Determinants of Skills and Competencies of Humanitarian Logisticians: A Sri Lankan Perspective for Developing Countries

In recent years due to the interest, attention and the precedence of humanitarian operations, logistics took a new turn into humanitarian areas. Humanitarian Logistics (HL) has now become one of the significant factors in assisting to any disaster. Skills of the logisticians are therefore a necessity to effectively manage the supply chain in a disaster. Given the recent issues that are being faced with regard to HL at each disaster that occurs in Sri Lanka, it is vital to research in to the area of HL. A number of researches have been carried out in finding skills of the humanitarian logisticians at global level. However, as to date there has been limited discussion on the skills of humanitarian logisticians in the Sri Lankan humanitarian field. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was conducted in order to find the skills of humanitarian logisticians in Sri Lanka. Skills which were identified earlier by researchers were further tested in order to find the applicability in the local HL landscape. We have identified deferent set of component than in the previous studies. Results will assist the training and recruiting humanitarian logisticians. Additionally, this paper also indicates future research requirements to the field of HL.