Visibility, resource sharing and performance in supply chain relationships: insights from humanitarian practitioners

Purpose – This paper aims to, by connecting to the ongoing conversation on the importance of supply chain visibility, empirically examine the impact of visibility in supply chain relationships, on resource sharing among and on the performance of humanitarian organizations. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected from 101 humanitarian organizations in Southeast Asia. The organizations all experienced being interconnected within the supply chain relationships formed in humanitarian response settings. Data are used to test the conceptually developed model, using the structural equation modeling-partial least square (SEM-PLS) approach. Findings – Results show that visibility has a significant impact on resource sharing and the performance of the organizations, especially in terms of the willingness to share resources, resources used and flexibility of organizations. The results also show that, in situations of high uncertainty, the association between resource sharing and performance becomes weaker. Research limitations/implications – The study is limited to the method used. Practical implications – Findings of this research provide insights for humanitarian practitioners on the need to increase visibility of the scarce resources available within the relationships formed during a disaster relief operation to improve overall disaster response. The level of uncertainty in terms of needs assessment, number of affected people, location of a disaster and so forth, is also taken into account in the recommendations made. Originality/value – This study is among the first to empirically test the link between visibility, resource sharing and performance, specifically in a humanitarian context, which is among the critical success factors for better interorganizational coordination and better aid delivery.