Humanitarian supply chain management: a systematic literature review and directions for future research

The purposes of this study are to review the available literature of humanitarian supply chain management (HSCM), highlight the research gaps and set the future research agenda. This research presents a literature review on HSCM over a time span of 14 years (2005-2018). Content analysis is used to examine the available studies which were published in well-known databases. The material selection process leads to 316 full text papers for analysis. The HSCM research is thoroughly reviewed and structured as per the contents using descriptive and categorical analysis. The key observation indicates that the HSCM research is mostly focused on the qualitative research methods. There is enough possibility to explore the MCDM methods in HSCM research for decision making in challenging situations. The findings also illustrate that there is adequate scope to develop the HSCM fields and possibility to explore the wide range of unfamiliar but very useful research avenues.