Helping to learn? Learning opportunities for seconded corporate managers

Purpose – Humanitarian disasters strike overnight causing urgent demands for assistance in complex environments. Attending to the needs of the beneficiaries requires highly trained and knowledgeable staff. However, humanitarian agencies can neither afford, nor keep on standby full‐time staff with a wide range of knowledge and expertise to meet all possible needs. Some agencies have gained access to additional trained staff through partnership agreements with the private sector. These secondments augment the capacity of humanitarian agencies placing corporate managers in a different setting where they can test their knowledge and skills. The purpose of this paper is to provide arguments to build a business case for corporate managers to be seconded to humanitarian relief operations. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses case study research and academic literature. Findings – The paper provides a list of the managerial roles of humanitarian logisticians to identify the learning opportunities available to seconded staff operating in disaster relief operations. The list of roles may be considered learning opportunities for corporate managers in a different context and setting. Social implications – The paper shows that there is a possibility to augment the response capacity of humanitarian agencies with corporate managers during a disaster. Originality/value – The paper focuses on the value of learning during emergency operations for corporate managers.