Humanitarian Actors’ Cooperation Network in the Social Sustainability Context. Evidence from Poland
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- Governmental institutions, such as intergovernmental organizations, regional associations, governments, local authorities [11];
- Rescue and supportive units, such as rescue units, medical staff, military;
- Essential products suppliers, such as manufacturers, service providers;
- Society, such as donors, recipients, churches, and religious organizations.
- What is the level of cooperation of Polish humanitarian organizations with other humanitarian actors?
- Who could be a leader(s) of humanitarian sector coordination and synchronization, to ensure social sustainability?
2. Materials and Methods
- Identification of actors and relations;
- Gathering of adequate data;
- Preparation of the matrix of relations;
- Network analysis;
- Results discussion.
- 0 means no cooperation of any kind (never cooperated with a given HA);
- 1 means one-time actions involving HA;
- 2 denotes occasional and irregular HA engagement;
- 3 indicates occasional and regular HA engagement;
- 4 denotes frequent and regular HA engagement;
- 5 means constant and lasting projects involving HA (permanent cooperation).
3. Results
3.1. Macro-Level Metrics of Polish Humanitarian Sector Cooperation
3.2. Micro-Level Metrics of Humanitarian Actors’ Cooperation
4. Discussion
- The group of leaders that could be responsible for integrative humanitarian actions and synchronization of activities but also ensuring social sustainability, and effective social policy implementation, such as humanitarian organizations, donors, non-governmental organizations, and community;
- The group of followers that could become followers of the leaders and support synchronization of activities in the field of administrative and institutional tasks in the humanitarian sector or social policy, as well as transport and storage processes, such as governmental institutions (transnational, national, local), logistics operators, and scientific institutions;
- The group of supporters and suppliers, whose role is to minimize the negative effects of the humanitarian crises, to provide supplies of essential humanitarian products, and to participate actively in the synchronization of various activities, such as rescue and supportive units (rescue teams, hospitals, armed forces) or as suppliers of aid goods;
- The group of secondary supporters that cooperate with other HAs and are located on the periphery of the humanitarian sector, such as sanitary equipment suppliers, fuel companies, waste management companies, and IT companies.
- organizational and institutional cooperation represents a wide understanding of cooperation among HAs that might be hard to manage and hard to improve; therefore, a more in-depth analysis should be performed from the perspective of specific areas of social sustainability, such as [23] justice, safety, well-being, quality of life, social inclusion (of e.g., refugees and IDPs), etc.;
- social sustainability is not only focused on improving the cooperation of various stakeholders, but also on implementing direct solutions for ending poverty and hunger, ensuring healthy lives, inclusive and equitable quality education, and the availability of water and sanitation for people, taking actions to combat climate change, promoting peaceful societies and justice for all, etc. A sustainable manner of the above-mentioned selected Sustainable Development Goals [18] should be discussed more broadly, for their integrative implementation through adequate policies and activities;
- no direct social sustainability solution has been proposed that could support more integrative and synchronized activities of the various HAs. This perspective might consist of different policy-making institutions [25,28], from the economic, logistic, infrastructural, or social fields, and who have different methods and tools for implementing solutions at national and transnational levels. The proposed hubs for framework and mechanism implementation constitute general guidelines that require formulating in more detail.
