Engaging the humanitarian marketplace: Values,valuations and the making of humanitarian geographies

Abstract

This article argues that humanitarian procurement and supply activities create geographies that are underpinned by valuations and the various values these arrange. The article draws from interviews with global procurement, commodity and supply chain leads for European and North American humanitarian organisations providing emergency humanitarian assistance and development programming as to how they engage with values and valuations in their professional practice. The article draws from economic sociology and its focus on valuation as a situated social process to explore how different values are recognised, negotiated and ordered within humanitarian procurement and supply practices. By paying attention to reflections on self-described practice, we can see the importance of standard procurement principles in accommodating different values, economic and normative, and how these organise market arrangements for different goods and services. This approach crucially allows for the possibility for new values to be accommodated (such as sustainability). It also shows the conflicts and strains that arise when existing processes and arrangements that have been legitimised by practice are questioned, namely through the localisation agenda and its reimagining of the values which underpin the flow and control of resources and the challenges this can make to international humanitarian arrangements and the sector’s colonial legacy. The article prompts further thought as to what values will continue to resonate in the sector and which new values will be realised through procurement and supply decisions in the future. The article highlights the importance of thinking with values and valuation processes in the making of humanitarian geographies. By extension, this highlights the importance of diverse theoretical bases for understanding value and valuation as a critical geographical practice.

Introduction

The provisioning of goods and services by international humanitarian organisations in times of emergency and ongoing crises creates a geography that has both values and valuations at its core. To initiate action humanitarian organisations, both international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and United Nations (UN) agencies, must obtain funding for projects and programming from donors. This has become a highly competitive market, framed by tools and techniques that economise and monetize aid outcomes and their delivery Herrick et al., 2022; Krause, 2014). This market-based approach to both organising humanitarian responses and funding allotments speaks to the power of market logics in contemporary society. As Fourcade (2011) notes, organisations are often required to economise normative or moral outcomes, using different technologies and techniques to budget for these outcomes as part of their missions, but the outcomes envisaged by such valuations are highly contingent on their social and temporal context. Thus, what is imagined, how these valuations become established (if at all) and with what effect are crucial matters to explore. Likewise, we cannot assume all values are considered and arranged at the point of project design and that additional values are not encountered and negotiated in decision-making at a later date. It is, therefore, important to examine the ‘routines and practices that do the deciding’ within humanitarian organisations (Krause, 2014: 172). The article focuses on this space of decision-making and specifically explores humanitarian procurement practice which, through its identification and sourcing of goods and services in different markets, directly engages with a diversity of values and valuation processes. Throughout this article, values are understood as organising actions that work to achieve desired effects or outcomes, and valuation as the ordering process through which social practices and technologies articulate values.

The article draws from accounts of global supply and procurement professionals in Western-based international humanitarian organisations as they describe their practice. This practice-based focus helps to encourage reflection and to overcome official accounts being presented which remove agency (Mosse, 2011). It also enables direct exploration as to how they engage with and negotiate changing normative values, alongside professional values, and regulatory and other valuation techniques in their decision-making. The article contributes to this special issue by highlighting how a practice-based engagement with values and valuations can interrogate processes typically described as being routine, standardised and ‘apolitical’ procedures. This approach specifically enables exploration of how different normative and economic values and their imagined outcomes are negotiated by global procurement and supply professionals. Moreover, by paying attention to the changing context of humanitarian action and the criticisms of the Western dominated system, we see how procurement has become a critical site of valuation for humanitarian organisations as to what values are recognised, legitimated and performed through everyday institutional practices.

Humanitarian action is underpinned by the commitment to support the well-being of a typically distant other (Barnett, 2011), commonly attributed to universal values of impartiality, neutrality, compassion and collective solidarity. While aid can be ‘driven by solidarity’, it is ‘often predicated on a liberal interventionism by Western states’ (Hyndman, 2018: 372). Geographers have emphasised the unevenness of the humanitarian response, for example, the bio-political and structural violence in the targeting and inadequacy of assistance (Newhouse, 2015; Smith, 2015), and the uncertainties of everyday life in a city dominated by humanitarian activity (Newhouse, 2017) or the reliance on it for life-saving infrastructure (Smith, 2015). Central to humanitarian geographies are the geopolitical and geoeconomic decisions that determine the flow of aid as discretionary responses to sudden emergencies or ongoing crises. Within this body of work, less attention has been paid to the decision-making of response that organises the provision of goods and services by the humanitarian industry. The systems of humanitarian provisioning developed by Western actors have been informed by military supply chain and logistical expertise and technologies (Attewell, 2018; Chua et al., 2018). Greater critical attention is now being paid to the ordering of circulation that results from the vagaries, violence and injustices experienced through supply chain capitalism (Tsing, 2009). In turn, the framing of humanitarian logistics and supply chains ‘as an apolitical science of circulation’ (Chua et al., 2018: 625) is being increasingly challenged (Pascucci, 2021; Ziadah, 2019). The workings of donor values in the circulation and delivery of aid are also being explored following critical engagement with humanitarian logistics and supply chain infrastructures (Pascucci, 2021; Ziadah, 2019) and are now emerging as a focus within humanitarian procurement (Siawsh et al., 2021).

