Editorial matters

Citation

Spens, G.K.a.K. (2014), "Editorial matters", Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Vol. 4 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHLSCM-12-2013-0045

Editorial matters

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Volume 4, Issue 1.

Time flies, and the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management is already in its fourth volume. Some changes are necessary with the maturing of the journal. Given our solid submission rates and the rise in quality submissions, the journal is expanding to more articles per issue in 2014. Rising submission rates indicate one or both of the following: humanitarian logistics being a growing field in research, and JHLSCM becoming widely recognised as the humanitarian logistics journal. Along with the recognition came numerous requests for running special issues. The first such thematic special issue has indeed been published already in 2013, and several more are on their way. We welcome suggestions for further thematic special issues also in the future but will of course continue to process articles for regular issues such as this one.

Articles in the issue

The HUMLOG institute, in addition to hosting the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, bi-annually awards a prize for the best doctoral thesis. This issue contains a number of very interesting articles on a variety of topics of which the first article was co-authored by the HUMLOG Institute's awardee for best doctoral thesis in humanitarian logistics in 2013, Jessica Heier Stamm. In both the thesis and in this article, game theory is applied to humanitarian operations. Muggy and Heier Stamm's “Game theory applications in humanitarian operations: a review” identifies the areas in which humanitarian operations could benefit from game theory, and results in a strong suggestion to conduct more practice-driven research in order to increase the impact of game theory models in the humanitarian sector.

Related to game theory, another interesting special issue coming together at the time of the writing of this editorial, will be the one on games for learning and dialogue in humanitarian logistics by guest editors Pablo Suarez and Casper Harteveld. The special issue will share the theory and practice of games as playable, dynamic models for education and dialogue. It will also investigate how games can meaningfully engage people and organisations in experiencing the complex systems behind humanitarian logistics – to better understand their current or potential role in transforming these systems – in a way that is both serious and fun.

As if it was a response to such a suggestion, next, Pazirandeh and Herlin discuss the case of “Unfruitful cooperative purchasing: a case of humanitarian purchasing power”. The article analyses the impact of co-operative purchasing on the purchasing power of different members of a purchasing consortium that focuses on buying freight forwarding services. Interestingly, joining forces in purchasing had no effects on purchasing power in this case. The article highlights the complexity of purchasing, and more importantly, of purchasing power.

The two following articles focus on the role of the military in humanitarian logistics. Rietjens, Goedee, van Sommeren and Soeters’ “Meeting needs: value chain collaboration in stabilisation and reconstruction operations” proposes a value chain process model that is then applied to three value chains of the stabilisation and reconstruction activities of the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction team during 2006-2010 in the Afghan province of Uruzgan. An interesting finding of this study is the blurred perception of the “customer” in these operations, and whether these should be the host nationals or beneficiaries of the programme, or the country of the sending nation of these troops.

On the other hand, Heaslip and Barber's article on “Using the military in disaster relief: systemising challenges and opportunities” is a systematic literature review on civil-military logistical co-operation that emphasises the different roles of the military in natural vs man-made disasters. As the authors argue, in natural disasters the military contributes to sustainment operations immediately upon the event, whereas in man-made complex emergencies, military assistance is longer-term and contributes to the logistical provision of aid overall. Generally, military presence in disaster relief comes with two missions: to establish a secure environment in which humanitarian organisations can operate, and to create conditions under which a disaster area can return to normalcy.

Crisis management from a military perspective is also at the heart of Anttila's article on ”Human security and learning in crisis management”. Here the focus is on organisational learning from the experiences of returning peacekeepers. The article also emphasises the importance of the local ownership of a peacekeeping mission in order for the mission to succeed in supporting human security. Apart from learning on the organisational level from both positive and negative experiences, the reintegration of returnees in their home society is further problematised.

Another literature review was conducted by Leiras, Brito, Perez, Bertazzo and Yoshizaki, in which they review the trends and challenges and aim to identify trends and suggest some directions for future research. The article builds on previous literature reviews, which are updated but then seven classification criteria are added to earlier ones in order to advance the literature analysis, thereby proposing new dimensions for literature review in the field. The main conclusions drawn by the authors is that there is a need for more studies regarding the disaster recovery phase and the need for closer relationships between academia and humanitarian organisations to increase the amount of applied research.

The final article of this issue discusses the “Application of humanitarian last mile distribution model”. The purpose of this research by Battini, Peretti, Persona and Sgarbossa is to extend a routing model so that it may be applied to a real case study of material deliveries involved in a development operation and to explore the impact of variations in available logistic assets. The work thereby explores the Last Mile Distribution Problem by providing a case study on Haiti to assist decision makers in making effective and efficient distribution across the last mile. The research shows how characteristics of logistic assets and their availability affect the distribution system performances, in terms of total distribution cost and shortages. In addition, the results indicate that fleet costs increase not linearly in function of the number of helicopters an organisation needs to satisfy the lack of trucks. More importantly, the article also shows that these models can be applied in real operations in order to show how much can be saved in function of the considered vehicle typology.

This issue goes to show that the call for more research that is useful for and can be used in practice has been heard. It is also time to share the knowledge now, and we hope that the articles in this issue do what this journal has set out to do, that is, to publish articles that make a difference.

The Editors of JHLSCM would like to acknowledge the Academy of Finland for their continuous support to projects in humanitarian logistics that enable them to focus on this area.

Gyöngyi Kovács and Karen Spens