Identifying challenges in humanitarian logistics

<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges of humanitarian logisticians with respect to different types of disasters, phases of disaster relief and the type of humanitarian organization. A conceptual model is constructed that serves as a basis to identify these challenges.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>The paper is based on a country as a case, namely Ghana. Structured and unstructured data are collected in a workshop with humanitarian logisticians, and complemented with presentations of humanitarian logisticians, as they perceive their challenges. Disaster statistics and country profiles are used as secondary data.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>The paper shows that some disasters defy a categorization between natural and man‐made causes. Challenges of humanitarian logisticians depend not only on the disaster at hand, but also on the local presence of their organization. The most emphasized challenge is the coordination of logistical activities. Challenges can be managed better if attributing them to different stakeholder environments.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Research limitations/implications</jats:title><jats:p>Applying stakeholder theory to logistics, this paper provides a greater understanding for the challenges of humanitarian logisticians.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Practical implications</jats:title><jats:p>A stakeholder categorization of the challenges of humanitarian logisticians helps to find potential collaboration partners as well as to mitigate these challenges.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>Humanitarian logistics is a rather new field in logistics literature. What is more, there is a lack of empirical cases in the field. This paper proposes a conceptual model based on an actual empirical case.</jats:p></jats:sec>