"That is a long ride" a qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach

“THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON HUMANITARIAN COORDINATION FROM A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH. PH.D. THESIS ON HUMAN RESOURCES PSYCHOLOGY University of Seville | Faculty of Psychology ©UN Photo/Albert Gonzalez Farran “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 1 TESEO Abstract In 2023, the Global Humanitarian Overview (UNOCHA, 2023) highlights that 363.2 million people require humanitarian aid, with a financial need of up to $56 billion. Despite the escalation of conflict and the recurrent emergencies affecting 69 countries, there is a great funding gap of $23 trillion (UNOCHA, 2023). In parallell, criticism of multilateralism is increasingly present in literature (Nogueira, 2022). Amidst these challenges, though, aid organizations continue to grow by 10% with an estimated total of 5,146 aid organizations by 2020 (Humanitarian Outcomes, 2023). This large network of aid endeavors to engage in multiple operations within a setting with limited resources, where most are centralized by a small number of entities (ALNAP, 2022). Survival in this competitive environment hinges on reputation and effective coordination Despite the continued demand for humanitarian coordination, it remains a complex and conflicting organizational interaction that is challenging to approach and fully comprehend. Consequently, this research adopted a constructivist qualitative approach to explore the professional experiences of humanitarian workers with extensive international careers. The objective was to identify patterns and dynamics conducive to effective coordination. Drawing on theoretical concepts such as Community Coalitions Action Theory (Butterfoss et al., 1993) and the Interactive Systems Framework (ISF) (Wandersman et al., 2008), and supported by an extensive theoretical review, this study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of humanitarian coordination. Recognizing the interdisciplinary nature of humanitarian coordination, we argue that the application of theories and approaches from organizational and socialcommunity psychology is deemed essential to grasp the nuances of humanitarian work at different levels. Although the use of these disciplines is not alien to humanitarian practice, we propose that the analysis of service coordination in these contexts can benefit from our theoretical and methodological proposals. We believe this interdisciplinary approach contributes to the functionality of humanitarian services and aids in overcoming collective action barriers. Through thematic analysis and causal loop diagraming (CLD) techniques, we have successfully mapped the personal and professional experiences of our target group, accounting for critical variables in humanitarian coordination. Thematic analysis has been employed to delve beyond the subjective surface, identifying coordination patterns and suggesting alternatives to ineffective actions or reinforcing proven effective practices. The construction of causal loop diagrams in modeling complex systems is grounded in the development of causal hypotheses. Our study's causal links, polarity, and integrated variables were informed by literature reviews and thematic analysis of expert interviews, enhancing the empirical support, hypothetical validity, and causality of our CLDs in simulated instances. The identified categories and themes from the thematic analysis were systematically integrated into a modeling software, presenting coordination drivers and issues as an interacting system explained through our bridged theoretical frameworks. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 2 International School of Doctoral Studies (EIDUS) Faculty of Psychology University of Seville Doctoral Program on Psychology of Human Resources: “Conflict management, coalitions and prosocial behaviors in organizational contexts” Official initial Research Title: “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Ph.D. Student: Granados Chahín, Sergio Antonio. Thesis Director & Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Maya Jariego, Isidro (Director | Tutor) Prof. Dr. Szarzynski, Joerg (Co-director) Prof. Dr. Rhyner, Jakob (Co-Director) “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 3 PORTRAIT PHOTO INFO. Headline: UNAMID Motorcade Travels through Darfur Caption Description: A United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) motorcade travels through a village. Unique Identifier: UN7392536 NICA ID: 457907 Production Date: 02/14/2010 10:27:33 AM Country: Sudan Credit: UN Photo/Albert Gonzalez Farran Web Address “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 4 Acknowledgements ______________________ Just as on many other occasions and in various situations, I have immersed myself in the process of writing this doctoral thesis, driven by my genuine passion and dedication to the humanitarian sector. Despite the inevitable ups and downs, numerous challenges, mistakes, and successes, the international humanitarian system remains a true representation of multilateral efforts to alleviate human suffering. Along the way, many individuals have played instrumental roles, generously supporting me in my academic and professional journey and sharing my commitment to contribute empirically through this research. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to my parents, true humanitarians, who consistently provide assistance wherever needed, driven by their enduring desire to contribute. To my siblings and friends across the globe, with whom I've learned the value of teamwork and the genuine "buddy principle." A sincere shout-out to my thesis director and co-directors. Professor Isidro (Director), with whom I initiated this project. He accepted me without hesitation and despite my limitations, has always been a mentor with endless patience and careful advice. Professors Joerg and Jakob (Co-Directors) have supportively hosted me for a year, during which their keen observations and warm welcome have given me the boost I needed to finish this project. The three of them, with their unwavering support, insightful advice, and wealth of knowledge, have significantly shaped the quality of this work beyond my own limited and rookie expectations. At the start of these doctoral studies, I read somewhere that the success of a thesis depends on the relationship with advisors. Following that logic, I couldn't have asked for better guidance, making my doctoral journey incredibly enlightening, thanks to the warm and professional support from my esteemed advisors. Institutionally, I extend my gratitude to the University of Seville, the DAAD, and the UNU-EHS for providing all the organizational support necessary for this research to be developed without any complications. Lastly, I want to acknowledge Flor, who has been unwaveringly with me throughout this project in three different countries, bearing the heavy load that comes with it. Without her, my motivations wouldn't have been as strong, my dreams not as ambitious, my convictions not as steadfast, and my triumphs not as fulfilling. To all of you, thank you. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 5 1960's Memoir __________________ "From Biafra's shell, we hatched in sorrow, Where failure's shadow, forever will stand. Endless toil, yet learning was scant. There we were fooled and shall be again. But our resolve is above reproach. Tireless efforts, yet flaws we see. In the system that cradles humanity's essence. An endless change, we must endure, (Undergone, without respite). For without it, humanity's fate, is chance." “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 6 CONTENTS Chapter I ............................................................................................................................................. 8 1.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 8 1.1.1. Why this research and research topic? .............................................................................. 8 1.2. Theoretical Discussion ............................................................................................................. 10 1.2.1. Humanitarian coordination: one in morale, riven in action. .......................................... 10 1.2.2. The evidence-based dilemma (and the need of it) in humanitarian coordination and implementation of actions........................................................................................................... 32 1.2.3. Bridging science and humanitarian practice: implementation research & CCAT. ..... 36 1.2.3.1 The theoretical & conceptual frameworks this research is bridging. ......................... 36 The Community Coalition Action Theory (CCAT) ................................................................. 36 The Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination & Implementation ........................ 40 1.2.3.2 The literature review in our study: implementation factors and coalition management factors. ........................................................................................................................................... 42 Community/local factors .......................................................................................................... 42 Organizational capacity factors ............................................................................................... 48 Communication factors & Trust .............................................................................................. 55 Technical Assistance & Training factors ................................................................................. 59 Chapter II .......................................................................................................................................... 66 2.1. Research purpose statement ................................................................................................... 66 2.1.1. Research questions............................................................................................................ 66 2.1.2. Working humanitarian coordination definition. .............................................................. 66 2.2. Methodology in our research .................................................................................................. 67 2.2.1. Literature review baseline. ................................................................................................ 67 2.2.2. Research design................................................................................................................. 69 2.2.4. Target group selection process. ...................................................................................... 75 2.1.5. Data Analysis. ..................................................................................................................... 80 2.1.5.1 Thematic Analysis ........................................................................................................ 80 2.3. Humanitarian Coordination Model ......................................................................................... 83 2.3.1. Systems thinking, systems dynamics, and causal loop diagrams. ................................ 83 2.3.2. Causal Loop Diagrams building....................................................................................... 85 Chapter III ......................................................................................................................................... 88 3.1. Research Findings & Discussion ............................................................................................. 88 3.1.1 Main Categories & Subcodes. ........................................................................................... 88 3.1.1.1 Coordination Issues: main sub-themes ..................................................................... 89 3.1.1.2 Coordination Drivers: main sub-themes ................................................................. 