Host governments severely impact international relief operations. An openness to assistance can lead to the timely delivery of aid whereas a reluctance to receive assistance can have devastating consequences. With lives at stake and no time to lose in humanitarian crises, understanding the host government's impact on the logistics performance of international humanitarian organisations (IHOs) is crucial. In this paper, we present an in-depth multiple-case study that explores this aspect. Results show that host government actions are explained by their dependency on IHOs and the levels of tensions between their interests (i.e., conflicting strategic goals). In addition, a host government's regulatory and enforcement capabilities are important for ensuring that they can safeguard their interests. We derive four stances that host governments can adopt in regulating logistics-related activities: non-restrictive, opportunistic, selectively accommodating and uncompromising. Each of these has different implications for the logistics performance of IHOs.

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Humanitarian aid workers increasingly experience pressure to professionalize their services in order to ensure more efficient and effective assistance to disaster victims. Particularly for logisticians, this pressure is also the result of increasingly tough regulations imposed by host governments. This causes a dilemma for aid workers: Professionalization can be at odds with their humanitarian values and principles, such as providing unhindered assistance, without discrimination, to whoever needs it. This research explores how humanitarian logisticians experience and deal with this dilemma. In particular, how they reconcile humanitarian values and principles on the one hand with their (developing) professional standards and practices on the other. Theoretical concepts on professionalization, social identity, and so-called boundary work are used to analyze the problem. Results show that individual logisticians adopt one of four distinct identities when approaching reconciliation, namely: Professional-dominance, intersection, union, or humanitarian-dominance identities. The associated approaches inform how they engage with stakeholders and make decisions. Each approach has its benefits and shortcomings in various operational settings. This implies there is a need to further establish the settings in which each approach delivers the best logistics performance. KEY WORDS: humanitarian logisticians, host government regulations, professional and, humanitarian identities 处于关键时刻的人道主义物流：物流人员如何在应对更加严苛的东道主政府 规定时让职业身份和人道主义身份和解 人道主义工作者在职业化的道路上经受着高压力，这是因为在一方面东道主政府对他们工作 的要求越来越高，他们要按照职业标准工作，同时符合严苛的政府规定。然而，在另一方 面，职业化时常和人道主义价值观及准则发生冲突，因为后者要求平等对待需要任何帮助的 人，为他们提供不受阻碍的援助。如果遵循规定，则某些规定会导致弱势群体无法获得救灾 物资。本研究对一家大型国际人道主义组织(international humanitarian organization， IHO)的人道主义物流人员进行探索，他们代表了经受上述高压力的人道主义工作者。研究探 索了他们如何面对挑战，如何使其人道主义价值观和原则在一方面与(发展)职业标准及实 践取得平衡，同时在另一方面努力实现良好表现，不受到政府规定压力的影响。本文将有关 职业化、社会认同和所谓边界工作的理论概念作为分析问题的视角。结果显示，个别后勤人 员采用了和解人道主义和职业价值观及原则的四种独特方法之一，这些方法进而能说明他们 如何接触利益相关者，如何作出与工作相关的决定。每一种方法在不同的操作背景下都有其 自身的优缺点。 关键词: 人道主义物流人员, 职业化, 东道主政府规定Logística humanitaria en la encrucijada: c omo los logísticos concilian las identidades profesionales y humanitarias en respuesta a medidas m as estrictas del gobierno anfitri on Los trabajadores humanitarios tienen mucha presi on para profesionalizarse debido a los requisitos elevados de los gobiernos anfitriones para trabajar de acuerdo con las normas profesionales y acatar normas muy estrictas. Sin embargo, por otro lado, la profesionalizaci on est a a menudo en contra de los valores y principios humanitarios para proveer una asistencia sin obst aculos y sin discriminaci on para quien la necesite. Si se respetan, algunas reglas pueden llevar a la exclusi on de poblaciones vulnerables de recibir suministros de ayuda. Esta investigaci on explora c omo los logísticos humanitarios, quienes ejemplifican a los trabajadores humanitarios que est an sujetos a esta coyuntura de presiones, de una importante organizaci on humanitaria internacional (IHO) enfrentan este desafío y concilian los valores y principios h...

