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Organisations involved in relief delivery tend to have cross-boundary mandates, which cause ambiguity of roles during delivery of relief services to the targeted victims. Having no clear role, specialisation affects service timeliness and increases resource duplication among the relief organisations. The objective of this study is to understand how organisational networks and organisational learning as complex adaptive system metaphors improve both organisational adaptability and role clarity in humanitarian logistics.

Using ordinary partial least squares regression through SmartPLS version 3.3.3, the authors tested the study hypotheses basing on survey data collected from 315 respondents who were selected randomly to complete a self-administered questionnaire from 101 humanitarian organisations. Common method bias (CMB) associated with surveys was minimised by implementing both procedural and post statistics methods.

The results indicate that organisational networks and organisational learning have a significant influence on organisational adaptability and role clarity. The results also show that organisational adaptability partially mediates in the relationship between organisational networks, organisational learning and role clarity.

The major limitation of the study is that the authors have used cross-sectional data to test this research hypotheses. However, this was minimised following Guide and Ketokivi's (2015) recommendation on how to address the limitations of cross-sectional data or the use of longitudinal data that can address CMB and endogeneity problems.

Managers in humanitarian organisations can use the authors’ framework to understand, first, how complex adaptive system competence can be used to create organisational adaptability and, second, how organisational adaptability can help organisational networks and organisational learning in improving role clarity among humanitarian organisations by collaboratively working together.

This research contributes to the existing body of knowledge in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management by empirically testing the anecdotal and conceptual evidence. The findings may be useful to managers who are contemplating the use of organisational networks, organisational learning and organisational adaptability to improve role clarity in disaster relief-related activities.

To coordinate humanitarian organisations with different mandates that flock the scenes of disasters to save lives and respond to varied needs arising from the increased number of victims is not easy. Therefore, the level at which organisations self-organise, network and adapt to the dynamic operational environment may be related to inter-organisational coordination. The authors studied self-organisation, organisational networks and adaptability as important and often overlooked organisational factors hypothesised to be related to inter-organisational coordination in the context of humanitarian organisations.

The study’s sample consisted of 101 humanitarian organisations with 315 respondents. To decrease the problem of common method variance, the authors split the samples within each humanitarian organisation into two subsamples: one subsample was used for the measurement of self-organisation, organisational network and adaptability, while the other was for the measurement of inter-organisational coordination.

The partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) analysis using SmartPLS 3.2.8 indicated that self-organisation is related to inter-organisational coordination. Organisational network and adaptability were found to be mediators for the relationship between self-organisation and inter-organisational coordination and all combined accounted for 57.8% variance in inter-organisational coordination.

The study was cross sectional, hence imposing a limitation on changes in perceptions over time. Perhaps, a longitudinal study in future is desirable. Data were collected only from humanitarian organisations that had delivered relief to refugees in the stated camps by 2018. Above all, this study considered self-organisation, adaptability and organisational networks in the explanation of inter-organisational coordination, although there are other factors that could still be explored.

A potential implication is that humanitarian organisations which need to coordinate with others in emergency situations may need to examine their ability to self-organise, network and adapt.

Social transformation is a function of active social entities that cannot work in isolation. Hence, for each to be able to make a contribution to meaningful social change, there is need to develop organisational networks with sister organisations so as to secure rare resources that facilitate change efforts coupled with the ability to reorganise themselves and adapt to changing environmental circumstances.

The paper examines (1) the extent to which self-organisation, adaptability and organisational networks influence inter-organisational coordination; (2) the mediating role of both adaptability and organisational networks between self-organisation and inter-organisational coordination in the context of humanitarian organisations against the backdrop of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory.

The purpose of this study is to examine how humanitarian organisation size affects inter-organisational coordination and further tested the mediating role of organisational innovativeness, self-organisation in the relationship between humanitarian organisation size and inter-organisational coordination among humanitarian organisations in Uganda.

The study is based on cross-sectional survey; data was collected from 101 humanitarian organisations. The analysis of the proposed hypotheses was done with the help of PLS-SEM using SmartPLS version 3.3.0 for professionals.

The results show that humanitarian organisation size significantly relates with inter-organisational coordination. In addition, self-organisation and organisational innovativeness play a complementary role between humanitarian organisation size and inter-organisational coordination.

The findings of this research provide useful insights into the role of humanitarian organisation size in boosting inter-organisational coordination in humanitarian relief delivery. High levels of self-organisation and organisational innovativeness not only improve inter-organisational coordination in humanitarian relief delivery but also enhance the transformation of humanitarian organisation size benefits into inter-organisational coordination.

