Humanitarian Logistics at a Crossroads: How Logisticians Reconcile Their Professional and Humanitarian Identities in Response to Tougher Host Government Regulations

Humanitarian aid workers increasingly experience pressure to professionalize their services in order to ensure more efficient and effective assistance to disaster victims. Particularly for logisticians, this pressure is also the result of increasingly tough regulations imposed by host governments. This causes a dilemma for aid workers: Professionalization can be at odds with their humanitarian values and principles, such as providing unhindered assistance, without discrimination, to whoever needs it. This research explores how humanitarian logisticians experience and deal with this dilemma. In particular, how they reconcile humanitarian values and principles on the one hand with their (developing) professional standards and practices on the other. Theoretical concepts on professionalization, social identity, and so‐called boundary work are used to analyze the problem. Results show that individual logisticians adopt one of four distinct identities when approaching reconciliation, namely: Professional‐dominance, intersection, union, or humanitarian‐dominance identities. The associated approaches inform how they engage with stakeholders and make decisions. Each approach has its benefits and shortcomings in various operational settings. This implies there is a need to further establish the settings in which each approach delivers the best logistics performance. 摘要 人道主义工作者在职业化的道路上经受着高压力，这是因为在一方面东道主政府对他们工作的要求越来越高，他们要按照职业标准工作，同时符合严苛的政府规定。然而，在另一方面，职业化时常和人道主义价值观及准则发生冲突，因为后者要求平等对待需要任何帮助的人，为他们提供不受阻碍的援助。如果遵循规定，则某些规定会导致弱势群体无法获得救灾物资。本研究对一家大型国际人道主义组织（international humanitarian organization，IHO）的人道主义物流人员进行探索，他们代表了经受上述高压力的人道主义工作者。研究探索了他们如何面对挑战，如何使其人道主义价值观和原则在一方面与（发展）职业标准及实践取得平衡，同时在另一方面努力实现良好表现，不受到政府规定压力的影响。本文将有关职业化、社会认同和所谓边界工作的理论概念作为分析问题的视角。结果显示，个别后勤人员采用了和解人道主义和职业价值观及原则的四种独特方法之一，这些方法进而能说明他们如何接触利益相关者，如何作出与工作相关的决定。每一种方法在不同的操作背景下都有其自身的优缺点。 Resumen Los trabajadores humanitarios tienen mucha presión para profesionalizarse debido a los requisitos elevados de los gobiernos anfitriones para trabajar de acuerdo con las normas profesionales y acatar normas muy estrictas. Sin embargo, por otro lado, la profesionalización está a menudo en contra de los valores y principios humanitarios para proveer una asistencia sin obstáculos y sin discriminación para quien la necesite. Si se respetan, algunas reglas pueden llevar a la exclusión de poblaciones vulnerables de recibir suministros de ayuda. Esta investigación explora cómo los logísticos humanitarios, quienes ejemplifican a los trabajad