Humanitarian procurement, as a form of public procurement, is structured by regulatory procedures and embedded principles such as ‘best value for money’ and consequently follows a highly standardised and technical process (Logistics Cluster, 2021). It was estimated that in 2020 the total global funding available for humanitarian response was US$30.9 bn (Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA), 2021). As approximately 65% of humanitarian expenditure relates to procurement activities (Falasca and Zobel, 2011), the potential impacts of the valuation processes underpinning decision-making are significant as are the impacts that procurement practices can have on the various markets they engage with and participate in. Despite a recognised paucity of studies explicitly considering humanitarian procurement (see Moshtari et al., 2021; Siawsh et al., 2021), existing studies tend to focus on procurement’s technical contributions to the efficiency and effectiveness of supply decisions. These are described as ‘primary’ procurement activities and centre on the identification and sourcing of goods and services (such as supplier selection and contract design), with analysis focused on modelling and developing tools for economic optimization (Moshtari et al., 2021). Thus, while procurement has been described as playing a ‘vanguard role’ in humanitarian supply chains, it remains portrayed as an administrative means of achieving cost-effective competitive advantage over other humanitarian organisations to deliver desired activities (Siawsh et al., 2021). Little attention has been given to what Moshtari et al. (2021) describe as ‘support’ activities. These are the key processes and relationships that ensure humanitarian project and programme objectives and organisational missions are met through procurement as it works to recognise and negotiate different economic and normative values. It is within this context of organisational decision-making that the article is situated.

The article is organised as follows. ‘Values and valuation’ section outlines the approach to values and valuation adopted in this article. ‘Contemporary humanitarianism: Markets, values and valuations’ section discusses the research context and current humanitarian arrangements in more detail, namely, market-based humanitarianism, on-going sectoral reforms and how these engage with procurement, its governing principles and existing procedures. ‘Methodology’ section introduces the scoping study undertaken with global supply chain, procurement and commodity leads with humanitarian organisations during summer 2021 that provides the empirical basis for the article. ‘Principles and practice’ section presents the analysis and identifies two main areas of attention. The first focuses on the importance of procurement principles in guiding the ordering of different values in decision-making (valuation), including the negotiation of potentially conflicting values emerging from wider concerns and policy agendas such as sustainability. Following from this, the second part of the analysis explores how pervading values and associated valuation practices can be questioned and re-imagined in response to changing societal and institutional pressures. The discussion focusses on the localisation agenda and its attempts to promote an inclusive humanitarian sector and practice and move on from its colonial legacy. ‘Concluding discussion’ section provides the concluding discussion noting how procurement practice has become a critical site for both humanitarian organisations and the sector more broadly. This is not just with regard to the practicalities of organising humanitarian response, but also the strains exerted on valuation processes as the practices associated are themselves more critically attended to as to how different relations and outcomes may be realised.

Values and valuation

This article is informed and framed by discussions within economic sociology and science and technology studies where questions of value and valuation are frequently explored through situated practices. In particular, Fourcade (2011) has argued that valuation is about the making of evaluative frames that incorporate ‘all kinds of assumptions about the social order and socially structured imaginaries about worth’ (p. 1769). Fourcade’s exploration of valuation recognises its social patterning wherein the techniques and tools used to establish worth (and its monetary equivalent) are social constructs that gain authority, in particular social, political and institutional contexts. These only ‘make sense in relation to the systems of expertise, social relations and cultural narratives’ in which they are found, and subsequently form a ‘feedback loop’ into social practices (Fourcade, 2011: 1728). Heinich’s (2020) recent discussion also conceives of value, values and valuation processes as socially constructed. Values are framed by actors but often configured by existing institutions and relational frameworks. This informs Heinich’s conceptualisation of the valuation process which consists of three articulated moments: ‘measure’ or worth which can include price; ‘attachment’ or an often-implicit attributed quality; and ‘judgement’ explicitly expressed by stated opinions or embodied behaviour, such as professional judgements and informal opinions. Each moment foregrounds a different contextual ‘experience’ of valuation, with the moment of judgement providing for an understanding of an ‘actors relationship to value’ (Heinich, 2020: 88). Both Fourcade and Heinich’s arguments have been informed in different ways by the work of Boltanski and Thévenot (2006 [1991]) and the economies of worth approach (often referred to as convention theory). This work has been central in promoting understandings of value that go beyond monetised and price-based approaches. This is based on common modes of justification and evaluation – involving moral and normative concerns – that attempt to stabilise shared meanings of value for coordinating actions. Conventions can come into play when large-scale coordination is needed between unfamiliar actors. However, the investments actors make in particular conventions and their evaluation techniques (i.e. rules and standards) can potentially suppress other ways of judging value, and so the ‘blind confidence’ in adhering to a particular convention can exclude and oppress other voices (Thévenot, 2009). Yet, such large-scale shared conventions become difficult to reconcile with an exploration of how and why different values come to matter, how we ‘actively deal with their interrelations’ and the plurality of valuation processes that may evolve in response (Fourcade, 2011; Kjellberg and Mallard, 2013: 22). Consequently, this article seeks to emphasise the contextual basis of valuation and the importance of professional expertise alongside other normative concerns in understanding the meanings and representations of value for actors through their situated practice, especially during times of transition.

More specifically, as socially constructed and situated practices, the relevance and authority of specific value systems and valuation processes can be called into question by changing societal and institutional concerns (Kjellberg and Mallard, 2013). When products or outcomes are inflected with normative values, or there is a shift in institutional context that queries the performance and relevance of existing systems, investigation is needed as to why these values matter and how they are engaged with by actors in their valuation processes (Fourcade, 2011; Helgesson and Kjellberg, 2013; Kjellberg, Mallard, and et al, 2013). Attending to valuation as a social process in this way can prevent technologies, rules, procedures, and so on being taken as given or ‘blackboxed’ without interrogation as to why these particular values and valuation methods are recognised, and by who (Kjellberg and Mallard, 2013). This also enables us to consider not just why some values carry more weight in decision-making, but how these arrangements evolve, and where there may be contestation or alignment between values (Helgesson and Kjellberg, 2013; Kjellberg and Mallard, 2013). It also can offer insights as to how some values and their associated claims may be politicised (Fourcade, 2011; Reinecke, 2015). Consequently, the article engages with humanitarian procurement as a site of valuation and explores existing practices, as well as recognising the strains and tensions introduced through changing normative values and issues facing the sector as it seeks to reform. The article now explores this changing context in more detail.