111 3.2. Humanitarian Coordination Modelling ................................................................................ 135 3.2.1 The Causal Loop Diagrams. ............................................................................................ 135 Chapter IV ....................................................................................................................................... 152 4.1. Research Findings & Discussion ........................................................................................... 152 4.1.1 Main findings of the research study ................................................................................ 152 4.1.2. Theoretical contributions, limitations & future research. ............................................. 163 4.1.3. Practical implications and conclusion. ........................................................................... 165 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................. 167 ANNEXES ........................................................................................................................................ 178 Annex I: Systematic Review Logic Grid and Search Queries ................................................ 178 Annex II: Code System & Definitions ...................................................................................... 182 “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 7 CHAPTER I _________________________ FRAMING THE PROBLEM 1.1. Introduction 1.2. Theoretical Discussion & Justification 1.2.1. Humanitarian Coordination: one in morale, riven in action. 1.2.2. The Evidence-based dilemma & the need of it in humanitarian operations. 1.2.3. Bridging science and humanitarian practice: a theoretical discussion. 1.2.3.1. Community Coalitions Action Theory & the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation 1.2.3.2. The systematic review of literature “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 8 Chapter I 1.1. Introduction 1.1.1. Why this research and research topic? In the year 2023, the Global Humanitarian Overview (UNOCHA, 2023) states that 363.2 million people are in need of humanitarian aid. The financial need to assist this population amounts to as much as $56 billion. At the launching event for this overview, the UN Secretary General called the 2022 year of extremes1, calling up for the severity of the emergency events, the wide scale of their impact and their complex and interconnected causes and consequences in people's lives. Other observatories of humanitarian affairs as the State of the Humanitarian System (SOHS) by ALNAP, have also called out the worsening global situation. In particular, the SOHS 2022 highlights that most of the active humanitarian plans to date are for conflict settings, with an 87% increase in people in need, and that floods account for the majority of disasters in the last four years (ALNAP, 2022). Access to these areas continues to be limited, and more humanitarian workers are attacked during their operations, with 116 killed by 2023 with an increase in kidnappings (Humanitarian Outcomes, 2023). With this worsening of conflicts and the frequency of emergencies expands in 69 countries and, despite a funding gap of 23 trillion still to be filled (UNOCHA, 2023), and with an increasing public criticism of the multilateralism (Nogueira, 2022), aid organizations continue to grow by a 10% with an estimated total of 5,146 aid organizations by 2020 (Humanitarian Outcomes, 2023). This large group (or swarm) of organizations are actively trying to engage in these multiple operations, where limited resources are centralized by a small number of entities (ALNAP, 2022) and the competition and reputation determines the basis of organizational survival. Although these organizations are increasingly under pressure to professionalize their actions (Walker & Russ, 2011) cases of failure, corruption, or even abuse of power scandals continue to appear around this sector (Naik, 2022). 1 Launch of Global Humanitarian Overview 2023 https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1a/k1assb7ar0 “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 15 founded, known as ad hoc humanitarianism (Barnett, 2011a), led to the construction of a more organized system in the 19th and 20th century. This new era known as modern humanitarianism began with the major emphasis on the value of life and human rights coming from the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution. Significantly, the founding of various organizations and adoption of conventions and treaties are the critical events of this new stage. For example, the founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1863 for the purpose of providing neutral and impartial assistance to those affected by armed conflicts2. The creation of the ICRC is a relevant organizational landmark for the contemporary behavior of humanitarian organizations for two essential reasons, 1) it represents the first organized relief structure recognized by various governmental actors and 2) it reinforces and encourages universal moral principles and promotes their adoption (e.g., with the adoption of the first Geneva Convention one year after its founding). These operating principles and legal instruments such as the Geneva Conventions and today's international humanitarian law continue to be the umbrella governing humanitarian actions today many years later (Slim, 2015), although with increasing ethical tensions among the different actors (Slim & Bradley, 2013; Weiss, 1999). This historical organizational memory rooted in the Enlightenment is obvious and constant in the formalization of humanitarianism in its various development stages. For example, in another significant event for modern humanitarianism: the creation of the United Nations after World War II. Still adhering to the Kantian humanism of the "Kingdom of Ends" where people are treated as the end and not the means to specific ends (Kant, 2012), the United Nations is created in 1945 with the objective of global governance for the welfare of individuals. Specifically, to ensure peace and security through cooperation among states to achieve human rights protection, humanitarian assistance, and development that ultimately enables individuals to be ends in themselves. These objectives are ideally achieved through the development of different actions, but essentially with the establishment and formalization of the political will of states through universal instruments such as conventions, treaties, binding, or nonbinding international agreements that have an impact on local and 2 The ICRC has a dedicated website to its history. For further contextual readings, see https://www.icrc.org/en/document/history-icrc “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 16 regional policies (Weiss & Daws, 2007). This moment in the development of humanitarianism or humanitarian action was marked by one of the trends described by Weiss & Barnett as "the willingness and ability of outsiders to help those at risk" (Barnett & Weiss, 2008, p. 2). This led to the proliferation of custodians of these instruments which evidenced the spread of non-governmental organizations in the 20th century. However, this first tendency, as mentioned by the authors, would also precede the entry into a dark stage of contemporary humanitarianism that would cause "the humanitarian community to engage in soul-searching about who they are, what they do, how they do it, and what impact their efforts have" (Barnett & Weiss, 2008, p. 3). An era in which beyond the moral binding thinking born in the Enlightenment would converge with the reality of organizational accountability and would face the complexity of challenges draw from a volatile and unpredictable globalized world. A world that defies the core cosmopolitan mandate of these entities: do good (and no harm) to those in need, while also coexisting with multiple other “like-minded” entities that have multiplied exponentially and share the same organizational need in an illequipped and resource-limited sector (Barnett & Weiss, 2008; Weiss, 2013). These challenges faced begin to become even more evident with the creation of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. From its mandate and early development, the system begins to exercise the practice of its obligations in the 1950s during the tensions of the Cold War. At this time, the challenges of coordinating actions in the sector began to emerge as a priority gap to be filled. However, it would take decades to form a formal need as an organizational priority3. This critical situation of coordination and pure humanitarianism was noted in several events after World War II. For example, in the Korean War (1950-1953) with the establishment of the United Nations mission known as the United Nations Korean Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA), created on December 1, 1950, under General Assembly resolution 401(v) (UNKRA, 1950) 4. Under this resolution, UNKRA had as its first priority the provision of basic necessities (food, clothing, and shelter) and measures to prevent epidemics; and second, the development of 3 For example, with the institution in 2006 of the Cluster Approach mechanism focused on coordination improvement. 4 A historical archive with several documents can be found at the UN Archives and Records Management Section here https://archives.un.org/content/united-nations-korean-reconstruction-agency-unkra “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 17 projects for reconstruction of transportation and power facilities, as well as the restoration of the country's productive capacity. Despite the enormous amount of funds allocated to aid in South Korea, some $200 million in annual U.S. expenditures on foreign aid, the agency encountered operational limitations from its inception in 1950. Political tensions and geopolitical interests on the part of the United States subordinated humanitarian assistance under the control of the military, and it was not until 1953, after the Armistice Agreement was signed, that UNKRA developed initial program actions with limited impacts (Lyons, 1958). The politicization of humanitarian assistance and its interaction with military actors is a common historical factor associated with the organizational behavior of aid entities. This politicization can call into question the neutrality and independence of humanitarian actions, which in turn translates into operational implications such as denial of access to areas where people need their services leaving no space for coordination with “counterparts” (Stoddard & Harmer, 2006). This is still a problem in the 21st century, although humanitarian entities have consolidated stronger independence in the contemporary evolution of humanitarianism in the international system after critical events we will discuss later on this chapter. The same challenges (and new ones) were encountered in the 1960s Biafra War. The international humanitarian system has been significantly confronted since this period of post-colonial wars. The civil war initiated by secessionist actions in the Biafra region brought the country into a complex emergency. The conflict left internally displaced persons (although not recognized under this concept), the establishment of refugee camps, unaccompanied minors, and a great need for vaccination. Furthermore, the conflict led to a severe famine by 1968, which was (for the first time) a humanitarian crisis internationalized by the media (Doron, 2014). This same media campaign with children suffering from kwashiorkor and marasmus served as a central thrust for fundraising, motivating professionals as well as humanitarian organizations to intervene, especially religiousbased NGOs in Ireland and the UK (Desgrandchamps, Heerten, Omaka, O'Sullivan, & Taithe, 2020). Among them were the ICRC, the Red Cross, Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, Caritas International, World Council of Churches (WCC) and many other faith-based organizations. However, despite being one of the most extensive humanitarian