Effect Of Humanitarian Supply Chain Collaboration Practices On Performance Of Humanitarian Organizations: The Case Of Eritrean Refugee Crises In Ethiopia
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Date
2020-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Humanitarian supply chain collaborations are a vital cluster of activities during emergencies
due to natural or man-made disasters to prevent loss of lives and property and alleviate
suffering in unstable environments. However, the subject is not well studied compared to the
business collaborations in profit-making organizations where profit is their main reason for
existence. The main objective of this study was to assess the practices, challenges, drivers,
and performances of selected non-profit making International and local Non-Governmental
organizations of the Eritrean refugee crises in Ethiopia and try to contribute to the research
family in the field. The main research designs applied for the research were descriptive and
explanatory types of research design. The data was collected through a questionnaire and
distributed to 100 selected staff and partners from Addis Ababa the country office staffs, and
Tigray region field offices in Mekelle, sub-office Shire, and Sheraro zone staffs where there
hosts a lot of Eritrean refugees which call upon emergency activities from international NonGovernmental organizations and local Non-Governmental organizations. Out of the 100
distributed questionnaires only 80 were used for the analysis as the remaining 20 were either
rejected for incompleteness or not returned at all. The data collected were analyzed through
the computer software SPSS and presented using descriptive texts, frequency tables, crosstabulations, percentiles, means, standard deviations, correlation, and regressions. The
assessment of the Humanitarian supply chain collaboration practices revealed that NonGovernmental organizations assess mutual trust well by building trustworthiness among local
and international Non-Governmental organizations in the affected area and the reciprocal
commitment and relationship-specific investment activity is also managed well. The resource
complementarity, strategic compatibility, and long-term orientation of resource sharing in
multiple events are also at its well level though there is some reservation indicated in the
responses. Operational compatibility, relational, and coordination capability in delivering
efficient relief were found to be satisfactory with some remarks. Searching for to get reduce
costs, eliminate duplications, attracting more donors from the drivers and poor
communication, power imbalance, absence of mutuality from challenges are mentioned to be
the main factors affecting the performances of the organization. In general, the collaboration
between international Non-Governmental organizations and local Non-Governmental
organizations in the Eritrean refugee crises in Ethiopia is operating well in the mentioned
areas and the activities are found to be fairly properly managed. However, the challenges and
drivers should be seriously considered and need to be dealt with the organizations for those
challenges and drivers in the control of the organizations while discussion with partners and
the responsible government bodies are required for those beyond control. Flexibility at joint
planning and forecasting is crucial and hence a contingency plan needs to be applied by the
organization as flexibility is perceived to be not performing well. As a future direction for
researchers interested in this field, it is good to consider more organizations especially on the
dyadic and network relationships that affect their performances in different regions.
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Keywords
humanitarian supply chain Collaboration, International and Local NonGovernmental organizations, challenge,, drivers, performance