Contemporary humanitarianism: Markets, values and valuations

The changing context of humanitarian response – values and markets

Following the growth in complex, protracted crises in recent decades, the modalities and imaginaries of what humanitarian response entails have evolved and expanded the humanitarian system (Barnett, 2011; Duffield, 2010). This has seen two ‘brands’ of humanitarianism emerge; ‘classical’ humanitarian emergency or disaster response, and ‘resilience’ humanitarianism associated with preparedness agendas (Hilhorst, 2018). The new modalities have acknowledged the role and contribution of local and national actors and disrupted the traditional values and motivations of the sector by involving private sector actors such as individual and corporate donors, and commercial logistic operators, alongside humanitarian actors (Pascucci, 2021). This has made explicit the sector’s mode of organising response and containing its ruptures through the espousal of individual and market freedoms as claimed by liberal governance and global institutions, which remain driven by Western state and institutional – geopolitical, geoeconomic and security – interests (Barnett, 2011; Duffield, 2010; Hyndman, 2018; Reid-Henry, 2014; Smith, 2015). ‘Marketization’ is frequently used as shorthand for the encroachment of neo-liberal principles into the resourcing and determining of humanitarian activities (Duffield, 1997, 2001). This relates to arguments that, as resilience humanitarianism ventures further into public service delivery, it risks destabilising public service infrastructures and opening up these spaces to be filled by private-sector expertise and global capital (Barnett, 2011; Duffield, 1997, 2001; Smith, 2015). However, while marketization denotes the increased influence of the market as a mode of organising exchange, this does not automatically include neo-liberal rationales. There are many forms of markets which are designed and shaped by different values, including moral and political values, and it is this ordering or arrangement which characterises the market and in turn which values (as outcomes and effects) are realised in its performance (Callon, 2021).

A ‘market-based humanitarianism’ is depicted as the latest alignment between ostensibly moral values and the market as an organising mechanism for Western humanitarianism as it ‘reproduces the logic of the social order undertaking it’ (Barnett, 2011; Haskell, 1985a, 1985b; Reid-Henry, 2014: 428). This gives rise to an increasingly uneasy accommodation between normative or value-rationality, and its immediacy of doing what is believed to be morally right, and instrumental-rationality wherein concerns for the long-term implications or outcomes are brought more fully into decision-making (Calhoun, 2013). This arrangement has been termed the ‘humanitarian marketplace’ (Duffield, 1997: 541) wherein more instrumental thinking informs both donor decisions as to where to spend resources and expectations of humanitarian organisations’ practice. Today, humanitarianism represents ‘a problem of order and value more generally’ as institutions try to accommodate both moral duty and productive efficiency in their resourcing (Reid-Henry, 2014: 419; cf. Fourcade, 2011).

This marketplace is also subject to the different interests and mandates of both donors and humanitarian organisations, as to whether they focus on specified issues, impacted population groups and/or places. As a result, the Western humanitarian system now functions as a competitive ‘market for projects’ (Krause, 2014). This sees the packaging of emergency responses into projects that can be sold to donors as consumers but with projects (and impacted populations) chosen to enable organisations to add value to their reputation and brand, providing the ‘symbolic capital [of] humanitarian authority’ and distinction between organisations within this market (Krause, 2014: 98). This also brings concerns that humanitarian actors lose their neutrality and autonomy by becoming associated with donor values and agendas (Barnett, 2011; Hyndman, 2018). Consequently, the allotment of aid funds awarded to international humanitarian organisations, to deliver the desired outcomes valued by both the organisation and donor, has been marketized and distributed through competition. However, we cannot assume that in fulfilling these commitments, all subsequent decisions made by humanitarian procurement and supply actors adhere to the same logics and values irrespective of context, or that additional values are not encountered. This requires further attention as humanitarian organisations are ‘themselves important sites of the distribution of resources’ (Krause, 2014: 171). While discussions have focused on values and commitments that underpin the sector, the article now discusses its potential reform where interpretations of value are foregrounded.

Sectoral reform: Making values visible

In 2016, at the World Humanitarian Summit, the world’s largest humanitarian donors and humanitarian organisations came together to agree the ‘Grand Bargain’. This proposed a ‘new framework for partnership based on results, efficiency, competency and reciprocity’ (High Level Panel on Humanitarian Funding (HLPHF), 2016: 3). The Grand Bargain provides the institutional context for resourcing humanitarian aid and the expectations as to how this should be disbursed by donors and humanitarian organisations. The HLPHF (2016) report which informed the Grand Bargain noted the problems of the aid system’s functioning. The report noted the lack of resources going directly to local or national responding organisations. This was accompanied by a recommendation for greater cash-based programming, as opposed to in-kind/material aid, to ostensibly empower impacted populations and support local and regional markets wherever possible. This was complemented by a call for donors to reduce bilateral/earmarked funding and to make available multi-year rather than single-year budgets. These proposals would enable the sector to respond to increased demands from protracted crises while achieving ‘improved procurement possibilities’ to save costs, reduce the administrative burdens for all parties and ‘respond more efficiently to the needs of affected people’ (HLPF, 2016: 20). However, despite the aspirations, between 2011 and 2020 on average 80% of all donations from the 20 largest donors remained earmarked/bilateral, and in 2020 only 3.1% of funding was given directly to local and national actors as opposed to the target of 25% (GHA, 2021).

As ‘Grand Bargain 2.0’ commenced in 2021, two cross-cutting aims were emphasised: first, ‘enhancing quality funding’ supporting multi-year and flexible (un-earmarked) funding commitments, and, second, to directing ‘more support and funding towards local and national responders’ otherwise known as the ‘localisation agenda’ (Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), 2021). This agenda is entangled with ‘questions of aid efficiency and issues of power’ (Roepstorff, 2019: 292). It is most commonly discussed in terms of changing the locus of power in decision-making and measured in terms of resources flowing to and directly controlled by national and local authorities and civil society organisations. However, the decision to allow country offices of INGOs to qualify as a local actor was a ‘huge disappointment to local organizations worldwide. INGOs with country offices had protected their interests and funding sources’ (Peace Direct, 2021: unpaginated). Localisation attempts to recognise local knowledge and expertise that have been marginalised through the continued dominance of Western institutions and organisations in the humanitarian system (Carpi, 2022; Herrick et al., 2022; Roepstorff, 2020; Sou, 2022). These can reproduce colonial attitudes and structural racism in decision-making as these are cloaked by the normative and universal value-based claims of humanitarianism (Pallister-Wilkins, 2021).

