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In recent years, logistics service providers (LSPs) have become important players in the humanitarian field, providing support for NGOs and governments when they respond to major disasters. However, the academic literature on humanitarian logistics has not really explored the roles that LSPs play in relief supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of LSPs in humanitarian relief.

The research uses a two-stage exploratory approach: first, it systematically reviews the humanitarian logistics literature to see the extent to which LSPs are taken into account. Then it analyses the web sites of leading LSPs to examine how they communicate about their role in humanitarian relief.

This research produces some surprising findings. While the academic literature seems to neglect the roles of LSPs in humanitarian logistics, some major third-party firms highlight their roles in relief networks. A number of research propositions are presented describing emerging roles for LSPs in relief supply chains.

This paper focuses on academic humanitarian logistics literature; a review of practitioner articles and the LSP literature might also be relevant. The web site analysis is based on corporate communication which may contain bias. Further research should add to this work with NGO/government perspectives and produce primary data in order to demonstrate the external validity of the research propositions.

The research identifies different roles LSPs could play in humanitarian supply chains, suggesting opportunities for new business lines.

The main contributions of this paper are to explore the roles LSPs could play in humanitarian logistics and to bring a new perspective to humanitarian logistics research.

This paper is based on a panel discussion at EurOMA 2015. The purpose of this paper is to identify a number of barriers to relevant research in humanitarian logistics. The authors propose a charter of ten rules for conducting relevant humanitarian research.

The authors use operations management literature to identify best practices for doing research with practice. The authors compile, condense and interpret opinions expressed by three academics and one practitioner at the panel discussion, and illustrate them through quotes.

The increasing volume of papers published in the humanitarian logistics literature has not led to a proportional impact on practice. The authors identify a number of reasons for this, such as poor problem definition, difficult access to data or lack of contextualization. The authors propose a charter of ten rules that have the potential to make humanitarian logistics research more relevant for practice.

By developing best practices for doing relevant research in humanitarian logistics, this paper enables the academic community and practice to better work together on relevant and impactful research projects. Academic knowledge combined with practice-inspired problems has the potential to generate significant improvements to humanitarian practice.

This paper is the first to address the problem of relevance of humanitarian logistics research. It is also one of the few papers involving a practitioner to discuss practical relevance of research. Through this unique approach, it is hoped that this paper provides a set of particularly helpful recommendations for researchers studying humanitarian logistics.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a more complete understanding of logistics preparedness. By comparing extant research in preparedness and logistics with findings from empirical analysis of secondary data, the authors develop a definition of and framework for logistics preparedness, along with suggestions for future research agenda.

The authors link the way in which humanitarian organizations define and aim to achieve logistics preparedness with extant academic research. The authors critically analyze public data from 13 organizations that are active in disaster relief and review papers on logistics preparedness and humanitarian logistics.

The authors found that, despite the increased attention, there is no unified understanding across organizations about what constitutes logistics preparedness and how it can contribute to improvements in operations. Based on the review of the academic literature, the authors found that the same is true for humanitarian logistics research. The lack of a common understanding has resulted in low visibility of efforts and lack of knowledge on logistics preparedness.

On the basis of extant research and practice, the authors suggest a definition of and framework for logistics preparedness with related suggestions for future studies.

Findings can help the humanitarian community gain a better understanding of their efforts related to developing logistics preparedness and can provide a better basis for communicating the need for, and results from, funding in preparedness.

Results can support improvements in humanitarian supply chains, thereby providing affected people with rapid, cost-efficient, and better-adapted responses.

The findings contribute to humanitarian logistics literature, first by identifying the issues related to the lack of a common definition. Second, the authors extend the understanding of what constitutes logistics preparedness by proposing an operationalized framework and definition. Finally, the authors add to the literature by discussing what future topics and types of research may be required.

The purpose of this paper is to present a brief overview of the field of humanitarian logistics and supply chain management and outline the scope of the new Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM). It further aims to highlight the variety of humanitarian logistics research and summarize the articles in the inaugural issue.

