Insights on the costs of humanitarian logistics : a case study analysis

The aim of this paper is to investigate how humanitarian organizations keep track of their logistics costs. Furthermore, first insights regarding the extent of logistics costs in humanitarian operations are provided and the underlying relationships with the objectives, the forms of cooperation, and the processes of the humanitarian actors are examined. In order to answer the research questions, a qualitative case study with expert interviews in six humanitarian organizations is applied. The results show that the recording of logistics costs in practice is rather limited. The figures given in the literature are only realistic under certain circumstances - in some cases costs can be much lower. The degree of project autonomy and the disaster phase are shown to have the greatest impacts. This work provides first insights into the logistics costs based mainly on the investigation into six German organizations and, hence, is limited in its generalizability. However, since little empirical data and few scientific contributions are available in this context, the paper provides more specific evidence of the actual level of logistics costs and the underlying dependencies.