TY - JOUR

T1 - Humanitarian Logistics at a Crossroads

T2 - How Logisticians Reconcile Their Professional and Humanitarian Identities in Response to Tougher Host Government Regulations

AU - Dube, Nonhlanhla

AU - Broekhuis, Manda

N1 - This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Dube, N. and Broekhuis, M. (2018), Humanitarian Logistics at a Crossroads: How Logisticians Reconcile Their Professional and Humanitarian Identities in Response to Tougher Host Government Regulations. Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 9: 151-182. doi:10.1002/rhc3.12134 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rhc3.12134/abstract This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.

PY - 2018/6

Y1 - 2018/6

N2 - Humanitarian aid workers increasingly experience pressure to professionalize their services in order to ensure more efficient and effective assistance to disaster victims. Particularly for logisticians, this pressure is also the result of increasingly tough regulations imposed by host governments. This causes a dilemma for aid workers: Professionalization can be at odds with their humanitarian values and principles, such as providing unhindered assistance, without discrimination, to whoever needs it. This research explores how humanitarian logisticians experience and deal with this dilemma. In particular, how they reconcile humanitarian values and principles on the one hand with their (developing) professional standards and practices on the other. Theoretical concepts on professionalization, social identity, and so-called boundary work are used to analyze the problem. Results show that individual logisticians adopt one of four distinct identities when approaching reconciliation, namely: Professional-dominance, intersection, union, or humanitarian-dominance identities. The associated approaches inform how they engage with stakeholders and make decisions. Each approach has its benefits and shortcomings in various operational settings. This implies there is a need to further establish the settings in which each approach delivers the best logistics performance.

AB - Humanitarian aid workers increasingly experience pressure to professionalize their services in order to ensure more efficient and effective assistance to disaster victims. Particularly for logisticians, this pressure is also the result of increasingly tough regulations imposed by host governments. This causes a dilemma for aid workers: Professionalization can be at odds with their humanitarian values and principles, such as providing unhindered assistance, without discrimination, to whoever needs it. This research explores how humanitarian logisticians experience and deal with this dilemma. In particular, how they reconcile humanitarian values and principles on the one hand with their (developing) professional standards and practices on the other. Theoretical concepts on professionalization, social identity, and so-called boundary work are used to analyze the problem. Results show that individual logisticians adopt one of four distinct identities when approaching reconciliation, namely: Professional-dominance, intersection, union, or humanitarian-dominance identities. The associated approaches inform how they engage with stakeholders and make decisions. Each approach has its benefits and shortcomings in various operational settings. This implies there is a need to further establish the settings in which each approach delivers the best logistics performance.

KW - humanitarian logisticians

KW - host government regulations

KW - professional and

KW - humanitarian identities

U2 - 10.1002/rhc3.12134

DO - 10.1002/rhc3.12134

M3 - Journal article

VL - 9

SP - 151

EP - 182

JO - Risk, Hazards, & Crisis in Public Policy

JF - Risk, Hazards, & Crisis in Public Policy

SN - 1944-4079

IS - 2

ER -