interventions in history partly because of the “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 18 mediatization of the crisis, the challenges and failures of this intervention resulted in one of the most critical moments of organizational transformation for the humanitarian sector regarding its effectiveness. First, problems related to the public perception and positive welcoming by the host state or other actors were noted at the time. Due to the nature of the conflict, access to people at risk (especially in the Biafra region) was denied, mainly because of the military blockade by the Nigerian federal authorities, although both warring parties were extremely suspicious of the aid and its effects on the military advantage. In general, negotiations with the main actors in the conflict were never comprehensively successful. A humanitarian corridor by land was never established, and the attitudes of warring actors towards humanitarian entities were eventually more negative (Desgrandchamps, 2012; Goetz, 2001). Even the Federal Government perceived these entities as no impartial or neutral (i.e., pro-Biafran), especially when humanitarian flights were also used by gunrunners to introduce weapons into the Biafra’s region, sometimes regarded as and undirect effect that prolonged the conflict (Goetz, 2001; Pérouse de Montclos, 2010). Eventually, as authors suggests, one of the most critical results for the NGO community after the Biafra’s war intervention was the expulsion of these entities from the country: "The Joint Church Aid airlift came to an end, Concern was expelled from Nigeria, Canairelief flights ended, and the organization folded. By the end of January 1970, a sizeable number of Irish missionaries – many of whom had been prominent in the delivery of relief – were placed under arrest and eventually deported from Nigeria" (Desgrandchamps et al., 2020, p. 75). Secondly, difficulties regarding the organizational maturity and execution of mandates were evident. Although ICRC and the Joint Church Coalition (comprised of Caritas International and WCC) managed to operate an air corridor, it was briefly suspended and represented a point of operational discrepancy for the behavior of these organizations. ICRC, governed by the Geneva Conventions, acted subject to the legitimacy of its operations by adhering to the sovereignty of the Federal Government, but this did not apply to other organizations. For example, when ICRC suspended "Mercy Flights" due to military concerns of the Federal Government, religious counterpart organizations continued these flights clandestinely only “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 19 relying to their duty to protect and care for human beings in need (Desgrandchamps et al., 2020). Along the same lines, despite its lack of experience in this type of complex emergency, ICRC had the role of coordinator during this conflict. However, this was questioned by other organizations as a non-essential actor while government representatives were dissatisfied with its performance (Desgrandchamps et al., 2020). "The Swiss ambassador reported that the ICRC delegation did not seem up to the task. Food shipments held up in the port of Lagos were spoiled, and there were complaints about the behavior of some members of its teams" (Desgrandchamps, 2012, p. 1423). Third, in the case of the ICRC during Biafra’s war, for example, it is worth noticing that organizational studies of aid entities highlight how the contexts of intervention or activities in the field driven by practitioners (sometimes improvising solutions) will to some extent determine changes in the organization’s policies. The problems, and discrepancies encountered, if well-integrated into organizational learning, will shape the decision-making processes or the maturity of the mechanisms that enforced these processes (Müller-Stewens, Dinh, Hartmann, Eppler, & Bünzli, 2019). In Biafra, the ICRC encountered a critical organizational pitfall that will eventually turn into growth. This was a challenge of fit and flexibility in relation to the policies and terms of reference, their resources to execute the mandates and achieve their goals, and to the actor-to-actor dynamics that occur in the field. For example, the issues faced by ICRC in Biafra have been described in detail by authors, and their roots are essentially organizational. Desgrandchamps (2012) has described these failures in relation to three main areas: the functioning of the entity, its interactions with other actors, and personnel management. By the time of the intervention in Biafra, according to this author, ICRC faced problems in its executive management at headquarters, discrepancies in the common understanding of how to operationalize the mandate, internal communication problems, lack of trained personnel and means or ways to recruit adequate staff, reliance on volunteers who received insufficient training, and a weak public relations apparatus that led to complications with other actors. Later in 1969, amidst a wave of negative perceptions by the authorities and other organizations, critical failures in humanitarian diplomacy, an ICRC commissioner-general granted with persona non grata status and arrested in Nigeria in 1969 somehow due his leadership approach, “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 20 and an ICRC plane carrying personnel and humanitarian aid shot down causing the death of these workers, the ICRC terminated its operations in 1969 under a formal agreement with the Federal Government (Desgrandchamps, 2012; Goetz, 2001). The complexity of the intervention in Biafra represented an important point for the effective coordination of humanitarian aid. Although these changes were not necessarily immediate and indeed internal to the organizations, they constituted an important step for future inter-organizational relations. If we return, for example, to the factors relevant to effective coordination, this context was key in accelerating the reflection on the role of these entities and in determining the parameters on which they committed their efforts (Davey et al., 2013). This is significant because it increases clarity of activities and reduces noise in practice, especially in building consensus as an organization on how and when to act. This very discrepancy in practice, for example, was one of the factors by which new organizations were founded (e.g., Medecine Sans Frontiers in 1971). It is at this moment of “soul-searching” that the formalization (and perception) of these entities begins to take on a more solid structure and clearer objectives, which are vital organizational characteristics for successful coordination. From this experience, for example, ICRC redesigns its training, duration of contracts, and recruitment policies for its staff with coherence to the reality of its activities and needs; basic factors such as the age of its managers start to be relevant, staff is hired specifically to ensure the improvement of the organization, and a more robust and clearer public stance was strengthened allowing the entity to position itself and its objectives (Desgrandchamps, 2012). These are just some of the historical events during the Biafra war that initiated the discussion and understanding of the coordination problems in the sector; and although each historical event would represent an important advance, subsequent events would reinforce this need, but also remind us of the slow process of professionalization of these organizations. Subsequently, the 1990s would also bring more critical reflections and transformations for the humanitarian sector. The accumulation of multiple disruptive events or crises around the world during those years pushed the system to react to a greater and more complex demand, but with the same immaturity and lack of resources as in previous years. However, in 1991, the United Nations would “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 21 formalize what can be conceived as the first step in structuring the humanitarian system as we know it today, through General Assembly Resolution 46/182 (A/RES/46/182, 1991). This resolution included the creation of the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), which would later evolve into the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the main emergency response and management apparatus of the system today5. This resolution would also include the creation of "...the post of Emergency Relief Coordinator; the Humanitarian Coordinator system; the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC); inter-agency needs assessments; the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP); the Central Emergency Revolving Fund (CERF); and the Financial Tracking System (FTS)" (Davey et al., 2013, p. 13). All these structures constituted one of the most important steps in the organizational growth of humanitarian work in the international system. However, in the midst of this slow and complex organizational development (i.e., soul-searching) the sector faced Kurdish refugee crises in 1991 and in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1994, genocides in Rwanda (1994) Bosnia (1992-1995), civil wars in Kosovo (1998), Somalia (1991) and Sudan- South Sudan (1990s), independence conflicts in East Timor in 1999, to mention a few relevant events. These crises would bring to the surface extremely complex and intertwined problems that would challenge the aid sector and raise even higher the bar of "effectiveness" and "efficiency" of its actions, especially those that required joint or coordinated action to provide lasting solutions. Although the sector was able to deliver tons of aid that prevented adverse effects on the population (Seybolt, 1997), critical problems regarding coordination were identified. During the Rwandan genocide, for example, coordination problems were in part related to the limited resource allocation capacity and mandate of some organizations (Borton, Brusset, & Hallam, 1996), e.g., the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), the UN peacekeeping mission for the country established in 1993, although with a limited mandate. Given these constraints on the mission's capacity, particularly in terms of personnel on the ground, the quality of intelligence collected (and needed to take preventive action) was questionable and led to late and inefficient decision making. This also had an impact on other actors' perception 5 For a more comprehensive reading on the organizational scope of UNOCHA, see https://www.unocha.org/ “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 22 of humanitarian organizations as incapable and lacking training and a clear mandate to perform their functions. For example, some of these negative perceptions were on UNAMIR: "for, as Rwanda shows, it is wholly inadequate to rely on UN officials and reporters confine to the capital of a country, who may know little about the wider conflict or optimal intervention strategies" (Kuperman, 2001, p. 112), or towards the UN Rwanda Emergency Office coordination cell by some organizations that "were critical of UNREO’s lack of technical personnel to provide an informed basis for operational coordination and of the caliber of some of the personnel" (Borton et al., 1996, p. 153). Again, and in relation to the ICRC case described above, the disconnection –or lack of coordination– between practitioners on the ground and decision making at headquarters would impact collective actions. This lack of reliable information and the conflict of interests of the actors of the coordinated action that formed UNAMIR (e.g., Belgium, by withdrawing its troops - unilaterally and independently of the Security Council - from UNAMIR upon suffering casualties on April 7, 1994) would end up in an even more limited reduction of the mission's ability to fulfill its mandate (Seybolt, 1997). This behavior of convergence between the interests of actors in a coordinated action is reducible to the understanding of coordination insofar as it can lead, as we have seen, to the withdrawal of