Within this context, the HLPF report also issued a scathing criticism regarding wasted resources arising from competition between organisations for the same funds in a ‘crowded market’ where each organisation attempts to ‘position itself as the best implementer’, with the report also decrying the lack of joint working to ‘reduce overhead or procurement costs’ (HLPHF, 2016: 3, 21). As an increasing number of organisations compete for the same ‘limited and unpredictable funds’, this brings pressures ‘for enhanced cost efficiency and greater collaboration’ (Gottwald, 2010: 1). These issues were acknowledged by organisations before the report due to the expansion of the sector and its heavily criticised coordination failings in recent international disaster responses (Guerro-Garcia et al., 2016). The challenges presented by the Grand Bargain have led to greater attention being directed to supply chain collaborations (e.g. Réseau Logistique Humanitaire (RLH), 2019). It has also focused attention on procurement and supply functions as strategic enablers of humanitarian activities, becoming more closely involved in project design and implementation (Siawsh et al., 2021). A recent global survey of humanitarian supply and logistics professionals (CHORD, 2022) suggested that resource pooling between organisations was becoming more common, although this happens more frequently across field and country offices than headquarters. And while over two-thirds of respondents frequently used local markets and resources for procurement as per the Grand Bargain objective, just over half engaged in ‘capacity building’ with local partners but less than half had integrated data and information systems with local partners (CHORD, 2022). The terminology of ‘local capacity building’ reproduces the binary constructions of the local lacking the expertise and capabilities of international actors (Peace Direct, 2022; Roepstorff, 2020). This suggests that change in economic and market engagements may be easier to imagine and achieve than changing institutional and cultural practices. This also suggests that different external social and economic pressures are converging towards procurement practice as a site where values as outcomes may be realised but exactly how these are engaged with by actors and incorporated into valuation and decision-making processes becomes of growing critical importance.

Procurement principles and valuation processes

The drive for efficiency in humanitarian activity has become focussed on the procurement process. This is linked to the rules and regulations that govern expenditure of public (tax payer) funds that provide a set of guiding principles directing humanitarian procurement. Ostensibly equivalent to values, this global organising system forms the basis of procurement decision-making across organisations. This frames the procurement process as highly standardised and technical in its practice, and offers a professional or expert rigour to judgements that are deemed applicable to any response context (Logistics Cluster, 2021; cf. Fourcade, 2011; Heinich, 2020). These principles include fair competition, transparency and ‘best value for money’ (BVM). The principle of BVM allows for ‘thinking about using resources well’ and is often described as finding a balance between the imperatives of the four Es: economy – minimising costs with attention to maintaining quality; efficiency – the relationship between the outputs compared to its necessary inputs to maintain quality; effectiveness – achieving intended outcomes; and equity – allocations are spent fairly (Jackson, 2012). Or more succinctly, BVM enables ‘an appropriate balance between the monetary and non-monetary requirements that an organisation can get from its selection of suppliers’ (Logistics Cluster, 2021: 3). The framing of the BVM principle allows for different values to be brought into consideration and ordered; as such, it possesses its own internal valuation system that relates to each sourcing decision as to what is an ‘appropriate balance’. The principle has attained a level of authority for professionals and exerts a significant influence as the point where organisational specific needs and missions interact with the specific context demands of the humanitarian response (such as timeliness) and can be incorporated into decisions. This technique illustrates how other values beyond cost or price can become incorporated into economic processes and valuations (Fourcade, 2011). The BVM principle illustrates how this globally recognised shared valuation convention also possesses the possibility of accommodating and aligning different values.

Fulfilling donor compliance requirements introduces further principles or values into the procurement process alongside BVM. These include outlining humanitarian and ethical policies, competitiveness in providing information for all potential suppliers in a bidding process, proportionality of governance procedures in line with the amount of resources being spent (often referred to as value or spend thresholds), and fairness so local suppliers can be supported to bid (Logistics Cluster, 2021; Moshtari et al., 2021). Additional principles such as those preventing fraud, terrorism, modern slavery and child labour are also paramount and explicitly captured in supply contracts (Moshtari et al., 2021). Sustainability has recently been included as a procurement principle in many organisations’ tender/bid evaluation criteria to help ensure that the social, economic and environmental impacts of the purchasing decision are taken into account. This shift has been led by the UN’s incorporation of sustainability into its supply contracts (https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/mission/principles; Moshtari et al., 2021; United Nations (UN), 2020), with UN Sustainable Development Goal outcomes recognised as valid BVM criteria if they fit the mandate of the issuing UN agency. The adoption of sustainable procurement has been incremental following concerns by the G77 group of nations that such criteria and associated standards would lead to unfair competition at the expense of suppliers from developing country contexts (Hasselbalch et al., 2015). This shift hides other cultural disparities in procurement practice. For example, Stoffel et al. (2019) identified that ‘green procurement’ has been more typically promoted by European Union (EU) and other global north institutions with social concerns reflected through the recognition of labour rights across global value chains and subsequent incorporation into tender evaluation criteria and contracts, whereas global south actors have traditionally been more concerned with addressing social inequalities and human rights and have managed this through national legislation (Stoffel et al., 2019). The remainder of the article now turns to explore how procurement practitioners engage with different values and how these become considered in valuation and wider decision-making processes.

