Barriers to Coordination Among Humanitarian Organizations: Insights from Practitioners in a Developing Country

Coordination plays an important role in facilitating effective and efficient humanitarian operations. However, coordination in humanitarian operations is not an easy task due to uncertainty and limited available time to establish coordination. The present paper aims at identifying perceived barriers to coordination among humanitarian organizations. An empirical survey involving 150 experienced practitioners from both governmental and non-governmental humanitarian organizations was conducted. Findings indicate that the highest quartile of the perceived barriers are related to inter-organizational compatibility, i.e., incompatibility on mission and goal, timeline, structure/policies, work culture, lack of sense of togetherness; organizational barriers including risk of dependency, limited resources; and external factors in terms of demand uncertainty. The least quartile of the perceived barriers is dominated by organizational barriers with respect to lack of incentives, lack of identity, and risk against fast response, and inter-organizational barrier in terms of communication/language barrier. The potential strategies dealing with the barriers are explored. Avenues for future research are also discussed.