Disaster relief inventory management: horizontal cooperation between humanitarian organizations

Toyasaki, Fuminori and Arikan Fichtinger, Emel and Silbermayr, Lena and Falagara Sigala, Ioanna (2016) Disaster relief inventory management: horizontal cooperation between humanitarian organizations. Production and Operations Management, 26 (6). pp. 1221-1237. ISSN 1937-5956

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Abstract

Cooperation among humanitarian organizations has attracted increasing attention to enhance effectiveness and efficiency of relief supply chains. Our research focuses on horizontal cooperation in inventory management which is currently implemented in the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) network. The present work follows a two-step research approach, which involves collection of empirical data and quantitative modeling to examine and overcome the coordination challenges of the network. Our interviews with members of the network identified several managerial issues for sustainable cooperative inventory management that the UNHRD network pursues. Using a newsvendor model in the context of non-cooperative game theory, our research has explored member humanitarian organizations' incentive of joining the network, a coordination mechanism which achieves system optimality, and impacts of members' decisions about stock rationing. Our results indicate that behaviors of member HOs do not necessarily align with the UNHRD's expectation. Our results suggest that for system optimality, a system coordinator should carefully assess the circumstances, including demand coefficient and stock rationing. Our research also proposes a policy priority for the first-best system optimal inventory management.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This research was partially funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): Project 26015
Keywords:	humanitarian operations; inventory sharing and rationing; pre-positioned stock management; newsvendor model; non-cooperative game theory
Divisions:	Departments > Informationsverarbeitung u Prozessmanag. Departments > Welthandel Departments > Welthandel > Transportwirtschaft und Logistik > Wakolbinger
Version of the Document:	Accepted for Publication
Depositing User:	Gertraud Novotny
Date Deposited:	03 Apr 2018 07:40
Last Modified:	19 Oct 2018 15:54
Related URLs:	Publisher
FIDES Link:	https://bach.wu.ac.at/d/research/results/78872/
URI:	https://epub.wu.ac.at/id/eprint/6195

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