What Skills Are Needed to be a Humanitarian Logistician?
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Author(s)
Kovács, G
Tatham, P
Larson, PD
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2012
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Logistic skills are of importance for employment and career development, and prior research has highlighted differences in skill requirements for different logistics functions as well as for different groups of logisticians. However, the continuing incidence of natural disasters and complex emergencies and the associated challenges including the requirement to build relationships with diverse stakeholder, has increased the demand for humanitarian logisticians - but there is, as yet, little understanding of which skills are important in this context. This article develops a conceptual framework for skills in the field of ...
View more >Logistic skills are of importance for employment and career development, and prior research has highlighted differences in skill requirements for different logistics functions as well as for different groups of logisticians. However, the continuing incidence of natural disasters and complex emergencies and the associated challenges including the requirement to build relationships with diverse stakeholder, has increased the demand for humanitarian logisticians - but there is, as yet, little understanding of which skills are important in this context. This article develops a conceptual framework for skills in the field of humanitarian logistics, and evaluates the framework through a content analysis of job advertisements with a special focus on the 2010 Haiti earthquake. This analysis concludes that humanitarian logisticians need a broad spectrum of functional skills (such as procurement, warehouse and transport management) that must often be held in some depth. In addition, however, humanitarian logisticians need 'contextual' skills that reflect their particular field of employment (such as security management and a comprehensive knowledge of donor regulations). It is suggested that such contextual skills are likely to feature in other areas of logistic employment, and that further research to identify these would lead to improvements in training and education programs.
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View more >Logistic skills are of importance for employment and career development, and prior research has highlighted differences in skill requirements for different logistics functions as well as for different groups of logisticians. However, the continuing incidence of natural disasters and complex emergencies and the associated challenges including the requirement to build relationships with diverse stakeholder, has increased the demand for humanitarian logisticians - but there is, as yet, little understanding of which skills are important in this context. This article develops a conceptual framework for skills in the field of humanitarian logistics, and evaluates the framework through a content analysis of job advertisements with a special focus on the 2010 Haiti earthquake. This analysis concludes that humanitarian logisticians need a broad spectrum of functional skills (such as procurement, warehouse and transport management) that must often be held in some depth. In addition, however, humanitarian logisticians need 'contextual' skills that reflect their particular field of employment (such as security management and a comprehensive knowledge of donor regulations). It is suggested that such contextual skills are likely to feature in other areas of logistic employment, and that further research to identify these would lead to improvements in training and education programs.
View less >
Journal Title
Journal of Business Logistics
Volume
33
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
This is the pre-peer-reviewed version of the following article: What Skills are Needed to be a Humanitarian Logistician?, Journal of Business Logistics
Volume 33, Issue 3, pages 245–258, September 2012, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2158-1592.2012.01054.x
Subject
Logistics and Supply Chain Management
Business and Management