Horizontal Coordination of I-LNGOs in the Humanitarian Supply Chain: An Evolutionary Game Approach

• Main Authors: Fan Chen, Sen Liu, Andrea Appolloni
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-07-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: sustainability; humanitarian supply chain; NGO; coordination; evolutionary game
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/15/5953

Disasters accompanied by heavy casualties and huge economic losses directly result in the disruption or delay of economic development. Considering the urgent need for reducing losses and accelerating the process of social recovery, international nongovernment organizations (INGOs) and local NGOs (LNGOs) with different resource endowments should achieve organizational coordination to improve the relief efficiency and sustainability of the humanitarian supply chain. Due to conflicting interests and expectations, this coordination is hard to achieve. In this study, we first establish an evolutionary game model between INGOs and LNGOs to determine the influencing factors and explore the interaction of NGOs in a dynamic way. Our results show that: (1) coordination by resource sharing can improve the sustainability of the humanitarian supply chain; (2) coordination willingness is affected by the behavior of other players, which can nevertheless achieve equilibrium under certain conditions; and (3) the important factors and optimal strategies of players are highlighted in the dynamic model. This study provides several insights into the theory of organizational coordination in the humanitarian supply chain regarding sustainability.