This research is one of the few studies that investigated the effect of humanitarian organisation size and inter-organisational coordination. It also brings into the limelight the mediating role of self-organisation and organisational innovativeness between humanitarian organisation size and inter-organisational ordination in humanitarian relief delivery.

The purpose of this study was to establish whether self-organisation and its components matter for supply chain agility in the context of humanitarian relief operations in a developing country, Uganda.

This study adopted a cross-sectional design to collect data from a sample of 101 humanitarian organisations (HOs) that deliver relief to Bidi-Bidi refugee settlement in Uganda.

Based on the findings, self-organisation explains 56% of the variance in supply chain agility.

Since the study was cross-sectional, changes in the perception of the subject matter could not be established. Hence, a longitudinal approach was recommended for subsequent studies. Data was collected only from HOs that deliver relief services in Bidi-Bidi refugee settlement.

It is recommended that managers of HOs should ensure that their organisations have flexible, adaptive structures that can affect self-organisation during emergencies so as to increase the speed with which they respond to victims' needs.

This study generates significant empirical evidence on a less studied phenomenon in the humanitarian sector. It vividly highlights the effect of self-organisation on building supply chain agility.

This paper aims to quantify, for the first time, the performance expectations gap in community roadworks projects by proposing a performance expectations gap index (PEGI) that can answer a vital question of how wide/how narrow the gap is from a stakeholder perspective. Previous scholars have offered qualitative descriptions of the expectations gap from an auditing point of view using a constructivist approach. This study uses a positivistic approach in addressing the procurement performance expectations gap.

The index is computed by combining data from actual and perceived performance of public roadworks from two categories of respondents: “Technical personnel” and “Road users” in selected District Local Governments (DLGS) of Uganda using paired mean differences. The authors created grand means from these two groups for us to make a meaningful comparison. Data were collected from community access roads projects opened, maintained and completed and the satisfaction levels from 69 DLGS. The community leaders and political representatives formed a group of road-users, whereas DLG Engineering staff represented the technical staff. Data was collected on the extent to which the DLG had achieved performance efficiency, performance effectiveness and performance reasonableness. The measurements items was anchored along the continuum of: (5) Outstanding = Performance is consistently superior to (1) Unsatisfactory = Performance is consistently unacceptable.

Study findings show the level of performance of roadworks attained by technical staff is only 65%, with 15.9% gap is attributed to performance efficiency, the 29.1% gap is attributed to performance effectiveness issues and 20% gap is the perceived performance unreasonableness gap in the stakeholder’s perspective, creating an overall performance gap of 35%, in the perspective of road users. From the computations carried out, the authors determined the size of the expectation gaps by the technical DLG stakeholders and road-users of 0.3493. The gap index (0.3493) falls within the range between 0.2 and 0.39, which is a small performance expectations gap, calling for top management’s attention to identify and work on the parameters causing operational inefficiency within implementing units of DLGs. Study findings show the level of performance of roadworks attained by technical staff is 65%, creating a performance gap of 35%, in the perspective of road users.

The implications of these results can ignite a meaningful debate on whether financing of road projects should be based on how narrow the performance gap should be and having sustained evidence that the gap is progressively being narrowed for improved sustainability of roadworks financing by donor agencies. Whereas this quantification of the performance gap is a new positivistic direction towards minimizing the performance expectation gap, it can easily be adopted by roadworks implementing units in assessing road-user performance needs at the point of project completion and once these are not achieved, such minor loopholes would be worked on, on a regular basis as and when need warrants.

The authors have introduced and empirically verified the performance expectation gap index, which further understands the performance expectations gap from a positivistic approach. The paper provides a problem-solving tool to analyse stakeholder engagement linkages with performance expectations variations on the practical side.

The paper has started on a change perception campaign of shaping road-user critical perspectives about the outcome of community roadworks procurements. By introducing and creating a mindset of quantitative assessments in understanding the expectation gaps that can be caused by a number of factors, the responsible people for creating, maintaining and widening PEGs will eventually wake up and improve personal behaviours that lead to the widening of the procurement performance gap in roadworks, from a stakeholders’ perspective.

Unlike previous scholars who used a constructivist approach, the paper is the first of its kind to use a positivistic approach to quantify the procurement performance expectations gap using a PEGI. The use of the index gives new insights to managing procurement performance expectations to the satisfaction of stakeholders from a quantitative perspective.