resources allocated to joint action, but also to the reconsideration of the latter. For example, authors have also noted that, in addition to withdrawing its troops, "during this time, the Belgian Foreign Ministry worked behind the scenes to minimize the spectacle of a unilateral withdrawal by convincing other countries to withdraw their contingents" (Seybolt, 1997, p. 8). Likewise, NGOs saw their operations delayed due to their organizational interests to retain a clear independence, especially from the armed military (Borton et al., 1996; Borton, 1996; Eriksson, 1966). Similarly, coordination failures were caused by a lack of role clarification and inadequate leadership. In both Biafra and Rwanda, the humanitarian organizations showed weaknesses in this regard. Those responsible for the senior leadership of both agencies, ICRC in Biafra, and the UN in Rwanda, were perceived as controversial as a consequence of their leadership and derived actions (Desgrandchamps, 2012; Seybolt, 1997). As detailed by Seybolt “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 23 (1997) the figure of the Special Representative of the Secretary- General (SRSG) was poorly received by one of parties of the conflict, his role was limited to certain aspects that did not account for the situation, and overlapped with that of other UN personnel (e.g., Humanitarian Coordinator), which subsequently resulted in overshadowed authorities and duplicated actions as well as poor integrated coordination of funds from UN entities with different mandates (Borton, 1996). These coordination problems are common and frequent particularly in actions that integrate entities with different agendas and objectives into a coalition. Here, the intervened context (which is of interest to this research) as well as the nature of the entities responding in this context are vitally relevant factors in understanding coordination difficulties. In the case of Rwanda, for example, the UN response was comprehensive, with organizations of strictly different organizational character, as a coherent measure to the diverse needs of that context, which ranged from humanitarian, security and military needs, or long-term needs such as development, to the need to address the needs of the population. It is not surprising, therefore, that problems of conflicting agendas accelerated by poor integration of the combined response were evident, possibly as a result of leadership and formalization (and common understanding) of roles and objectives. Also, as a primary catalyst for the coordination problems mentioned in the introduction to this discussion, problems were found in the competence and lack of training of the personnel responding in the field in these entities. For example, the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance (JEEA) report for the Rwanda response (Eriksson, 1966) found that staff assigned to UNREO had limited experience and knowledge of UN or emergency contexts, possibly stemming from, as discussed by the authors, first, the nature and immediacy with which this entity was created (ad hoc), and the weakness of its recruitment systems (Borton et al., 1996; Borton, 1996) (a situation also faced by other organizations, such as ICRC in Biafra, as we have discussed). In 1992, the civil war in Somalia was also a context of complexly intertwined threats relevant to the organizational challenges faced humanitarian actors. Factional civil war and drought led to massive displacement and famine. Eventually, insecurity problems increased, internal land looting expanded, resulting in thousands of refugees, “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 24 and food insecurity led to various chronic diseases. The deployment of humanitarian assistance was extremely complex and difficult. And as a result, again, the complexity of the problem highlighted the need for the interdependence of the coordinated actions (solutions) of the actors. One example is that although a United Nations Operations Mission in Somalia (or UNOSOM) was deployed in 1992, and designed a plan for the acceleration of humanitarian assistance, the mission faced operational constraints as the UN's diplomatic negotiations with the actors in the conflict were not achieving their objectives (Middleton & O'Keefe, 1998; Møller, 2009). Diplomatic failures that resemble those back in Biafra while trying to establish the humanitarian corridor with General Ojukwu (Bello, 2021). Moreover, insecurity on the ground was also a characteristic point that highlighted the need for coordination and integration of different perspectives. For example, while some actors highlighted the need to escort food supplies to ensure access to people in need (Flikkema, Frerks, & Kliest, 1994; Middleton & O'Keefe, 1998), other NGOs advocated that food should be the top priority, as stated by the MSF president at the time "aid diversion is not a concern because in a country so struck by famine any diverted food gets eaten anyway" (MSF, 2013, p. 80). Many reports concurrently highlight the vast and diverse presence of actors on the ground with discrepant mandates and procedures in their operations; Somalia was, again, a case of a swarm of NGOs with converging mandates and interests which eventually turned in underperforming coordination (Middleton & O'Keefe, 1998). This same hive of organizations would be repeated in Kosovo, during the war in 1999, where the international community was involved with around 285 (at least registered) NGOs (Wiles, 2000; K. Young, 2001). Behind all these organizations, of course, there were also donors and stakeholders that would play a relevant role in understanding coordination (Everett & Friesen, 2010). Likewise, various response assessment bodies, as well as the organizations on the ground themselves, produced reports relevant to understanding the constraints encountered in Kosovo 1999. One of the blockers to effective coordination for this response was the dynamics exerted on organizations by donors. This led to a bilateralism of actions that would incur selective practices on the ground as to which organization and where it should implement its activities, "for “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 31 Figure 1. Barriers and implications for humanitarian coordination in our reviewed cases “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 32 1.2.2. The evidence-based dilemma (and the need of it) in humanitarian coordination and implementation of actions. Regardless of the existence of the humanitarian coordination mechanisms, it is their implementation, along with the lack of substantive, sound, and ready-to-use evidence-based data driving them, as well as the slow pace of learning from past experiences, that raises the criticism. In its current state, the aid sector has just recently started its data-driven discussions in a formal organizational sense (for example, the so-called Humanitarian Innovation projects9) and we can just barely speak about an evidence-based system (Dijkzeul et al., 2013). Humanitarian organizations still rely firmly on their normative principles as a measure of credibility for engagement and acceptability (Slim, 2015; Weiss, 1999). This is an organizational resource that allows them to stay afloat in complex environments, although it also might further complicate their operations once challenges to this ethical framework are encountered during the implementation of actions (Broussard et al., 2019). To mention a few, for instance, some evidence has shown that despite the tireless efforts to remain impartial or neutral, humanitarian organizations are leaving impacts in the context they operate (as shown in our first section). This has been a clear debate when, for example, humanitarian aid goods delivered in conflict zones can unintentionally prolong war (Narang, 2015). Similarly, humanitarian organizations in order to fulfill their impartiality principle need to know to whom the assistance is going, which is related to the needs-assessment tools and their ability to discern between target populations for assistance. Here, the implementation of those aid programs faces the limitations of these needs-assessment tools that might directly impact accountability (Hilhorst, Melis, Mena, & van Voorst, 2021; Moore, van Loenhout, Almeida, Smith, & Guha-Sapir, 2020). The data obtained in humanitarian context assessments can influence the scope of programs, their objectives, and the resources for their implementation. However, when these tools are not optimal, the effectiveness of assistance is highly questionable (Moore et al., 2020; Roberts & Hofmann, 2004). Similarly, needs assessment in humanitarian work is, for the most part, limited to the use of assisted 9 See, for example, the UNHCR Innovation Service/Fund established in 2016, dedicated to the transformation of UNHCR through investment in innovative ideas. See more in https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/ “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 33 percentages (Bradt, 2009) and rigorous monitoring and evaluation mechanisms remain a scarce capability among these organizations, with aid assistance more often landing off target (Lough & O'Callaghan, 2021). Therefore, it would be difficult to know the ultimate purpose for which users utilized much of the assistance provided in many aid interventions in the past and present; or if the services provided are actually meeting the population´s needs. Under this understanding, humanitarian actions are, indeed, a matter of real effect in target populations as well as in the context they operate. Generally, the discussion around this issue have been shaped around the concept of “humanitarian effectiveness” (Scott, 2014). Humanitarian effectiveness was a concept thoroughly discuss during the World Humanitarian Summit10 as one of the four main issues/themes in the sector (UNOCHA, 2013). The notion of effective aid was a key theme mostly because is subject to a significant lack of specificities and thus, framing it as a measurable (and acceptable) concept is ambiguous. In other words, evidence of successful practices in the humanitarian sector is inherently a matter of a broad set of topics. Talking about aid effectiveness is, for example, confronting the evolved reality of “short-term” relief against the nowadays “protracted” crisis where, beyond humanitarian activities, development practices are also carried out by these entities. Therefore, effectiveness is necessarily specific (limited) to phases or sectors of assistance. That is, effectiveness may relate to the initial assessment, the design of the intervention, its implementation, management of information or databases, and others. Also, effectiveness may relate to the specific context, either prevention, relief, or recovery, further complicating the consensus building and systematization of effective initiatives (Ngamassi, Maitland, & Tapia, 2014). In the face of these issues, the system has led the production of countless guidelines and manuals for dealing with these problems (e.g., the Sphere Project manual) to formalize assistance and its evaluation. However, organizations and practitioners in this sector still encounter the vagueness of gray literature that lacks consistency and review. Also, given the fact the “humanitarian interventions constitute only a small part of humanitarian crisis” (Dijkzeul et al., 2013) one-side 10 The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) was high-level political event led by the UN Secretary General and held in Istanbul in 2016. Around 9,000 participants from states, civil society organizations and NGOs were present with the objective to generate commitments and partnerships to achieve the Agenda for Humanity. See more https://agendaforhumanity.org/summit.html “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 34 approaches, such as the quantitative approach of Sphere Project, will most likely fail to capture their comprehensive realities of politicaldriven conflicts or cultural differences in each specific intervention context. Furthermore, due