Governance of service triads in humanitarian logistics

Service triads, in which a buyer contracts with a supplier to deliver services directly to the buyer’s customer, represent an emerging business model. Service triads entail a structure of inter-organizational relationships that is fundamentally different to that encountered in linear supply chains (Li and Choi 2009; Tate et al. 2010). Interestingly, most of the services International Humanitarian Organisations (IHOs) offer to each other fall under the realm of logistics (van Wassenhove 2006), for example, the World Food Programme (WFP) offers customs clearance, transportation and warehousing services through the logistics cluster to other organizations (WFP 2013).

The governance in service triads is always more complex than in dyadic buyer-supplier relationships. This study uses agency theory to understand the dynamics between principal(s) and agent(s) and how contractual arrangements influence the buyer-service provider alignment in humanitarian service triads.