Outsourcing for emergency relief: Unravelling key strategies

Abstract

Modern relief organisations are overwhelmed with complex emergency response operations. Man-made and natural disasters are affecting millions of people, infrastructure and land. In developing countries, many emergency relief programs fail due to ineffective outsourcing management of emergency response services. This has been worsened by failure to understand the concept of outsourcing and measures to improve it. Little is known about the key strategies of outsourcing and their impact on emergency relief performance. Thus, the study sought to establish key strategies of outsourcing and their impact on performance of emergency relief programme. The study employed a descriptive research design tapping into quantitative research approach. To collect data from respondents, the closed-ended questionnaires were used. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analysing the quantitative data. The study found that adopting strategies to enhance outsourcing improved the organisation’s efficiency and effectiveness in performing emergency relief services. The study revealed that investing in information technology and software systems; and adopting supply chain modelling, algorithms and programming are impetus strategies that can be implemented by a leading non-governmental organisation to enhance outsourcing. Thus, there is significant relationship between exercise of sustainable strategies that enhances outsourcing and performance improvement of emergency relief services. The management of the organisation should adopt information technology, artificial intelligence and data analytics when outsourcing services within the organisation. The study focused on a leading non-governmental organisation in Zimbabwe neglecting other emergency relief organizations and thus making it difficult to make inferences to other players. Therefore, th? researcher recommends that further studies should consider taking all humanitarian organisations to have a comprehensive understanding on the issue under study.