to donor accountability, fast speed of deployment and closure of activities, as well as the wide amount of funding relief interventions receive if compared to preparedness or recovery, it is likely that long-term innovations as well as their evaluation are being neglected 11. Then, it is normal to lean to think that this organizational and political conducive environment focused on immediate needs has detracted the evolution on more in-depth empirical discoveries. Hence, discussions of a successful systematization of practices and lessons learned in humanitarian assistance is still a prodigious conundrum and a remarkable need still to be covered from which this research stands to contribute. As it is logical to deduce, it is complex to obtain, evaluate and systematize sound theories and draw conclusions from humanitarian settings. Humanitarian knowledge has not been managed as it is in other fields, e.g., health research. A considerable amount of the socalled evidence-based knowledge has been produced in this field and it is the translation of these findings from more evidence-driven disciplines into practice that represents the key challenge for practitioners. Like other structured fields, in health evidence research, findings can be organized using the hierarchical 4S approach (system, synopsis, synthesis, studies) (Bradt, 2009). The 4S approach comprises four fundamental principles: evidence at hand (system), intervention effectiveness (synopsis), systematized and reviewed evidence (synthesis), and research storage (studies). This framework for structuring research findings allows practitioners to rely on steadfast information to overcome the isolated criteria of experts in decision-making. However, for our topic research, humanitarians have hardly any such mechanisms, neither in substance nor in time. Rather, the system is still relying on this very expertisolated criteria to handle operations with a recurrent focus on statistical frequencies rather than empirical and tested findings (Bradt, 2009). Only a few reviewed data repositories can be mentioned in relation to this need in the sector. For example, the ALNAP annual reviews and the work done by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Similarly, the project Evidence Aid organization is one of the most critical projects coherently implementing a 4S approach to 11 For instance, see the information data on Pooled Funds from UNOCHA regarding early-action compared to rapid response at Pooled Funds Data Hub UNOCHA (2021) “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 35 evidence in humanitarian response12. Nonetheless, practitioners in the sector are more frequently requesting ready-to-use and clearly systematized data to achieve humanitarian effectiveness (Turner, Green and Harris, 2011). While having the 4S hierarchical approach fully worked out in the humanitarian sector may be difficult to implement (to say the least), working at specific levels on a practice-based may be more realistic. The most attractive level for this research study is that of intervention effectiveness (synopsis), from which implementation and coordination practices are the focus of analysis. Knowing what works in humanitarian operations can help address the current demand of more than 200 million people in need requiring $35 billion in funding for the aid to be put in place (UNOCHA, 2021). The challenge is not only to get the programs up and running, but to know whether these massive efforts are, first, meeting their objectives and, second, whether those objectives are helping people overcome their suffering. In addition, policy-based standards are now placing greater emphasis on project managers and practitioners to act on, for example, gender equality and to hand over the response to local leading actors, or what is called localized action. As a general example, these two requirements alone represent a major effort for field practitioners to acquire effective, evidencebased actions to meet them. Both standards, although they have received exponential growth in research in the last years, are still among the "newbies" for which information is still poorly systematized. However, what seems to be trending in the humanitarian sector, although it is beyond the purpose of this research to demonstrate, is the linear trend in policy documents that appear each year indicating what is missing and what needs to be done. It is therefore easy to portray humanitarian aid professionals as those caught between an unpredictable and ever-growing demand and a system faced with increasing standards to meet. Consequently, there is a clear an urgent need to know what works to finish the endless loop of action of social wicked problems. 12Evidence Aid aims to save lives and livelihoods in disasters by providing decision-makers with the best available evidence and by championing its use. https://evidenceaid.org/ “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 36 1.2.3. Bridging science and humanitarian practice: implementation research & CCAT. 1.2.3.1 The theoretical & conceptual frameworks this research is bridging. The Community Coalition Action Theory (CCAT) Social problems are hard to approach and solve. Their very interconnected causes sometimes require for social scientists, practitioners, and policy makers to pool resources and strategic actions in joint responses to reach a desired outcome. These problems are known as wicked problems. Those are problems that have many interdependent factors, therefore, increasing the complexity of resolving them (Rittel & Webber, 1973). Interorganizational actions can be highly beneficial and more effective to handle this complexity. Nevertheless, notwithstanding its benefits, interconnected services through interorganizational entities requires high levels of efficiency to be effective. That is, coordination mechanisms should be carefully established, the goals clearly agreed, tasks and activities planned and monitored, and the overall impact and successes of the services thoroughly evaluated. This is a complicated dilemma commonly known in collective action (Olson, 2003). Therefore, a comprehensive framework to monitor the development of the coalition structure is required for practitioners to keep a formal evaluation of their now collective activities. Here is where the Community Coalitions Action Theory (CCAT) finds its relevancy. As key to our research, we consider that this theorical framework rooted in community psychology can serve as a crucial guideline for humanitarian coalitions to understand the complex dynamics of coalitions. The CCAT has been introduced by Butterfoss & Kegler (2002) and it is a framework based on Inter-organizational Relations Theory (IOR) (Gray, 1989) that captures the complexity of coalitions development. Specifically, this complexity and comprehensive relational patterns are approached by understanding the formation, implementation, maintenance, and outcomes of the structure. By doing so, the CCAT allows the coalition’s members to perceive the effectiveness of their joint action through a detailed set of factors. Furthermore, coalition are also collaborative platforms where individuals or organizations “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 37 come together to address a common concern and provide a solution (Feighery & Rogers, 1990), so it is normal to understand community coalitions as unions or alliances of actors who pursue common purposes (Butterfoss et al., 1993) and who are willing to share resources to achieve those solutions (Alter & Hage, 1995). Nevertheless, the community coalition strategy has been mostly applied in health promotion programs, and most of the literature can be found primarily around this topic (DiClemente, Crosby, & Kegler, 2002). However, studies incorporating CCAT approaches in the humanitarian sector are scarce, and only a few can be mentioned using the word coalition, although they do not strictly integrate the CCAT (Ngamassi et al., 2011; Saavedra & Knox Clarke, 2015; Zhao, Yen, Ngamassi, Maitland, & Tapia, 2014). CCAT: Formation stage In the CCAT development framework, formation occurs when a leading actor take action to get other relevant actors to work together to intervene a problem seeking for a common a goal. Coalition’s formation usually happens through ad hoc committees promoted and established by the most resourceful and leading actor (Butterfoss et al., 1993). Nominated members by the leading actor then designated representatives from their organizations to be the active practitioners in the coalition in specialized areas. For instance, in the humanitarian coalitions, there are several specialized services being offer by the joint action, from legal assistance, shelter, food and other basic needs, psychosocial and medical attention, and more. Once these steps are done, the coalition formalizes its goals and operational working guidelines. As identified by Butterfoss et al. (1993), this are the most important factors to guarantee an effective coalition’s formation: •Resources exchanged: so that the inter-organizational cooperation can be effective and balanced. •Payoffs from joining to the coalition: the benefits of joining to the coalition for the members outweigh the individual action. •Size of the minimum winning: whereby the dropout of any of the members would likely impact the effectiveness of the action. (Butterfoss et al., 1993) “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 38 Similarly, it has been suggested that a clear intention to join and a strong belief in reconciling individual interests with a common purpose is important for coalition formation to be effective (Butterfoss et al., 1993). This is known as "directionsetting," or the members' clear agreement on the vision and need for the coalition. Both factors have also been found to be determinants of implementation effectiveness in implementation research (Durlak & DuPre, 2008). CCAT: Implementation and maintenance stage The implementation and maintenance stage starts when the now connected members carry out the needs assessment and analysis (NAA) and the activities are being monitored (Butterfoss et al., 1993; Butterfoss & Kegler, 2002). At these points, members of the coalition collectively contribute their insights to comprehensively understand the social phenomena of concern. There are several methods to perform NAA in research, however, primary, and secondary data, questionnaires, focus groups, household surveys, or interviews are the key most used in the humanitarian sector. Also, the international humanitarian systems as a set of structure tools and guidelines to perform NAA. For instance, the IASC operational guidelines for coordinated assessment or the IASC Multi-Cluster/Sector Initial Rapid Assessment (MIRA) guidance among others. In general, coordinated NAA helps practitioners to build the base of their strategic planning and offers a detailed blueprint for monitoring and evaluation. Furthermore, coordinated NAA has proven to be a booster for assistance effectiveness (Akl et al., 2015; Tatham, Spens, & Kovács, 2017). Several factors have been found key determinants to reach a successful implementation and maintenance stage, but Butterfoss et al. (1993) frame them as follows: • Degree of formality: “formalization is the degree to which rules, roles, and procedures are defined precisely.” • Characteristics of the leadership: the coalition leadership should be attentive and supportive of the needs and concerns of each one of the members, excellent problem-solvers, and with fair decision-making mechanisms, the coalition can be more cohesive. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 39 • Characteristics of the membership: the diversity of services and capabilities brought to a coalition comes from its members, therefore, membership characteristics are a key factor to determine the coalitions capacity and management. Membership commitments are also de base agreement for members to fulfill their duties (i.e., tasks, activities, number of resources pooled to the coalition, number of hours or working time dedicated to the coalition, and other relevant role-based duties). • Organizational climate: climate in an organization it is understood as those perceptions by its members on a range of different topics such as effective communication within the structure, or conflict resolution mechanisms. Butterfoss et al. (1993) highlighted the following factors as key for organization climate: • Member relationships • Member-staff relationships (if applicable) • Communication patterns • Decision-making, problem-solving, and conflictresolution processes. • Relations with external supports: although the members of a coalition allocate a significant number of resources and capacities into the inter-organizational entity, external actors to the coalition can also offer a great advantage for the services and planning of the coalition’s actions (Butterfoss et al., 1993). CCAT: Outcomes of the coalition The effectiveness of joint action initiatives is critical for the coalition to maintain its credibility and sustainability in long-term interventions. The results obtained from collective actions must be significant for members to perceive that the cost of membership outweighs individual strategies. This is directly related to the motivation of members and their willingness to maintain their membership in the coalition to achieve results that go beyond their individual capacity but are intrinsically related to their missions. In turn, the achievement of meaningful objectives to solve complex problems through joint actions is something that helps to maintain the funding of the strategies carried out by the coalition. Nevertheless, the author of this theory argues that “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 40 “shortterm successes should not, however, be mistaken for ultimate solutions to chronic […] problems and endemic social concerns” (Butterfoss et al., 1993) and continues by stating that “the ultimate indicators of coalition effectiveness reflect a coalition's attainment of its mission, goals and objectives” (Butterfoss et al., 1993). Therefore, humanitarian effectiveness can be considered if the current network providing the response has been strengthen in each one of the humanitarian aid cycle’s stages, and the actors involved are prepared to provide a proper assistance. This is done by parallelly building technical capacity of the local and international actors involved in protection initiatives, promoting strategies and programs that continuously adapt the protection perspective, monitoring and evaluating the impact of their actions, and strengthening the coordination and information sharing mechanism to avoid duplication. Hence a complete evaluation of actions and current programs is necessary to guarantee the coalition’s effectiveness (Butterfoss et al., 1993). At this point, coalitions should be clear on what their short and longterm outcomes are (Linney & Wandersman, 1991) to confirm if its programs are being effective and useable for its target population, and so that informed decisions can be taken (Potter, 2006). The Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination & Implementation For interventions to be effective, evidence-based knowledge should be put into the hands of practitioners in a comprehensive and easy-to-access way. Nevertheless, promising results and sound theories are more often inaccessible to those delivering the intervention (Bradt, 2009). Similarly, evidencebased practices require a significant effort to consider implementation barriers that can be seen as a time-expensive operational task in humanitarian environments. Against this, practitioners are requiring high-quality research findings to perform better while deploying services (Turner, Green, & Harris, 2011). To approach this need, a bridging discipline connecting research and practice has been developed and named implementation research (IR). IR focuses on the methods and factors that can help to take evidence-based knowledge into the practice settings (Glasgow, Eckstein, & ElZarrad, 2013). In other words, implementation research is interested in knowing how to “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 47 humanitarian settings. For instance, staff being prevented from providing the services by armed groups or the natural-related variables making access impossible, as it is common in rural and peripheral areas. Another reason can be the working preferences of highly skilled staff to work on specific regions or areas where they might not be needed the most (Dubey, Gunasekaran, Altay, Childe, & Papadopoulos, 2016). High rate of staff turnover has been also noted in research findings as a contributing factor to decrease human resources assets (Dubey et al., 2016), which can be in turn responsible for the lack of establishing capacity (Canavera et al., 2016). An effective practice to handle this barrier of successful implementation is a shift in the hiring and retention practices (Menashy & Zakharia, 2020). Ataullahjan et al. (2020) have identified the positive outcomes from, for instance, hiring locals who are directly connected to the area where the services are being provided, or by increasing salaries and training to their staff (Ahmed et al., 2020). On the other hand, these practices not only contribute to the effective and rapid implementation of programs or projects but can also be seen as solid factors for the continuity of actions and the sustainability of long-term objectives. In this sense, local actors can help during the de-implementation of programs or innovations, a relevant issue when considering the effectiveness of programs (McKay, Morshed, Brownson, Proctor, & Prusaczyk, 2018). This issue has so far been neglected in interventions, and although it has been widely covered in the health field (Norton & Chambers, 2020) academic literature concerning humanitarian intervention deimplementation is lacking (Walsh-Bailey et al., 2021) but frequently adverted by practitioners as a crucial topic to improve through anticipatory action or "avoiding a “cookie-cutter” approach that fails to account for the local context" (Hunt et al., 2020, p. 5). These factors for effective implementation and coordination of assistance in humanitarian contexts reviewed in our literature demonstrate the relevance of community adjustments in interventions. However, professional practices for achieving effective integration of these factors are often shown to be generalized and lacking in procedural explanations in most academic papers. From the 4S approach, these relevant and effective practices often do not reach a degree of synopsis or easily accessible (systems) for their quick and effective utilization/application. Against this, in our review we have been able to find some relevant empirical relationships observed in practice and which relate to the remains of our proposed “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 48 implementation factors, but which are not exhaustively detailed. Recurrent, for example, is the importance of creating a more decentralized structure although this is rarely conceptualized or operationalized in practice in a clear and concise manner. This organizational action or need for adjustment and flexibility to other relevant actors and the integration of alternative practices implemented prior to an intervention implies, for example, training in leadership and community and intercultural awareness techniques of the professionals in charge of these programs. On the other hand, our review also highlights the relevance of the generation of procedural documents for the induction of authoritative patterns to guide the response, although flexible enough not to alienate unfamiliar actors with strict policies of action. However, none of these relationships, although vital and consistent in our review, are not clearly detailed as evidence at hand for use by practitioners in response. Another important empirical relationship discovered is the need for humanitarian organizations to make organizational adjustments in their engagement and action practices with local actors, as well as their sustainable recruitment practices. This has also been highlighted in our first chapter and the evidence suggests that these actions can improve the sustainability and effectiveness of programs. These adjustments involve, for example, the relevance of language and cultural understanding of service users, or the preparation of local actors as reinforcers of program objectives. However, these actions can be complex and involve multiple steps in the project planning stages, which for our review remain generalist and require a more in-depth analysis of previous experiences to uncover the specific actions effective in achieving these practices. Our research aims to close this gap of effective actions that fill this gap between these empirical relationships, and those found for the other implementation factors uncovered in this review. Organizational capacity factors In the framework of implementation, another relevant component for the effectiveness of the deployment of interventions or programs is organizational capacity (citation). Organizational capacity is defined, from the theoretical model used for this research, as activities that help the structural functioning of the entities providing the service, including leadership, or the formalization of protocols among others (Wandersman, Duffy, et. al, 2008). By “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 49 integrating this component with the Community Coalition Action Theory, this factor is related to what is known as the degree of formalization of the coalition (Butterfoss, 1993). This degree of formalization is necessary so that the entities that make up the coalition (and the coalition itself) are formally established in the work dynamics of the members, and the very identity of this coalition as a new entity that emerges from the sum of the parts is clarified. Specifically, it is this organizational capacity of the coalition, established through the degree of formalization, that would allow this collective entity to function in an integrated manner, reducing interorganizational conflicts arising from the organizational diversity that each member brings (Butterfoss, 1993). In our theoretical review, 49 papers mentioned or focused their work on the different components that could be understood as organizational capacity from our theoretical models in use for this thesis. Particularly, certain activities were more recurrent in this theoretical review, which we will expose in this discussion. For example, among the most frequently mentioned elements of organizational capability are 1) leadership, 2) conflict of interest, 3) protocols and roles, and 4) inter-organizational trust, which we will detail below. As a starting point, leadership has been found to be a critical factor in facilitating activities, or colloquially, in making things happen. Strong leadership on the part of the entities involved in the implementation of a program is determinant in the introduction, maintenance of the intervention, but also the adjustments (organizational or structural) necessary for implementation (Zielinski, Allison, et al., 2021). In programs for victims of abuse, for example, researchers found that flexibility as a result of the leadership of the host organization, including the modification of its own organizational rules, facilitated the development of group therapies for this population, without which the very nature of this organizing entity could have been a barrier to these activities (Zielinski, Allison, et al., 2021). The same result was also mentioned in interventions for reproductive health in refugee camps in Syria, when donors and specific agencies paid attention to the development of the intervention (Krause, Williams, et al., 2015). This may be because, as mentioned in the literature, the leader takes responsibility for his or her role within the coalition (Lie, 2011). Similarly, during the Ebola response in West Africa, Gillespie, Obregon, et al. (2016), have