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
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SNA Metric | Description | Research Sample |
---|---|---|
May be called actors or vertices. The position of the node is a partial determinant of its opportunities and constraints. In the research sample, nodes represent humanitarian organizations that participated in the survey. | 100 | |
May be treated as activity links, resource ties, or actor bonds. This informs about activities, resource elements, or bonds of two or more organizations that can be connected in different ways, or how the relationships have developed over time, how actors may perceive each other concerning each other. In the research sample, affiliations refer to the humanitarian actors (HAs) presented in Figure 1. | 22 | |
Network mode | ). | 2-mode |
) | May be called edges. This is the total number of ties that are created by the nodes’ (n) assessment of affiliations (m). Ties constitute the matrix of relations. | 2200 |
Character of relations | Defines the complexity of the network and the structure of relations that may be directed: one-sided (asymmetric) or undirected, double-sided (symmetric). In the research sample, character of relations does not play an important role; the presence of a relationship was considered to be more important than its direction. | Undirected |
Degree | The number of ties connecting a node to its network that measures visibility, influence, and potential as a coordinator. | |
Closeness | Sum of geodesic distances to all other nodes, which measure access to information or risk of disruption. | |
Betweenness | The proportion of all shortest paths between nodes in the network. In an undirected network, this is called the symmetric betweenness and detects key players and gatekeepers. | |
Eigenvector | Vector of positive values in a binary matrix that indicates node connectedness within a network. A higher eigenvector indicates that the node is likely to be connected to other nodes that are highly connected. | |
Density | The number of ties in a network divided by the total number of ties (n×m, where n means a number of rows and m means number of columns in the matrix). Dense networks more easily develop common trust and behavioral patterns through facilitating flows of information. | 0.675 |
Radius | The minimum eccentricity in the network. A node is central if its eccentricity is equal to the radius. | 2.000 |
Diameter | The maximum eccentricity in the network. If the radius and diameter are equal, the network is self-centered (all nodes belong to the center). | 3.000 |
Average path length (undirected) | Average geodesic path length in the bipartite graph, within components. | 1.896 |
Transitivity | The number of quadruples with four legs divided by the number with three or more legs, in a bipartite graph. | 0.755 |
No. | Humanitarian Actor | Degree | Closeness | Betweenness | Eigenvector |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Humanitarian organization | 0.940 | 0.922 | 0.068 | 0.280 |
2 | Non-governmental organization | 0.930 | 0.910 | 0.065 | 0.279 |
3 | Religious organization | 0.800 | 0.780 | 0.047 | 0.243 |
4 | Intergovernmental organization | 0.690 | 0.696 | 0.033 | 0.212 |
5 | National administration | 0.760 | 0.747 | 0.040 | 0.235 |
6 | Local authorities | 0.760 | 0.747 | 0.040 | 0.235 |
7 | Regional association | 0.750 | 0.740 | 0.041 | 0.229 |
8 | Rescue units | 0.680 | 0.689 | 0.031 | 0.212 |
9 | Hospitals | 0.610 | 0.645 | 0.023 | 0.196 |
10 | Armed forces | 0.600 | 0.640 | 0.025 | 0.184 |
11 | Private logistics operators | 0.770 | 0.755 | 0.047 | 0.230 |
12 | Fuel companies | 0.390 | 0.538 | 0.010 | 0.121 |
13 | IT companies | 0.370 | 0.530 | 0.009 | 0.118 |
14 | Scientific institutions | 0.710 | 0.710 | 0.036 | 0.217 |
15 | Food products suppliers | 0.790 | 0.772 | 0.047 | 0.237 |
16 | Drinking water suppliers | 0.590 | 0.634 | 0.025 | 0.181 |
17 | Sanitary equipment suppliers | 0.390 | 0.538 | 0.011 | 0.124 |
18 | Suppliers of essential products | 0.500 | 0.587 | 0.016 | 0.161 |
19 | Suppliers of medicaments and medical devices | 0.590 | 0.634 | 0.025 | 0.184 |
20 | Waste management companies | 0.380 | 0.534 | 0.008 | 0.125 |
21 | Donors | 0.940 | 0.922 | 0.069 | 0.281 |
22 | Community | 0.910 | 0.887 | 0.066 | 0.270 |
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Marcinkowski, J. Humanitarian Actors’ Cooperation Network in the Social Sustainability Context. Evidence from Poland. Sustainability 2022, 14, 5492. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14095492
Marcinkowski J. Humanitarian Actors’ Cooperation Network in the Social Sustainability Context. Evidence from Poland. Sustainability. 2022; 14(9):5492. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14095492
Chicago/Turabian StyleMarcinkowski, Jakub. 2022. "Humanitarian Actors’ Cooperation Network in the Social Sustainability Context. Evidence from Poland" Sustainability 14, no. 9: 5492. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14095492