Methodology

In summer 2021 a qualitative scoping study was undertaken with INGOs and UN agencies, headquartered in Europe and North America providing humanitarian assistance in emergency only or emergency and ongoing programme-based contexts. Six interviews spanning five secular organisations were undertaken with global supply chain, procurement and commodity leads. The study focused on food aid; however, as all participants worked for organisations that provided assistance across multiple humanitarian sectors (such as nutrition, shelter, and water, sanitation and hygiene), the discussions were more wide-ranging, enabling exploration of the values and valuations undertaken by participants as well as broader professional reflections.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted remotely by the author, using either Microsoft Teams or Zoom video calling. Interviews lasted 90–120 minutes, recorded with consent and were fully transcribed. An additional email exchange took place with a procurement lead for a second UN agency. In the following analysis, sources have been fully anonymised; however, an indicative description is given of the participant’s role and organisation type – INGO or UN, followed by P signifying global procurement lead, SC as global supply chain lead, C as global commodity lead, or SCN noting a global supply chain network lead working across multiple INGOs. Additional documents published by each organisation such as annual reports and procurement process documentation in the public domain at the time of interview (covering the period 2018–2021) were also collected. These documents were used to help inform interview schedules, expand discussions and triangulate interview data. Interview data were analysed using open thematic coding.

Analysis

All participants described their practice and the processes which they followed, with two explicitly noting that this provided them with a rare space for reflection and time to think through their professional and organisational challenges. This approach has enabled the analysis to capture the changing context of their work as well as how they negotiate normative values alongside established procurement principles and valuation processes. The analysis is organised into two main sections. The first section focuses on the emphasis of procurement principles in guiding practice. Using the example of sustainable procurement, this section considers how different normative values stemming from reform, donors and organisational concerns may introduce new principles that are not easily accommodated within existing valuations. The second section explores the strains seen in existing practice and valuation processes as participants engaged with the localisation agenda. This sees procurement becoming a critical site interacting with and ordering different values and imagined outcomes of both the sector reform and wider institutional practice.

Principles and practice

Authority and legitimacy through best value

The preceding sections have outlined how procurement is organised through a series of interacting procedural values, which represent the ‘fundamental principles . . . we’re going to live by’ (INGO1/SC). Principles were typically the entry point chosen by participants to describe their practice and were used in narratives to position their claims to professional and organisational competency through adherence to recognised regulatory and governance structures. They were also used to assert and attach the moral and solidarity values underpinning humanitarian actions that gave additional affective authority to their role (Heinich, 2020). For example, participants directly compared their work to the for-profit sector such that humanitarian procurement was ‘not like Amazon’ (INGO3/C & INGO2/P) and was undertaken ‘in service of the need’ (UN1/P).

Participants emphasised the authority of the Best Value for Money (BVM) principle for their practice. It also became discussed as one technique wherein different repertoires of value (from their own organisation and beyond, notably donors) and associated measures were able to be held together within one economised framing (Fourcade, 2011). The emphasis on BVM was commonly associated with achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness from available resources. This was being driven by donor demands and expectations following the Grand Bargain which participants from INGO1 and INGO2 noted had led to a ‘transformation’ of each organisation and was placing procurement and supply chain activities in a more strategic position (Siawsh et al., 2021). For example,

If you look at [our] overall mission statement . . . one of them is to control costs and deliver value for money. And that comes from donors explicitly saying that there needs to be more value and cost control in the delivery of humanitarian aid with development projects. So I think that and some donors DFID particularly, USAID as well, are more and more pushing value for money as this critical part of what you’re doing . . . which is the strategic driver for the organisation. (INGO2/P)

Notably, the strategic transformations did not encapsulate joint working or pooled procurement; rather, efficiency and effectiveness helped to establish each organisation’s market niche. As such, the competitive market for projects remained the dominant organising mechanism by which humanitarian activities were designed and implemented (Krause, 2014). Although INGO4/SCN noted the need for change in practice,

the [funding] gap is increasing and the capacity to fill that gap is not going to be filled by everybody doing their own thing in their corner. So, if we want to be serious about saving money we need to work together.

The information underpinning market assessments and the various matrices and assessment tools used by both organisations and funders in their decision-making (UN2/P; Herrick et al., 2022; Krause, 2014) was being reconfigured by organisations to shape their transformations. For INGO1 and INGO2, this process was accompanied by the adoption of new software allowing greater ‘visibility’ across each organisation’s procurement and supply chain function and its interrogation for donor reporting. In this way, procurement actors could attempt to generate greater economic efficiencies by looking across their entire organisation. For example,

We are actually trying to see whether or not we can centralise a few of these things . . . If I can get a better deal at headquarters for us as a global entity, then we should do that instead of going through four layers . . . we can get an overview of what is it that we actually are buying, aggregate it and then go and make appropriate deals on things that are common. (INGO1/SC)

The importance of viewing operational activities in aggregate was central to re-evaluating and changing operating procedures and practice. The transformation in INGO2 had taken 4 years to put into place. Its main rationale was described thus:

So it’s about flipping round the culture of just working one award, one project, just buying what’s needed for that, to be looking at our global demand and writing procurement strategies to deliver on that proactively. (INGO2/P)

The global or aggregated demand (representing economic value) was then used as leverage when negotiating new contracts to obtain volume-based discounts. This made use of long-term or framework agreements that are increasingly common across the sector and used extensively by participants. This form of contract design enables goods and services to be sourced over an extended tender period (typically 2 years) based on data reviewing previous procurement decisions and funding secured to estimate likely future demand for a particular product. This was described by INGO2/P as ‘sourcing against the plan before the demand arrives . . . so that all the supply solutions are in place contractually’ rather than the ‘tactical bubble’ of reactive purchasing when information is lacking and demand heightened (Balcik and Ak, 2014; Moshtari et al., 2021). It was stressed that these technologies and processes were undertaken to enable procurement professionals to deliver humanitarian outcomes underpinned by the ordering offered by procurement principles to ‘get the best value for money’ (INGO2/P).