effectively identified how the lack of leadership led to a significant delay in the development of activities, ultimately concluding in the “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 50 lack of standard working procedures, producing, for example, complications in accessing communities. This facilitative role of leadership in complex contexts such as inter-organizational relationships is widely cited in literature. In their evaluation of responses to food crises in Haiti, Kenya, Pakistan and Côte d'Ivoire, Maxell & Parker (2012) concluded that one of the crucial challenges and opportunities in these responses is those related to leadership, especially in its role as facilitator of negotiation actions with governments. Similarly, the lack of local leadership can lead to problems of program sustainability or accountability of government actors if, for example, international (external) entities neglect these aspects during their interventions (Sami, Mayai, et al., 202). However, this lack, in complex contexts such as emergencies, is not usually due to an intrinsic lack, but to a volitional and strategic action that is subject to the role, experience, and will of the leader. For example, in the Humanitarian Response Review Report, the United Nations coordinating agency, UNOCHA, clarifies that "the international humanitarian coordination system operates by goodwill and consensus and relies too often on the authority and competencies of the Humanitarian Coordinator" (Adinolfi, Bassiouni, Lauritzen & Williams, 2005, p. 11). This is especially critical in conflict and emergency environments where actions are always against time and decision making can be compromised by the enormous contextual and organizational complexity of these contexts. As a counter to this, however, the organizational leadership literature encourages that "managers should create an environment that nurtures, enriches and encourages employees to formulate new ways of solving coordination-related operational challenges. This can be achieved where a manager creates an error management culture and is open to innovations, which encourages employee to take the risk of coming up with new ways of doing things while knowing that sometimes these are prone to error" (Mutebi, Muhwezi, et al., 2020). This argument aligns with consistency to recommendations offered in disaster logistics studies, particularly in problem-solving capacity, attention to connectivity, and spontaneity of relationships, "visions going beyond logistics principle in dealing with disaster management" (Salam & Khan, 2020). However, the organizational context of humanitarian aid entities is often top-down, with a center-dependency on the leadership of the "head" of the programs with a risk of authoritarianism (Tatham and Houghton, 2011) and who, as we will “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 51 see in our results, often have long specialized expertise, but may lack leadership and management skills. This is not only mentioned in the specific organizational literature, as, for example, in the management of local coalitions to access political spheres or decision-makers (Post, 2015), but also in the empirical literature of humanitarian relief chains where "the abilities of chain coordinators (as a person) were important in achieving the success of coordination" (Akhtar, Marr & Garnevska, 2012, p. 96). Generally, it is quite common to find in our reviewed literature the need for humanitarian coordinators to act as facilitators, promoters, or actors who make things happen between parties, rather than managers or "captains" (Jensen, 2012). Indeed, other authors clearly point out how, historically (as we have illustrated in our introduction), individual qualities of leaders in humanitarian responses, and the scarcity of profiles and high turnover have hampered operations (Maxwell & Parker, 2012). However, the centralization of leadership that can affect the facilitation of interventions and coordination may also relate to the scarcity of resources and funding that becomes more common in this sector (Garber, Kusher, Wren, Wise, Spiegel, 2020; Maxell & Parker, 2012). On the other hand, humanitarian contexts are now suffocated by the presence of many entities providing services. These entities differ not only in mandate, but also in their interests, working dynamics, the services they provide and even the different phases or stages of emergencies and conflicts. As we have seen previously, this diversity directly affects the centralized leadership in coalitions or coordinating entities (Independent International Commission of Kosovo, 2000), given that, usually, organizations respond to funding and accountability dynamics to different donors or stakeholders and their operations are not immune to these influences (Weiss, 2013). In practice, this diversity converges and is denoted in conflicts of interest, or discrepancy of agendas. These differences may have different causes, but there are certainly some common drivers that we have identified in our review. For example, the perception (and criticism) of partnership or working together with other entities is a determining factor for humanitarian coordination. Partnership or collective work among organizations is very sensitive to public criticism by civilian actors, the military, or the affected population. That is, the political evaluation of collaboration is an important determinant for coordination (Jensen & Hertz, 2016; Nabi, 2014). It is no surprise that common interests and objectives are a predictive aspect for two organizations to decide to act in a coordinated manner (Lie, 2011). “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 52 This is even clearer in emergency contexts where humanitarian action may suffer from perceptions politicization of aid, as suggested by the case reviewed in the Thai floods, which conflicted coordination between government entities and local actors (Yeo & Comfort, 2017). In addition to the fact that the organizational structure as such, and its mandates may prevent coordinated affiliation with other organizations (Jensen & Hertz, 2016), this discrepancy may also be evidenced in competitiveness, as illustrated in the Ebola response in Sierra Leone (Olu, Lamunu, Chimbaru, Adegboyega, Conteh, Nsega, et al., 2016). According to the Community Coalitions Action Theory (Buterfoss, 1993), the discrepancy of interests takes an important role in achieving an effective coalition. These differences are addressed theoretically from this theory through something known as "directingsetting", in which the agreements and alignment of objectives is clearly discussed. This has been shown to be an effective factor in other interventions, such as local coalition contexts (Post, 2015) or humanitarian assistance chains (Akhtar et al., 2012). Or, on the other hand, in the formulation of joint-teams of agencies specialized in similar themes to address specific problems, as in the response to the Indonesian earthquake (Bisri, 2013). Similarly and in a similar context, during the Indian earthquake, the authors report that there was some willingness to cooperate, but the disparity of "principles" prevented coordination (Nabi, 2014). This same difference in principles is even clearer when the desired coordination must occur between agencies that inevitably (and necessarily) share intervention spaces, but their structures are significantly opposed, for example, with military entities, usually perceived as inflexible (Nabi, 2014; Salam & Khan, 2020). These same differences in principles and interests can occur between governments and aid entities such as NGOs. An interesting example from our review in this regard is presented by Mlenga (2016) in denoting that in community-based disaster risk reduction programs government actors and NGOs had different approaches to a problem and conflicts of interest about their intervention. However, strategies such as using "bridges" or focal points between these organizations, having some degree of discretion (Kalkman, 2020) and critical skills and mechanisms such as conflict resolution (Wimelius & Engberg, 2015), conscious integration of stakeholder interests (Regis- Hernandez, Mora-Vargas & Ruiz, 2017) are suggested for addressing these differences. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 53 As may be obvious, these differences are intervened, at least from our theoretical frameworks and from the review done, also from the agreements and officialization of formal mechanisms or tools such as protocols and role definition. From our theoretical frameworks, roles and protocols are part of the degree of formalization of coalitions, but they are also a required factor for effective implementations (Butterfoss, 1993; Wandersman, Duffy, et. al, 2008). Formalizing protocols is a strategy that helps create a collective understanding of how to act in the face of specific coalition actions and reduces the variability of opinions on how the new collective entity approaches these situations. In humanitarian contexts this is not a minor organizational strategy, but a sine qua non given multiple possible actions to respond to sudden events. Sadly, the very conditions of these scenarios can make it difficult to formalize these protocols and is not an unknown phenomenon for the sector since interventions in the 1990s (Apthorpe, 2001). For example, in the response against cholera in Yemen, the impact of the emergency demanded case-based intervention, but the lack of protocols, their inadequate dissemination, and lack of practicality was a barrier to these case-based care mechanisms (Spiegel, Ratnayake, et al., 2019). The authors also highlight that this is even more complicated in contexts where there is no prior preparedness plan, or where these "do not include key standard components, including analysis of hotspots, scenarios for OCV use, community surveillance, infection prevention and control and improvement of laboratory capacity" (Spiegel, Ratnayake, et al., 2019, p. 4). Similarly, in the Yemen conflict, other authors highlight the failure to formalize protocols to increase the efficiency of services. Miller, Zunong, et al. (2020) studied health care facilities through an integrated, community-based case system, but, although the biggest reported obstacle was the cost of transfer, they also highlight that the absence of referral protocols between community workers and health facilities hindered effective integration. In the context of the Iran earthquake emergency response, Sfarpour, Fooladlou, et al. (2020) identified that aid and donor management can be affected by the lack of rules to help monitor, for example, celebrity involvement and misuse of official channels, or to oversee the systemic distribution of aid. This same need for a systematized and protocolized vision among health workers in disasters can help reduce the complexity of the context and the service itself, something the researchers defined as "having common language for organizational interactions, a systemic “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 54 and comprehensive vision for rolling the interconnected links" (Bahadori, Khankeh, et al., 2017, p. 322). The common language referred to by the authors is critical to reduce the risk of misuse of information in a context where, certainly, information can save lives. An example of this in our review also occurred in the aforementioned case of the Ebola response in Sierra Leone (Olu, Lamunu, et al., 2016), where different parties had different reporting and information collection formats further complicating the coordination of the response against the virus. To further evidence the chronicity of failures in the protocolization of actions and their common occurrence in these contexts, in the intervention to care for refugees in Syrian camps, "the lack of a national protocol on clinical management of rape survivors hindered provision of these services" (Krause, Williams, et al., 2015). In fact, one of the recommendations offered by John, Gurumurthy, et al. (2019) in their study