The contribution of skills of humanitarian logistics workers to logistics performance in disaster relief

With the growing number of natural and man-made disasters happening in a world of uncertainty and rapid changes, the area of humanitarian logistics has recently received interest from researchers. It is crucial for humanitarian organizations to study logistics skills to help managers identify job requirements accordingly and find the right human capital, and be aware of the most relevant skills that contribute to the development of logistics performance. The purpose of this study is to reveal the most important skills for humanitarian logistics performance from the point of view of humanitarian logisticians who are engaged in the disaster relief operations in Türkiye. Additionally, this study aims at testing whether there is a relationship between the perceived importance of general management and functional logistics skills and some demographic variables. To achieve this aim, a self-administered questionnaire is distributed to humanitarian logisticians who are engaged in disaster relief operations in different humanitarian organizations in Türkiye. A sample of 230 responses was collected. With the help of SPSS 25, descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, and Post Hoc tests are used to analyze the data. The study finds that the importance of the functional logistics skills perceived by humanitarian logisticians working in disaster relief operations in several humanitarian organizations in Türkiye varies significantly across different years of work experience. Moreover, the results indicate that the importance of the general management skills perceived by humanitarian logisticians varies significantly in terms of the international character of duties and among different job positions. Keywords: Disaster Relief, Humanitarian Logistics, Logistics Performance, Logistics Skills.