The environments in which international humanitarian organisations (IHOs) operate are not just complex, they are knotty. There are multiple features of the humanitarian context that create insurmountable obstacles for IHOs as they try to deliver life-saving assistance to populations in distress. For instance, extremely disruptive events caused by natural and manmade disasters happen in this context. Moreover, IHOs often face hostility as conflicts have become more dangerous and widespread. The realisation that the humanitarian context has such unique features led to a dedicated research stream for humanitarian operations in Operations Management (OM) in the mid-2000s. Interestingly, crises in other contexts have been observed to share similar features. Consequently, researchers increasingly argue that much can also be learned about conducting operations under impossible conditions from this context. Most recently, researchers have highlighted some lessons to be learned from the humanitarian sector about dealing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented crisis of our time. Nevertheless, these features and their implications for operations management (OM) remain ill-understood. This PhD thesis attempts to address this shortcoming. Using the humanitarian context as a research setting, I set out to learn about operations management (OM) challenges and strategies for crisis management in general and humanitarian relief in particular.The thesis explores the implications of some of the defining features of the humanitarian context that render it knotty (complexity, extremity, and hostility) for key OM functions. Three prominent, yet under-researched, phenomena are used as the basis for unravelling those implications, i.e., complex emergencies, overlapping disasters (i.e., concurrent crises) and armed conflicts. ComplexityIn the first study (Chapter 2), the phenomenon of interest is complex emergencies which are defined by the World Health Organisation as situations in which there is a "breakdown of state structures, the disputed legitimacy of host authorities, the abuse viii of human rights and possibly armed conflict". Complex emergencies constitute the majority of humanitarian crises world-wide, are increasingly the backdrop against which major natural disasters occur, and tend to be protracted crises. The politically charged nature of complex emergencies implies that host governments tend to behave in ways that induce complexity in humanitarian operations.The first study sought to understand how and why host governments behave towards IHOs and the subsequent impact on humanitarian logistics. Three factors are found to influence host government behaviour, namely (i) the levels of tensions between their strategic interests and those of IHOs, (ii) their general level of dependency on IHO services and (iii) their regulatory and enforcement capabilities. The sources of tension between host government-IHO interests range from political reasons that, for example, lead to restricted IHO access to areas controlled by no...

PurposeThis paper links supply chain risk management to medicine supply chains to explore the role of policymakers in employing supply chain risk management strategies (SCRMS) to reduce generic medicine shortages.Design/methodology/approachUsing secondary data supplemented with primary data, the authors map and compare seven countries' SCRMS for handling shortage risks in their paracetamol supply chains before and during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.FindingsConsistent with recent research, the study finds that policymakers had implemented few SCRMS specifically for responding to disruptions caused by COVID-19. However, shortages were largely avoided since multiple strategies for coping with business-as-usual disruptions had been implemented prior to the pandemic. The authors did find that SCRMS implemented during COVID-19 were not always aligned with those implemented pre-pandemic. The authors also found that policymakers played both direct and indirect roles.Research limitations/implicationsCombining longitudinal secondary data with interviews sheds light on how, regardless of the level of preparedness during normal times, SCRMS can be leveraged to avert shortages in abnormal times. However, the problem is highly complex, which warrants further research.Practical implicationsSupply chain professionals and policymakers in the healthcare sector can use the findings when developing preparedness and response plans.Social implicationsThe insights developed can help policymakers improve the availability of high-volume generic medicines in (ab)normal times.Originality/valueThe authors contribute to prior SCRM research in two ways. First, the authors operationalize SCRMS in the medicine supply chain context in (ab)normal times, thereby opening avenues for future research on SCRM in this context. Second, the authors develop insights on the role policymakers play and how they directly implement and indirectly influence the adoption of SCRMS. Based on the study findings, the authors develop a framework that captures the diverse roles of policymakers in SCRM.