Paying attention to market geographies and the impact of valuations

The strategic shift discussed above was tempered by the different geographies at which provisioning arrangements made sense for each participant. For UN1/P, this varied by-product with some sourced explicitly near to the sites of expected demand to both reach populations quickly but also to encourage political support for wider programme and project outcomes such as public health improvements. Within INGO2 for INGO2/SC, market functioning and supply activities were understood in terms of regional geographies (i.e. West Africa and Southeast Asia), whereas for INGO2/P, each product has its own geography, informed by anticipated demand. This was explained as follows:

. . .we also want to aggregate our procurement across multiple donor projects in one geography. Which is what has not been done well in the sector before.

[Interviewer: When you say ‘one geography’?]

It’s wherever is possible, and it depends on what you’re buying. So, if you’re buying pharmaceutical products, we can aggregate globally because the countries don’t have the market. If we’re buying livestock then we’re buying it in the village that we’re working in. So it’s about having a cognisant strategy for each of those categories which defines that. (INGO2/P)

Both INGO1 and INGO2 noted the importance of many procurement activities being managed through their country offices and were typically for lower value thresholds. In contrast, global headquarter teams typically managed larger value thresholds and stepped in to source ‘complex’ products and manage the greater governance risks associated with them (typically cash transfers, pharmaceuticals or construction materials and services) or where quality standards could not be guaranteed. Previous sections have emphasised the strategic shift and economic prioritisation of gaining greater efficiencies to achieve humanitarian outcomes in relation to donor expectations, which were being achieved through each organisation as a global entity leveraging its market power for each respective good or service required. However, the technologies that were now facilitating this evaluation also allowed INGO1/SC to consider more normative (non-price) valuations in their organisation’s purchasing decisions such as the equity of spending in different product and local markets. This is explicitly discussed in the following quote and suggests an awareness of what humanitarian markets can do in both their design and performance (Callon, 2021):

With the [new software] system, we are now slowly beginning to build statistics that enables us to see how are we using this. Are we spreading it? Are we giving $2 to everybody or are we actually concentrating it and only using a few. (INGO/SC1)

Negotiating values

For many participants, changing donor values and associated demands was necessitating the adoption of sustainability as a procurement principle. The rationale of including this new value (as outcome) within procedures was twofold: to secure funding, and establish reputational leadership within the sector and market-place on this matter (INGO1 and INGO2). Differences were expressed between participants as to whether this was an important normative value in and of itself in relation to their missions. Consequently, how sustainability was being accommodated by organisations in their procurement practice varied. For example, INGO1/SC discussed how ‘going green’ was going to be incorporated in their procurement principles: ‘It’s driven by donor requirements that in order to get a donor to pay for it, you need to be able to show sustainability of the chain’. However, this participant envisaged that different measures of sustainability used by funders such as carbon neutrality would cause difficulty. This was in relation to procuring in local markets in the global south where ‘a lot of the needs are satisfied’ by local offices and partners but that the ‘concept is not really there’, and in weighting this value in their decision-making processes alongside others, notably BVM wherein it was envisaged that carbon neutral options would likely be more expensive:

Then you get into a clash . . . then the question becomes which one do I go for. What is heavier? Is the localisation agenda heavier or is it the sustainability agenda? That will become a choice that we’ll have to make down the road. (INGO1/SC).

However, resolving the balance of values introduced by external pressures would in INGO1/SC’s view be determined ultimately by donors:

It is at odds. There’s no hiding behind it. It is and I think part of what we will have to develop over the next couple of years is ways of putting that on the table. When we do project proposals to the donors.

This was not a simple re-balancing of valuations expressed in tender criteria. Rather, it reflected the concern that if funding requirements prioritised a different arrangement of values to achieve particular donor values/outcomes, it could change the organisational mission from ‘100% emergency’ towards resilience humanitarianism:

You develop local skills. You build local capacity. You have cash infusions in the country. You build a market . . . so you go over into the development trend. I see that there will be fun there. (INGO1/SC)

INGO2 had already addressed how the balance of values was to be weighted. For large-value threshold sourcing, the organisation had introduced ‘in the most recent version of our procurement manual, a mandatory requirement for all the tenders and formal quotations to evaluate the sustainability of the purchase. Which is new. They have to assign a percentage criteria’. (INGO2/P also discussed INGO2/SC). Here, sustainability’s value could be measured in environmental terms, social impact of suppliers or economic impact which emphasised local market purchasing. Considering sustainability as a principle illustrates how procurement principles are essential to bringing order to complex decision-making but that external donor values may be a significant influence in their arrangement and consequent weighting as the need to secure funding dominates organisational processes.

Localisation: Procurement as a site of valuation and change

The localisation agenda is shorthand for a more inclusive humanitarian system that formed part of the Grand Bargain commitments. Localisation and the outcomes the agenda seeks to realise were openly discussed by participants and their reflections show how values associated with this agenda were causing a ‘strain’ in this site of valuation (Kjellberg and Mallard, 2013). The strain was occurring between existing system and organisational processes and what changes may be needed to decolonise the sector’s institutional practices.

Local sourcing – value alignment and conflict

Participants frequently discussed localised sourcing undertaken by their country offices; this was typically for lower economic value/spend thresholds which illustrated the hierarchical basis of decision-making and power relations ordering humanitarian procurement practice within organisations. For participants prioritising sourcing in local markets and undertaking detailed market assessments that underpinned decisions whether to go to regional or global suppliers was an exemplar of the humanitarian principle of ‘do no harm’ and worked to prevent local markets being undermined by their activities (explicitly detailed by INGO3/C and INGO2/P). Efforts to find a balance between this principle and its economic interpretation, and the wider values and commitments expressed by the localisation agenda was noted by INGO2/SC:

But actually if there is a local business already importing it, why am I circumventing that to import it myself. Surely part of our role is to support the local economy. . . So you’ve got to balance out the procurement at local level with the humanitarian directive.

