Exploring Barriers to Coordination between Humanitarian NGOs: A Comparative Case Study of two NGO's Information Technology Coordination Bodies

Humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly collaborating through inter-organizational structures such as coalitions, alliances, partnerships, and coordination bodies. NGO’s information technology coordination bodies are groups of NGOs aimed at improving the efficiency of ICT use in humanitarian assistance through greater coordination. Despite their popularity, little is known about these coordination bodies, specifically the extent to which they address inter-organizational coordination problems. This paper examines coordination problems within two humanitarian NGO’s information technology coordination bodies. Based on data collected through interviews, observation, and document analysis, despite positive attitudes toward coordination by members, seven of eight widely accepted barriers to coordination still exist among members of these coordination bodies. Further, in a comparison of mandate-oriented, structural and behavioral coordination barriers, research finds mandate issues were most significant and structural factors were found in the greatest numbers. Findings suggest that effective humanitarian NGO’s information technology coordination bodies must pay attention to both organizational design and management issues, although the former are likely to have a greater impact on coordination. DOI: 10.4018/jissc.2011040101 2 International Journal of Information Systems and Social Change, 2(2), 1-25, April-June 2011 Copyright © 2011, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. INTrOduCTION In recent years, as the number of man-made and natural disasters has risen, so has the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in international humanitarian relief and development (UNDP, 2002). This growth has in part contributed to their increasing importance in the humanitarian field but at the same time has increased the range of challenges they face. One of these challenges is inter-organizational coordination around information technology (Saab et al., 2008). In an attempt to mitigate this challenge, humanitarian NGOs are forming structures such as coalitions, alliances, partnerships, and coordination bodies (Guo & Acar, 2005; Zhao et al., 2008). NGOs’ coordination bodies are groups of NGOs brought together with the purpose to improve coordination of their activities. Coordination efforts among NGOs members of a coordination body are thought to function as a solution to the duplication of efforts, poor planning and implementation of relief efforts, and a lack of knowledge among humanitarian organizations on the developing situation. This NGOs’ coordination entails developing strategies, determining objectives, planning, sharing information, dividing roles and responsibilities, and mobilizing resources. Coordination among NGOs is also concerned with synchronizing the mandates, roles and activities of the stakeholders and actors at higher organizational levels. NGOs coordination ensures that priorities are clearly defined, resources are efficiently utilized and duplication of effort minimized in order to provide coherent, effective and timely assistance to those in need (Harpviken et al., 2001). The issues involved in forming and maintaining these entities, as well as interorganizational relationships more broadly, have been the subject of some studies (Bennett, 1995; Donini, 1996; Harpviken et al., 2001). These studies find that while coordination bodies share a limited number of common traits, they vary in several dimensions. Common features include (1) independence from government; (2) existence of a semi-permanent secretariat; and (3) a variety of participants sharing common ideology (Bennett, 1994). Within the frame of these common elements, coordination bodies have been found to vary in their structure, size, formality and duration. Structural variations are observed in their variety of missions, organizational forms, and decision making processes. Size variations are reflected in coordination bodies that attempt to coordinate intensely among a small subset of NGOs, or target larger memberships and less complex interactions. Variation in the level of formality and authority depends on who has taken the initiative to set up the coordination entity, and which agencies are involved (Harpviken et al., 2001). Moreover, coordination bodies may be temporary initiatives, ongoing inter-agency bodies or permanent incorporated nonprofit organizations (Zhao et al., 2008). A number of coordination bodies focus exclusively on information technology and management (IT/IM) related issues. We refer to them in this paper as information technology coordination bodies. These coordination bodies aim at reducing redundancies and pooling limited IT resources, while at the same time promoting inter-organizational information sharing to improve humanitarian relief and disaster response. They help to ensure that organizations that are members have access to the best information and communication technology and practices when assisting during or after disasters. The two cases investigated in this paper are examples of such coordination bodies. HumaniNet is a salient example of an information technology coordination body. HumaniNet consists of over a hundred organizations. HumaniNet provides its members with practical assistance in global information and communication technologies, especially in remote areas. Despite their popularity, the existing scholarship on humanitarian NGOs has yet to investigate the impact of humanitarian NGO’s information technology coordination bodies. The literature is especially silent on the extent to which obstacles obstruct an effective inter-organizational information technology coordination under the umbrella of a coordiInternational Journal of Information Systems and Social Change, 2(2), 1-25, April-June 2011 3 Copyright © 2011, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. nation body. In response to this limitation, our research explores the issues that humanitarian NGO’s information technology coordination bodies face when carrying out their activities. Adopting the label of ‘coordination body’, this research addresses the question: “What barriers face NGO’s information technology coordination bodies in the humanitarian relief field?” Using a comparative case study design, this research investigates coordination problems within two humanitarian NGO’s information technology coordination bodies. The two coordination bodies1, ReliefTechNet International and Information Technology for Emergency Alliance (ITEA), have respectively twenty-two (22) and seven (7) organizational members. Our unit of analysis is the coordination body, not the member NGOs which comprise the bodies in question. The study introduces an analytic framework that divides coordination barriers into mandate, behavioral, and structural categories and finds that the coordination bodies studied here differentially influence these areas. Taking into account past literature, the study finds that from the eight identified coordination barriers, the coordination bodies seem to be able to overcome only one barrier, namely competition for resources among members. In addition, descriptions provided by the subjects elaborated on the nature of the obstacles helps to add detail to the framework introduced in the first part of this study. When approaching this research, we identified the eight barriers to inter-organizational coordination as said earlier, but did not anticipate each of the eight to receive equal weight from our study participants. Both the special context of our research, humanitarian relief, and the special type of coordination bodies, those focused on IT, signaled to us that the weighting of these barriers would be differently distributed. The context of humanitarian relief led us to believe that the barriers involving resources and costs would be paramount. From the literature on these large-scale humanitarian relief organizations we knew that finances, resources and personnel are always stretched thin. We anticipated that competition and the perceived increasing costs of coordination would prevent some organizations from entering into coordination body project activities. Conversely, we assumed that barriers involving conflicting goals and values would receive little weight since most organizations shared the larger mission of humanitarian relief. The fact that both coordinating bodies in question were also special, focused on technology issues, also led us to anticipate an unequal weighting of these barriers. We assumed that since the body was focused on more technical, rather than organizational joint projects and activities, barriers involving information and communication issues and divergent goals would matter less to decisions to coordinate. The members of the coordinating bodies who sat around the table shared an interest and expertise in IT. This led us to believe that those problems that could be classified as technical problems would be treated as such and dealt with easily by the body. Those that were more organizational may have been seen as out of their scope of expertise and may have presented more of a barrier to coordinate. The paper is structured as follows: the next section provides a background on coordination barriers, which is followed by the third section that introduces the analytic framework. In section four, the research methods are discussed and thereafter, the two coordination body case studies are presented. In section six, the research findings are articulated followed by the discussion and conclusions in section seven.