Cross-sector humanitarian–business partnerships in managing humanitarian logistics: an empirical verification

Abstract

Cross-Sector humanitarian–business partnerships in managing humanitarian logistics comprise a key discussion topic in literature, yet empirical validations of these partnerships are lacking to date. This paper aims to develop a typological framework for humanitarian–business partnerships in managing humanitarian logistics and to empirically verify this typology with a data-set using content analysis. The results show that the amounts of partnerships developed between the business sector and the humanitarian sector in managing humanitarian logistics is still limited and these partnerships are not widely publicised. The research furthermore shows that financial contributions comprise the most common type of resource delivered by the business sector when it comes to partnerships with the humanitarian sector focused on managing humanitarian logistics. It is also interesting to note that the majority of partnerships in our sample are dyadic in nature, managed by a single humanitarian organisation and a single business corporation. Furthermore, we find that most of the partnerships target support for natural disaster emergency relief operations and mainly focus on disaster response.