Participants noted how even within this constrained reading of localisation, its rhetoric did not translate into increased funding to realise local purchases. Consequently, localised sourcing was still subject to efficiency concerns and ‘best value for money’, which was leading to pressures to address sourcing efficiencies for common items: ‘But a lot of it is done locally . . . We are actually trying to look the other way, what can we take out of the local one which we can do a strategic bit on’ (INGO1/SC). Another participant (INGO4/SCN) preferred for organisations to be this honest in their sourcing strategies with respect to the localisation agenda to manage expectations of all procurement funding flowing through local markets and not risk losing their organisational (and sectoral) reputation and trust-based relations in different local and national contexts when this did not materialise.

Changing system values and relinquishing control

A number of participants commented on localisation being one of the ‘latest trends’ in the industry and desired by donors, without commitment to its realisation. This was seen in relation to INGOs funding, as INGO4/SCN noted:

There is a lot of crap in our industry of people just putting localisation in any proposal because it looks pretty and they’re going to get the money, but, they’re really doing shit on the ground in order to really localise.

This was accompanied by views that donors were unwilling to change their resourcing patterns and administration away from their established governance systems and upwards accountability reporting from organisations to donors resulting in the ‘feedback loop’ reproducing their preferred institutional practices (Fourcade, 2011; Roepstorff, 2019). For example,

Part of the trends in the industry is that donors . . . They want localisation so they want the local actors to do it but they don’t want to deal with all the contract administration of having a local actor. So they want to create partnerships instead so they only have one counterpart . . . Then we have to deal with the contract administration of having 47 local partners on the ground because the donor doesn’t want to deal with the 47, and “We’re not going to pay you, [INGO1], to do it. (INGO1/SC)

Within discussions, further detail was given as to how procurement and supply professionals were working to navigate donor demands and industry ‘norms’, and attempt to address what Barnett (2011) has described as ‘a “remote control” system that allows headquarters to direct field operations carried out by locals [. . . raising . . .] chilling comparisons to imperial rule’ (p. 222). INGO4/SCN commented that ‘If we want to localise it means we have to empower local authorities to make their own decisions’, whereas INGO2/P expanded on this sentiment and noted the lack of alignment between localisation and local civil society organisation autonomy within existing sectoral arrangements:

. . .to localise you need to enable an organisation to adapt systems to programme themselves. If donors force that local organisation to operate in seven or ten different ways to meet their needs, you’re not localising, they’re like your own implementing arm. You’re not giving them the space to grow and develop their own systems, their own policies and procedures.

Beyond this, a division between organisations became apparent as to how localisation both in terms of its potential political power and the array of values it represented could be implemented. For INGO4/SCN, this required a broader change in data sharing with local partners and national authorities (if possible) rather than data being held within INGO own-organisational systems and the lock-in of training and knowledge to support this because ‘as long as you have the information you control the response’ (cf. Thévenot, 2009). Data sharing by international humanitarian organisations with local partners is poor (CHORD, 2022) and so relinquishing control of decision-making and associated power of both resource and information flows by INGOs is slow. Instead, incremental albeit ‘paternalistic’ steps were occurring. For example, INGO1 and INGO2 were working to insert themselves between donor requirements and local partners and suppliers, either directly pushing back and/or translating donor requirements into more generic terms with less prescriptive terminology to facilitate local control and decision-making such that this ‘supports the localisation agenda rather than sabotaging it’ (INGO2/P).

But for INGO participants where they could create change was within their own organisation and empowering country offices to make decisions and take control of the procurement needed for activities/responses in a timely way. For example,

The local country programme . . . set up camps to host 60,000 people basically overnight. That was done locally. They were using local supply chain contracts, local suppliers, etc., etc., to build up that capacity . . . What we have done is we have made the framework and the processes and the methodologies and we have then gotten approvals from the donors that if our country operations follow these processes, the donors will say, “You spent the money wisely and therefore we don’t want it back. (INGO1/SC)

With the caveat that it was possible for the organisation to arrange this valuation procedure with donors given its size and international standing. INGO2 had developed a similar approach:

. . .wherever possible we want local supply chain staff from the country in which we operate, buying local products in local markets. And all we’re doing is funding it . . . And we put in place the governance, the reporting and the accountability to enable our donors to have confidence that that money has been delivered in the way it should be . . . That’s the way we’re headed, I hope. (INGO2/P)

The latter quotes emphasise the extensive governance surrounding traceability and accountability that structures procurement and supply, which all participants noted. This reiterates the hierarchical arrangement of procurement within INGOs to fulfil financial accountability requirements. This works to reaffirm existing valuation measures and technologies that support the prevailing system and control of resources which are dominated by Western techniques (Stoffel et al., 2019; cf. Thévenot, 2009) which in turn can disenfranchise local organisations (Carpi, 2022; PeaceDirect, 2021). This established information and reporting flow and its attached value and relational meanings that recognised professional expertise appeared resistant to re-imaginings and so continued to legitimate this ordering and institutional practice (Fourcade, 2011; Heinich, 2020). It also continued to legitimate funding flows and protect the interests of international organisations (PeaceDirect, 2022):

Now, there’s a lot of politics to say ‘you’re localising but at the same time if we can still keep the control, because that actually justifies the reason we’re here’. There’s a lot of this happening. (INGO4/SCN)

Yet, participants were not unaware of the violence that existing structures could generate. In the following quote, INGO2/P captures the strain being placed on procurement as a site of valuation and its failures to reconcile principles and normative values originating from the West:

But it’s quite a sort of topic for discussion at the moment as to how do we, without being neo-colonial, enforce some of our “values” on our downstream supply chain, without overly burdening them, and impacting their ability to do business. That is one of the big questions that we haven’t yet answered as an organisation, or as a sector, really, I don’t think.

