Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of logistics service providers’ (LSPs) initiatives to disaster relief and how LSPs are engaged with humanitarian sector. In recent years, the importance of logistics services in disaster relief operations and the capacity of LSPs to improve humanitarian supply chain management have become an increasingly interesting topic for both professionals and academics. Design/methodology/approach: This research follows a qualitative approach based on multiple case studies. Findings: The current research, after considering the differences and similarities among collaboration, cooperation and coordination and underlining how crucial these mechanisms are in the humanitarian context, explains the contribution of LSPs to relief operations alongside humanitarians. Research limitations/implications: There has been increased interest in humanitarian logistics on the part of international academic and professional communities. This study constitutes a first exploratory step in the research to build a platform for benchmarking analysis of logistics services that aims to ensure the effective implementation of social responsibility principles. Practical implications: The managerial implications arising from the research offer a range of current responsible actions from which strategic and operative directions to contribute can be derived. Originality/value: Humanitarian logistics represents a crucial field in logistics management. This paper addresses the innovative socially responsible initiatives undertaken by the main international LSPs in the area of humanitarian logistics.

As disasters become progressively more frequent and complex, better collaboration through partnerships with private business becomes more important. This research aimed to understand how platforms support the engagement of the private sector—especially logistics businesses—in humanitarian relief operations. The study was based on a literature review and on an investigation of an emblematic case of the cross-sector platform, recognized at a global level in logistics and supply chain management, between the United Nations World Food Programme and the Logistics Emergency Teams (WFP/LET), composed of four global leading logistics providers. The insights resulting from this paper may be of particular interest to both academics and professionals regarding the two sectors, profit and non-profit. This is because the implementation of the platform reflects the concrete benefit for people in need reached by the humanitarian relief operations. It may also constitute a useful tool for building an agile supply chain capable of being resilient in responding to sudden and unexpected changes in the context, both in humanitarian and commercial supply chains.

Purpose: The present paper aims at understanding how horizontal network collaborations between small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can be designed and implemented to take advantage of a supply chain finance (SCF) perspective.Design/methodology/approach: This study presents an SCF literature background identifying four literature gaps, and in response to them it adopts an action research approach. The empirical analysis is developed on a network-case study: a horizontal collaboration project between small businesses of the Italian wine industry and their supply chains.Findings: SMEs can play an active role in developing – in terms of design and implementation – their collaborative networks by taking advantage of an SCF perspective for themselves, and their customers, based on the reorganization of relationships interface processes. Taking this perspective can be a concrete and crucial way to sustain the development of SMEs and their supply chains in an actual competitive context.Research limitations/implications: The paper identifies the theoretical gaps in the literature, suggests new research areas that deserve to be more deeply investigated and connects case-related results to the key concepts. The empirical part presents a real case application that proposes a complete roadmap for managers and practitioners who wish to experience similar projects.Practical implications: This network-case study storyline, presenting an overview of ten years of meetings, with related purposes, is suggesting a roadmap for design and implementation of horizontal network as managerial implications. These kinds of active research projects, with a collaborative mixed team of academics and practitioners, and involving a multilayer group of participants, are positive examples for closing the bridge between companies and academia, which enhance this network of small businesses active in trying to improve their competitiveness working together.Originality/value: The value of the paper is to embrace a supply chain-oriented perspective for an SME, independent of the financial system and based on inventory flow management. Very little literature focuses on inventory-based research within the SCF framework, designed for real implementation in horizontal network collaboration by entrepreneurial ventures.