Results from an e‐mail survey with editorial board members are presented. The survey is used to further shape the scope of JHLSCM.

The journal draws on a variety of research streams in humanitarian logistics. This is seen as its richness but also as a challenge.

Humanitarian logistics is an emerging field. There is still a lack of good empirical research and research with rigor as well as relevance. More research needs to be done in developing countries and by researchers from these.

Even though there has been collaboration between humanitarian and commercial organizations, there is also a need to establish humanitarian‐academic partnerships to improve training, education, as well as research – which should ultimately manifest itself in an improvement of practice.

Humanitarian logistics research needs to rediscover its aim to serve beneficiaries.

This paper is an introduction to the inaugural issue of a new journal, JHLSCM.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying strategic mechanisms of agility in a humanitarian logistics context. Based on the research conducted in business disciplines, the paper empirically examines a set of four strategic dimensions (being purposeful, being action-focused, being collaborative, and being learning-oriented) and identifies an emergent relationship between these capabilities and agile humanitarian logistics operations.

Leadership and management actions perceived to support the four capabilities were identified and used as a basis to complete the exploratory research. Specifically, a case study with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) was undertaken and, in this context, a qualitative analysis of 29 face-to-face interviews with humanitarian logistics experts working for WFP was conducted.

The research corroborates the relevance of the four strategic-level capabilities to the humanitarian logistics context and confirms that these capabilities play a role in the development of agility in humanitarian operations. The work also identifies a set of key strategic decision-making areas that relate to the building of agility.

Additional research is needed to further investigate and measure the strategic-level capabilities and to quantify their impact on operational agility. Further research should also be undertaken to extend this study to a wider range of humanitarian organisations.

This paper is the first empirical research that takes a strategic approach to the concept of agility in humanitarian logistics. It highlights that the leaders and managers of humanitarian organisations have a significant role to play in the building of an agile system.

Outsourcing of logistics has great importance in disaster relief. Aid agencies spend several billion US dollars every year on logistics services. However, the concept of outsourcing has not been established adequately in literature on humanitarian logistics, leading to a fragmented view of the practice. This paper provides a holistic perspective of the concept by constructing a conceptual framework to analyze both practice and research of outsourcing in humanitarian operations. Based on this analysis, we explore future trends and identify research gaps.

The paper is based on a structured review of academic literature, a two-round Delphi study with 31 experts from aid agencies and a complementary full-day focus group with twelve experts from aid agencies and logistics service providers.

The paper systemizes the current practice of outsourcing in humanitarian logistics according to a conceptual framework of five dimensions: subject, object, partner, design and context. In addition, it reveals ten probable developments of the practice over the next years. Finally, it describes eight important research gaps and presents a research agenda for the field.

The literature review considered peer-reviewed academic papers. Practitioner papers could provide additional insights into the practice. Moreover, the Delphi study focused on the perspective of aid agencies. Capturing the views of logistics service providers in more detail would be a valuable addition.

The paper establishes the academic basis for the important practice of outsourcing in humanitarian logistics. It highlights essential research gaps and, thereby, opens up the field for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide future researchers with a framework for conducting research in the unique field of humanitarian logistics.

The authors categorized humanitarian logistics research articles. Borrowing from the theory of constraints and management information systems literature, the authors developed a framework for research.

The review of humanitarian logistics literature indicates that researchers have begun to lay the foundation for a core body of knowledge. While there is a growing body of research in humanitarian logistics, it is predominately focused on the area of planning.

This effort categorizes past research using elements of logistics, develops a framework for research in humanitarian logistics, and recommends areas for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the potential of outsourcing of humanitarian logistics activities to commercial logistics service providers (LSPs) throughout the different disaster phases. The authors identify incentives for initiating outsourcing of humanitarian logistics activities to commercial logistics providers, humanitarian logistics activities to be outsourced and selection criteria for partners.