Here, the implicit power of supply chains (Tsing, 2009) and more particularly contract specifications as a convention and technology of governance in the sector are being alluded to and called into question (Kjellberg and Mallard, 2013).

Confronting the colonial legacy

The legacy of colonial power relationships and the associated ‘white gaze’ that has rendered local responders and their expertise invisible in emergency humanitarianism has been noted by many authors (Barnett, 2011; Hilhorst, 2018; Hyndman, 2018; Pallister-Wilkins, 2021). This was recognised by INGO2/P as part of the challenges faced by procurement and supply actors in endeavours to change institutionalised attitudes in the sector:

I mean, twenty years ago, and there are still lots of people in our sector who think like this . . . it was full “White Knights”, we’ve got a warehouse in [UK] full of stuff, and we’re all going to fly on the first plane over and give you that stuff, and then leave.

The extreme characterisation of the ‘push system’ described here uses the emergency imaginary to validate outside, that is, Western intervention (Calhoun, 2013; Hyndman, 2018), and caused unease among participants more generally. For example, UN1/P noted they tried not to run parallel or push systems wherever possible due to the inefficiencies this brought to anticipating demand and the harm this brought in replicating supply infrastructures which could destabilise existing governance and supply arrangements, whereas INGO4/SCN was attempting to change the power relations surrounding the push system:

there’s a colonialist approach to that. . . you don’t know what the situation is except that you are overwhelmed, so we’re going to push to you what we think you need . . . we’re never going to change the raison d’être for the international responder to push, that’s why we’re here, but if we can put the national authority back into the driver seat much faster . . . that’s what we are trying to do.

Concluding discussion

Krause (2014) stated that within humanitarian organisations, ‘From values very little follows by way of concrete instructions as to what to do, and it is organizational routines and practice that do the deciding’ (p. 172). It is this space of decision-making that the article has explored. I have argued that humanitarian procurement has valuation at its core as it works to order different values that legitimise humanitarian supply decisions. The article has drawn from practice-based accounts and reflections from participants undertaking procurement and supply chain arrangements at a global level for some of the world’s largest humanitarian organisations. The methodological approach has made visible the agency of practitioners and explored how values (normative, economic, etc.) become reflected in ‘principles’ and arranged through valuation technologies and procedures. While the power of procurement principles holds both implicit and explicit associations to professional values and expertise, we see how working with the principles offers some guidance for participants as they negotiate some of the more intransigent issues facing their practice and the sector (Heinich, 2020).

The article has shown how by engaging with technical practices and procedures that are often ‘blackboxed’ through their administrative and regulatory function (Moshtari et al., 2021; Swiash et al, 2021), different socio-cultural and political values are calling into question existing and highly established procedures. This is not just questioning the relevance of the valuation measures and technologies used in procurement procedures but more explicitly questioning the values underpinning the shared conventions of the humanitarian system and its history that have worked to organise the flow of funding and the associated control over decision-making and activities (Fourcade, 2011). This is most evident in exploring the tensions expressed in valuations surrounding the localisation agenda and the potential to re-imagine and reset power relations within the sector that have been obscured through self-proclaimed universal and apolitical values underpinning response decisions and their implementation (Chua et al., 2018; Pallister-Wilkins, 2021). The article suggests procurement can work to progress localisation and challenge established systems, but as a site of valuation, it has been brought under ‘strain’ by trying to attend to this agenda and align this within other values and established valuation processes as opposed to initiating broader change (Kjellberg and Mallard, 2013). This is exemplified by the expansive ‘best value for money’ principle and challenges brought by donor efficiency demands that can in part be better achieved by global/aggregate purchasing rather than by committing to localised decision-making and imagining this as the site of efficiency gains. Consequently, the efficiency and accountability principles that govern the sector in terms of both their discursive rhetoric and meanings for professional practice retain an enduring influence. Yet, when the oppression of supply chains was recognised in questioning the imposition of Western values on suppliers, it was rarely questioned in terms of achieving efficiency and effectiveness of outcomes.

This strain is arguably making procurement a site of possibility as well as vulnerability within organisations and across the sector if reform commitments are to be taken seriously. Procurement decisions reflect the values of the organisation and the wider humanitarian system; thus, what values as outcomes are realised through its practice requires continued critical engagement and attention. As noted, valuation is a social process reflective of its context and is undertaken in the image that we choose to make it (Fourcade, 2011; Reid-Henry, 2014). The market-based humanitarianism explored in this article has not shown a direct nor unquestioning reproduction of neo-liberal values in procurement and supply decisions; rather, it suggests the ongoing translation of liberal and globalised agendas into international humanitarian organisations. In its most recent iteration (following the Grand Bargain), we find attention focused on procurement as it becomes viewed as a site of ‘strategic’ importance that is itself becoming shorthand for attempting to accommodate different values and their potential consequences.

The study was limited in scope to global headquarter actors and their perspectives and also their mode of working at this particular scale of activity. This means that engagement with donor values and demands may be more immediate than in their country offices for example. As such, the article highlights the need for research to pay attention to and acknowledge national socio-cultural, legal as well as economic contexts (Fourcade, 2011). Consequently, more work is needed to explore ‘local’ procurement practices and the full diversity of value repertoires, meanings and valuations that contribute to the humanitarian system and its practices to accompany the growing body of work on the micro-politics of aid and the ‘localisation’ agenda.

The article has illustrated how thinking with values as desired outcomes and the practices which are undertaken to achieve these enable the social and temporal context of emergency response and associated valuations of decision-making to be recognised. This article has foregrounded the situated practices of decision-making that determine where and how money is spent; within this economic geography, the interrelation and negotiation of different values and valuation procedures undertaken in headquarter sites result in spatialised outcomes that determine global and local market arrangements. By extension, this contribution to the special issue and its discussion has highlighted the importance of working with diverse theoretical bases of value and valuation as a critical geographical practice.