Humanitarian Logistics at a Crossroads:How Logisticians Reconcile Their Professional and Humanitarian Identities in Response to Tougher Host Government Regulations

Dube, Nonhlanhla and Broekhuis, Manda (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 (2). pp. 151-182. ISSN 1944-4079

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Risk, Hazards, & Crisis in Public Policy
Additional Information:
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.
Subjects:
?? HUMANITARIAN LOGISTICIANSHOST GOVERNMENT REGULATIONSPROFESSIONAL ANDHUMANITARIAN IDENTITIES ??
ID Code:
123554
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
20 Jun 2018 10:18
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
18 Sep 2023 01:19