Review of Empirical Studies in Humanitarian Supply Chain Management: Methodological Considerations, Recent Trends and Future Directions

Abstract

Humanitarian supply chain management (HSCM) has gained much interest among academicians and practitioners in recent past. This paper aims to review empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 1995 and 2015. The articles are classified based on the author’s affiliation, methodology used, operational stage addressed in the study, type of disaster focused, etc., The review categorizes empirical studies based on the methodologies. The study also tracks the development and usage of various methodologies in the humanitarian logistics research. Furthermore, a comparative study on themes arising from the review of literature and the challenges faced by practitioners during operations under various disasters is mapped. Finally, the direction for future research in HSCM is discussed.

Appendix 1: Summary of literature reviews in HSCM

Criteria	Scope	Database used	Keywords	Review Period	Classification of papers?	If yes, which categories?	Findings	Proposed research areas
Altay and Green ( 2006 )	OR/MS literature in disaster operations management	ISI Web of Science IFORMS search engine Business Source Premier Cambridge Scientific Abstracts IDS Compendenx Engineering Village 2 Scirus Econbase Civil Engineering Database Scitation SciFinder	Disaster emergency catastrophe extreme event disastrous catastrophic	1980–2004	Yes	Phase of disaster research methodology research contribution cause of disaster publication period problem scenario	Mathematical programming is most frequently used method system dynamics, constraint programming and soft OR techniques are underused	Do more research on reconstruction phase, Develop mitigation tools, Develop theory on preparation, response and reconstruction phases, Use new methodologies such as system dynamics, fuzzy systems, soft OR more multi-agency research considering political
Kovács and Spens (2007)	Literature on humanitarian logistics	Several journal databases	Humanitarian AND logistics humanitarian aid AND supply chains disaster relief AND logistics disaster relief AND supply chains emergency AND logistics emergency AND supply chain	Not specified	No		Literature focuses on the preparation phase with little focus on immediate response phase, Insufficient mitigation phase studies to address man-made disasters,	Do more research on response and reconstruction phases, Do more research on planning and execution of operations in disaster relief, Do more research on links and similarities between humanitarian logistics and business logistics
Natarajarathinam et al. (2009)	Literature of supply chain management (SCM) in times of crisis	ProQuest ABI/Inform EBSCO Science Direct	Crisis risks disaster uncertainty emergency disruption catastrophe crisis management risk management disastrous catastrophic	Pre-1990 to 2008	Yes	Source of crisis scale of crisis phase of crisis management research methodology type of respondent to crisis	Increase in number of publications in the last years, Increase of number of paper focusing on several phases of disaster management, More research on mitigation and preparation phases, Few research on the recovery phases, Limited empirical, Many analytical research using OR techniques applied research	Do more research on reconstruction phase, Develop scales for level of crisis management, Do more research on robustness and resilience of supply chains, Do more case studies and empirical research, Do more research on supply chain management crisis arising from internal sources
Letteri et al. 2009	Systematic literature review of Disaster Management	Systematic Review the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI	Disasters, Risk management, Defence sector	1980–2006	Yes	Reference, authors, year of publication, journal name, methodology, country of association	Need for a holistic theory in disaster management, Major contributions from US and Canada, Major studies are process based, lack of studies on learning	Performance management and knowledge management, organizational issues, meta-organizations, network theory
Pettit and Beresford ( 2009 )	Literature about critical success factors in the commercial context	Not specified	Not specified	Not specified	No		Critical success factors from commercial context are equally important in the humanitarian aid context, Cultural elements and political constraints play an important role in HSCM, Effectiveness of a humanitarian supply chains is determined by structural or cultural factors	Test the critical success factors proposed in the study through qualitative research in the context of humanitarian aid
Overstreet et al. 2011	Framework for research in HSCM	EBSCOHOST, ABI/Informs, Elsevier, and Google Scholar	Supply chain management, Humanitarian logistics, Disaster relief, Research	Not specified	No		Research in HSCM and HL is still at infancy,	Organization’s personnel, equipment/infrastructure, transportation, information technology/communication, and inventory management as they relate to the humanitarian logistics.
Kunz and Reiner (2012 )	Identify the most frequently studied situational factors in the humanitarian research	Business Source Complete, Science Direct, ABI/INFORM Global and Web of Science	Logistics, supply chain, humanitarian and relief	2010–2011	Yes	Context of operations, Speed of start, Cause of disaster, Phase of disaster management, Research methodology and Situational factor	Governmental, socio-economic, infrastructural and environmental are the major situational factors under which the major types of research has been done.	Slow onset disasters and continuous aid process is being neglected in the research, More research to focus on the man-made disasters as well with focus on the reconstruction phase of the disaster management, Need for empirical methodologies in the research.
Galindo and Batta ( 2013 )	OR/MS literature in disaster operations management from 2005–2010	ISI’s Web of Science, Business Source Complete, Compendex Engineering Village 2, Scirus, Emerald, JSTOR, Scitation and Google Scholar	Disaster	2005–2010	Yes	Phase of disaster research methodology research contribution cause of disaster publication period problem scenario	Mathematical programming is the most frequently used method with conceptual analysis and combined methodologies gaining importance. Game theory, constrained programming and soft OR are still the under used	Coordination analysis using cluster based approaches, Introduction of technology application based studies, using statistical analysis tools for evaluating the DOM problems, in-depth exploration of soft OR methodologies
Abidi et al. 2014	Humanitarian supply chain performance	EBSCOHOST, ABI/Informs, Elsevier, and Google Scholar	Performance measurement, Performance management, Humanitarian logistics, Humanitarian supply chains, KPI	1970–2013	Yes	Descriptive, theoretical lens, sampling, purpose, context, definitional	Performance models not empirically tested, relationships between the factor and PM not easily verifiable, PM are defined at organizational and process level only, most studies include only internal performance indicators	Need for common measurement framework, need to integrate PM to planning stages, use of IT for PM, impact of stakeholders in PM,
Leiras et al. (2014)	Humanitarian Logistics	Not specified	Humanitarian logistics, Humanitarian supply chain	Not specified	Yes	General information, disaster types, disaster life cycle, research method, problem type, optimization type, decision level, stake holder perspective, coordination perspective	Preparation and response studies are more widespread than recovery phases, few studies linking theory and practice, slow onset disaster are not addressed, productivity and efficiency studies are not focused,	Hierarchical planning could be a suitable way to explore impact of politics, Predominance of work focused on the strategic decision and need to extend the analysis to the other decision levels Need to learn from business logistics, need to focus on coordination studies