…”