Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of organisational future orientation and interaction quality on inter-organisational communication, and the mediating role of inter-organisational group mechanism on the relationship between organisational future orientation, interaction quality and inter-organisational communication. A questionnaire assessing the experience of organisational future orientation, inter-organisational interaction quality, inter-organisational group mechanism and inter-organisational communication was administered to 101 out of 136 humanitarian organisations delivering social services to refugee settlements in Uganda. The proposed hypotheses were tested using PLS-SEM in the SmartPLS version 3.3.0 for professionals. The paper found that organisational future orientation has a positive impact on inter-organisational communication. Inter-organisational group mechanism partially mediates organisational future orientation and inter-organisational communication whilst it fully mediates the relationship between inter-organisational interaction quality and inter-organisational communication. The findings of this research provide useful insights into the role of inter-organisational group mechanism in boosting the role of organisational future orientation and interaction quality in inter-organisational communication in humanitarian relief delivery. Hence, a high level of inter-organisational group mechanism not only improves inter-organisational communication in humanitarian relief delivery but also enhances the benefits of organisational future orientation and interaction quality for inter-organisational communication. This research is one of the limited studies that investigate the effect of organisation future orientation and interaction quality on inter-organisational group mechanism and inter-organisational communication in humanitarian relief delivery in sub-Saharan Africa.
Highlights
In the last few decades, an exponential increase in the number of disasters and their complexity has been reported, which has attracted a multitude of relief organisations
The results indicated that a single factor solution does not emerge, since the maximum covariance explained by one factor is only 33.80%, which is below the 50% threshold value, suggesting that common method bias is unlikely
We find that organisational future orientation and inter-organisational group mechanism have a significant effect on inter-organisational communication but interorganisational interaction quality has no direct effect on inter-organisational communication
Summary
In the last few decades, an exponential increase in the number of disasters and their complexity has been reported, which has attracted a multitude of relief organisations. As Pescaroli and Kelman (2017) postulate, the operational environment after the occurrence of a disaster is often inherently unstable, characterised by high levels of turbulence, such as infrastructure breakdown, involving telephone lines and roads, and, at the same time, the influx of many actors with differing mandates to the site (El Khaled and Mcheick 2019) This volatile condition impairs the information transmission process and suppresses the inter-organisational information exchange effort, affecting the ability of the organisations to act and respond in a timely manner to the needs of the victims, the areas where relief efforts are more critical and the resources needed, leading to poor co-ordination capabilities between the various organisations (L’Hermitte et al 2016) and wastage of resources (Nurmala et al 2017). Clarifying and increasing understanding of how humanitarian organisations may improve information’s exchange among themselves amidst conditions of change is of vital importance (Bisri 2016)
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