This study is based on empirical data collected by interviewing 12 practitioners from commercial LSPs and 12 practitioners from humanitarian organizations (HOs). A review of related literature guided this research.

This research shows that incentives for initiating outsourcing engagements, partner selection criteria and activities to be outsourced are changing throughout the different disaster phases. A number of research propositions are presented.

This research constitutes a first step towards the goal of a comprehensive analysis of humanitarian logistics outsourcing throughout the different disaster phases. The authors collected data from practitioners and large organizations based mainly in Europe and the USA. Hence, insights from national and local organizations of other parts of the world are missing.

This research provides a deeper understanding of outsourcing of humanitarian logistics activities. As the main implication for practice, the research suggests a strategic use of outsourcing during the three disaster phases. The authors acknowledge that business objectives, risks, stakeholder agendas and requirements, as well as costs play a vital and changing role for outsourcing decision-making during the three disaster stages. The managerial implications arising from the research can provide support to commercial LSPs and HOs that initiate or develop strategic outsourcing relationships.

This study covers the gap in the humanitarian literature related to context-specific factors of outsourcing in humanitarian logistics by empirically investigating the phenomenon. This is one of the first studies that empirically investigate the potential of outsourcing of humanitarian logistics activities throughout the disaster phases.

Humanitarian logistics has for a long time been argued to be a new discipline. Now that even the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM) has existed over a decade, it is time to take a closer look at its evolution. This article provides some understanding for the developments of humanitarian logistics over the past decade, reveals current trends and discovers what lies behind the curtains in the humanitarian logistics and supply chain management discipline.

This article brings in developments and discussions in humanitarian logistics practice into the research domain.

The article conveys the concerns of humanitarian logistics practitioners to research. These include the backlash from the COVID-19 pandemic as a prime current concern, and also other longer-term issues and developments.

The themes identified in the article can be used to inform a research agenda in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management. The article revisits a framework of global events and their cascading impacts to include non-linearities and multiple disruptions from evolutionary disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article argues for more collaborative and co-designed research to increase the relevance and impact of humanitarian logistics.

Wider societal views are brought into the area of humanitarian logistics.

The article highlights the gaps that remain in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management research.

This research aims to shed light on the trend of humanitarian supply chain (HSC) studies in the era of pre, during and post coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic outbreaks. This study provides comprehensive bibliometric mapping published in the 21 top vintage sources globally providing detailed metadata on HSC articles. The manuscript objectives are threefold: to explore the documents that are published in the field of humanitarian logistics and supply chain; second, to identify details of articles in humanitarian logistics and supply chain and thirdly, to explore research the critical area published in the HSC in pre, during and post era of pandemic COVID-19.

This research adopts bibliometric analysis of HSC studies using the Biblioshiny, a shiny app for the Bibliometrix R package. The tool employed in this study decodes the data extracted from the Scopus database to various visualized forms. The review of the HSC studies in this research covers all related publications from 2006 to early 2022. The record of the article was scanned and refined accordingly.

A multi perspectives of HSC studies were explored, discussed and identified. The bibliometric analysis findings offer significant information on the current and future trend publications in the area of humanitarian logistics and supply chain. Additionally, it also provides significant information on the highly cited documents in humanitarian logistics and supply chain studies, most productive contributors, keywords analysis findings, most productive countries and sources, network analysis data on co-occurrence network and themes mapping information in the field of humanitarian logistics supply chain before and after pandemic COVID-19.

A multi-perspective of HSC studies was explored only within the online Scopus database. It excludes other articles published in other databases. Future research could explore related articles published in other recognized databases.

Practitioners can use multi perspectives findings from pre, during and post-pandemic COVID-19 issues discussed in this paper to get new insight and perception of the issue to facilitate their current and future operation and strategy.

To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first bibliometric study to analyze the trend of HSC studies using Biblioshiny focusing on pre, during and post COVID-19 pandemic. The review highlights annual publication trends, most productive authors, most cited papers, most productive countries, most productive institutions and most productive sources, which leads to a number of future research agendas for future studies.