Food banks are humanitarian aid organizations that collect, organize, and deliver food to nonprofit member agencies and also to individuals to help alleviate the society’s hunger problem. The supply chain of food banks is characterized by private sector companies, individual donors and governmental agencies providing monetary support and food inventory on the supply side, and the member agencies such as food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and volunteers delivering support on the demand side. Within the purview of this supply chain, food banks strive to improve their performance, which is commonly measured in terms of the amount of food delivered to the communities in need. Food banks rely on managerial talent that is relatively more constrained than the private sector and also use a voluntary workforce for attaining their performance goals. Considering the unique yet pertinent role of human assets in food banks to manage their supply chain integration (SCI) initiatives, in a recent paper my co-authors and I employ an intellectual capital (IC) framework to analyze the human, organizational, and social capital antecedents of supply chain integration in food banks. Specifically, we suggest that intellectual capital drives supply chain integration in humanitarian organizations. Moreover, we propose specific relationships between the dimensions of intellectual capital. A carefully crafted survey is used to inform our results. The results indicate that human capital significantly impacts social capital, which, in turn, drives all supply chain integration dimensions.
Our study sheds light on the mechanism through which Social Capital is built in a humanitarian aid setting. The findings from SUR and mediation analyses indicate that Human Capital and Organizational Capital precede Social Capital, which, in turn, helps in building SCI in food banks. Since Social Capital channels the impact of Human Capital and Organizational Capital on SCI, it suggests that the quality of relationships shaped by the Social Capital plays a critical role in attaining SCI in food banks. Prior studies have reported that relational embeddedness, which is a part of Social Capital, is especially instrumental in terms of process innovation. We show that achieving strategic collaborative relationships in humanitarian supply chains is driven by the interplay among the dimensions of IC. This is one of the significant theoretical contributions of our study. We show that Human Capital and Organizational Capital play a foundational role in developing Social Capital. The Social Capital thus formed, in turn, determines the way SCI is driven. Specifically, Social Capital acts as a mediator between Human Capital and Supply Integration, and between Human Capital and Internal Integration. Moreover, we also observe a mediating role of Social Capital between Organizational Capital and Supply Integration, and between Organizational Capital and Internal Integration. Systematic lack of support of the mediation of the relationship between Human Capital and Demand Integration, and between Organizational Capital and Demand Integration by Social Capital is interesting and is worth investigating in future research.
It seems that upstream and internal SCI is achieved via Social Capital facilitating Human Capital and Organizational Capital; however, we do not observe the same facilitating influence of Social Capital in the downstream. There are studies that investigate supply integration or buyer–supplier relationships and Social Capital in the literature. However, the relationship between demand integration and Social Capital has not been studied as much and it could shed light on the lack of significance for the mediating role of Social Capital. Age of the food bank did not turn out to be a significant variable in our model. While one might suspect the history of the organization to play a significant role in terms of establishing SCI, a lack of significance or a negative relationship between age and SCI has been observed in the literature before. Traditional organizations might not be willing to engage in joint decision making, which is a common indicator of integration with supply chain partners, due to their inertia and resistance to change. In our case, we observe no significant relationship between SCI and age. Therefore, we can say that in the nonprofit sector, determinants of supply chain dynamics might be different than the amount of time the organization has been in existence.
In general, our study presents valuable insights for the management of food banks. First, given that IC precedes and acts as an antecedent to SCI, food banks should be proactive in managing their Human, Organizational, and Social Capital. Human Capital is especially instrumental in building Social Capital. Our findings show that Social Capital is influenced more by the skilled workforce as compared to codified knowledge repository and information exchange mechanisms. Hence, food bank managers should give emphasis to enhancing the skill levels of their workforce, perhaps with training programs and workshops that focus on continuous improvement. Our results support the argument that good information does not translate into productive coordination unless knowledge facilitates the use of these resources effectively and contributes to collaboration. Further, information is transformed into knowledge when it is combined with know-how and expertise of the staff. This knowledge helps in making informed decisions and also promotes collaboration by improving alignment between parties involved in decision-making. Hunger issue needs to be addressed urgently and on a continuous basis, and the food bank staff has to work under various financial and time constraints to find creative solutions to deliver food. Food banks, like other humanitarian organizations, need to be agile and adaptable so as to handle the operational issues they face. In this respect, the intellectual structure of the organization is instrumental in achieving the required responsiveness by appropriately shaping the supply chain management practices.
As Social Capital is a crucial aspect of IC and influences all dimensions of SCI, it should be given particular attention in food banks. Our pre-analysis interviews with the food bank executives indicated that they are quite cognizant of the criticality of human assets in their business. We show that while this recognition of the importance of Human Capital is good, executives in charge of strategic decisions in the food-banking sector should prioritize development of Social Capital to enhance their internal and external integration initiatives. The results of our study show that Social Capital provides the pathway for obtaining the SCI benefits resulting from both Human Capital and Organizational Capital. Social Capital is the sum of all resources, existing and potential, residing in and available through the network of relationships of members of a group. Social Capital encourages cooperative behavior and promotes value creation through development of new forms of association and innovative methods.We find support for the facilitating role of this important dimension of IC in a humanitarian aid setting. Food banks are social enterprises that require practical solutions, dynamism, and agility to operate and survive. Social Capital provides access to broader sources of information that is relevant, timely, and of high quality. The knowledge, capabilities, and skills of the actors (Human Capital) and the knowledge engrained in structures, systems, and processes (Organizational Capital) are transformed into practices that support integrated supply chains through the network of interrelationships (Social Capital).
Social Capital makes exchange of knowledge possible both within the organization and across boundaries with external partners because the actors identify themselves with a community and commit to collective goals and shared targets. In sum, we consider IC as a structural characteristic that drives managerial practices (SCI) in the organization. As food banks deal with extensive uncertainty in terms of supply base, inconsistency and lack of standards in donations, variety of partners, and matching supply to demand, these organizations can and do benefit from strategic supply chain management practices. We propose an IC framework to analyze a potential driver for SCI in this type of resource-constrained nonprofit organizations. Managers of food banks should spend effort in recruiting and maintaining talent and relationships for the survival of their organizations as our analysis provides empirical support for the influence of the human factor in the nonprofit organization and emphasizes the social aspect of operations in this setting.