on the flood in Chennai (India), an effective way to achieve organizational alignment among the various entities is through the standardization of protocols. However, and as we will see later in our expert interview results, standardization and protocolization can come at a significant cost in the flexibility of operations, an elemental and necessary feature of humanitarian response that can affect the ability to respond to unforeseen events (Mutebi, Ntayi, et al., 2020; Salam & Khan, 2020). Related to protocols, the definition of roles in joint actions is very frequent in the literature. In its basic and logical understanding, a coalition with entities of different nature, sector, mandate, objectives, funding and even culture, clarity about who does what and when is vital to avoid duplication of actions and to manage resources more appropriately. In the humanitarian sector, the problem has been identified since interventions in, for example, the genocide and civil war in Rwanda (Sybolt, 1997) or Somalia in 1991 (Flikkema, Frerks, et al., 1994) and has continued to be monitored and reported until the last evaluation of the Cluster Approach in 2010 (Steets et al., 2010). The recurrence over time and chronicity of this problem is not of unknown cause. As mentioned above, this may be due to a lack of clarity in protocols and procedures. For example, when governments lack good communication and directive to dictate the roles of different entities, such as in the intervention in South Sudan for child protection (Canavera, et al., 2016). Another reason for the lack of role clarification is that different humanitarian aid organizations maintain a significant degree of operational independence, whether for reasons of principle or strategy, the assignment of roles by a coordinated “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 55 entity may be perceived as a loss of autonomy (Olson, 2013; Ramalingam & Barnet, 2010). As clearly described by some authors in our review "a cluster lead which considers itself the "owner" of a cluster with NGOs and others simply as suppliers is unlikely to be successful. This is both because many actors in the humanitarian system have strong organizational identities and do not like to be directed" (Jensen, 2012, p. 158). Perhaps the most obvious immediate effect and evidence in the literature of the lack of role clarification is that of duplication of efforts, as specified in the work of Nabi (2014), describing the lessons learned from the response to the Kashmir earthquake in 2005. However, this same rhetoric is identified in our review as a vicious "loop", since the same entities, in addition to being reactions to the assignment of roles, demand the establishment of certain roles, such as that of a lead agency (Nolte, et al., 2012). That is why, from our theoretical understanding, the factors of communication and trust (described below) are argued as key in the mediation and solution of these dynamics. Communication factors & Trust Similar to the organizational capacity result, our literature selection concluded with 47 articles related to interorganizational communication factors. As described above, our theoretical argument focuses on the fact that organizational and goal diversity in humanitarian contexts are drivers of failures in the integration of agendas, the accuracy of information, or the very willingness to participate in coalitions. Effective practices in communication and inter-organizational trust building could provide tools to address the complexity of these situations. For example, some of the basic and recurring failures found in our review detail the lack of communication mechanisms as an obstructive factor in coordination (Abaya, Le Dé, Lopez, 2020). These authors investigated the deployment of the Cluster Approach in the Philippines and describe how seamless communication between science agencies and cluster members is ensured through a communication mechanism integrated into the response plan, which "worked on providing a single frame of reference which improves both the leadership and accountability of cluster leads and encourages greater participation from member agencies of each cluster" (Abaya et al., 2020, p. 367). Going back to the interventions in Albania and Kosovo, Wiles (2000) also identified that information centers for advocacy work that humanitarian agencies try to achieve during the refugee crisis. These channels or spaces for sharing and disseminating information have different “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 56 modalities, although they usually tend to take the form of collective meetings, or coordinated sessions can facilitate networking and immediate updating of information more easily (Fortwengel et al., 2020; Krause et al., 2015; Lee, Chelmis & Di Nicola, 2021). In humanitarian jargon, this is known as "hubs" or spaces where information is dumped and shared, and their modalities can vary. However, and as we will see in our expert interview results, not all information is necessary or relevant, which is why it is critical to "identify key influencers and channels of communication with strong reach and relevance while considering more specialized communication for specific sub-groups" (Gillespie et al., 2016, pp. 663). However, establishing these communication mechanisms is often not easy. Many barriers internal or external to the organizations may prevent their realization or, indeed, the willingness to share information and communicate with the rest of the organizations. First, structurally, the need to implement technological mechanisms to facilitate communication is recurrently mentioned in our review (Lee et al., 2021). These authors consistently argue in their results that the lack of a service coordination tool, or the disparity between the platforms used, coupled with the lack of organizational capacity to manage this integration is a major barrier to facilitating communication (Lee et al., 2021). Similar to these arguments, in Betancourt et al.'s (2020) longitudinal study for psychosocial adjustment and social integration of child soldiers from the civil war in Sierra Leon, they suggest "strong communication channels and partnerships are especially vital to this process with researchers being comfortable using a variety of communication modalities that are responsive to bandwidth and connectivity issues inherent in postconflict settings (Betancourt et al., 2020, pp. 7). Similarly, the default mechanism, meetings, despite the fact that in our review several authors mention the relevance of these to, for example, generate common understanding (Fortwegel et al., 2020), identify operational challenges and solutions (Garber et al., 2020), to generate community participation (Sami et al., 2020), to establish common progress reports (Wimelius et al., 2015), or to match services to individuals' needs (Peters et al., 2020), or to gain access to possibly unknown resources (Loitz et al., 2017), these mechanisms also suffer from significant difficulties. For example, the structure and format of the meetings should be carefully thought out, because they may be perceived as unnecessarily long and inefficient for decision making (Olu et al., “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 63 course was accompanied and developed in collaboration with an emergency medicine department of the local university hospital, as well as lecturers from hospitals in other countries specialized in humanitarian studies (Bustamante et al., 2020). Likewise, the content delivered in trainings in, for example, toolkits, such as the one presented by Eisenman et al. (2014) require advanced technical knowledge of specialties such as community psychology, sociology, or emergency medicine. In this case, the toolkit contained thematic sections addressing, for example, psychological first aid, community mapping, community participation, among others, built in collaboration with academic, public health, and even private sector entities such as media consultants. The integration of these actors, as well as the cautious formulation of this toolkit for community resilience based on the priority needs of stakeholders, the integration of digital strategies as mapping tools, and its interactive aspect makes the case presented by Eisenman et al. (2014) a positive model to mention. However, given the complexity of humanitarian aid and emergency scenarios, technical assistance can vary in many ways. This need may arise, for example, the need for technical assistance outside capitals (Spiegel et al., 2019), lack of analytical capacity internally in organizations (Flikkema et al., 1994), need for training in international frameworks of law or humanitarian aid (Canavera et al., 2016), technical equipment and space needed (Olu et al., 2016), political action skills (Post, 2015), the development of performance indicators (Akhtar et al., 2012), to share operational guidelines and systematized best practices, with cash and voucher programming and information management, as well as overcoming language barriers (Maxwell & Parker, 2012), to integrate big data into information analysis and improve understanding in teams (Nagendra et al., 2020), to integrate the different information systems that each organization uses and that could prevent coordination (Bjerge et al., 2016), to assist in the use of geographic information systems which play a critical role in humanitarian operations (Mesmar et al., 2016), to better understand and use internet systems and social networks that have proven to be an important tool in emergency responses (Mesmar et al., 2016), to assist and train professionals in understanding digital information systems (Ipe et al., 2010), to assist in developing competencies on psychosocial assistance and referral protocols identified as vital to, for example, the refugee intimate partner violence prevention programs described by Greene et al. (2019). To develop cross-cutting web “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 64 platforms with flexible functionalities such as their independence from connectivity to optimize the supply chain (Wang et al., 2016), or in the development of new needs analysis tools that optimize resource allocation (Zissman et al., 2014), or in encouraging technical partnerships to better understand a problem and fundraising that will give sustainability to actions (Estupiñan-Day et al., 2011), or for organizational transformation that streamlines rapid adaptation to the changing nature of emergencies (Matarazzo et al., 2020). These are just some of the vital technical assistances that may be needed in the contexts studied and, as the social phenomena inherent in humanitarian crises become more complex, technical assistance needs to be an essential pillar in the deployment of operations. As we have seen in the sections described above on implementation factors, targeting the effectiveness of operations demands being wary of these factors and their inherent aspects. The arguments presented above do not necessarily illuminate the action of humanitarian assistance to improve the implementation of services, but they have allowed us to reflect on the implicit interaction of these factors and the "how to" of doing so in the practice of humanitarian action. Although some of these factors may seem obvious, for example, leadership, the truth is that from our theoretical and empirical argumentation, the interrelation of these factors and their application in operations is often complexified by many factors. That is why, having integrated our theoretical approaches and briefly illustrated some readings and cases on these implementation factors, our study aims at getting to know the personal experiences of professionals with a long experience in the sector to understand their effective practices and understanding of these factors in different contexts. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 65 CHAPTER II _________________________ EMPIRICAL RESEARCH 2.1. Research Statement 2.1.1. Research Questions 2.1.2. Working Humanitarian Coordination definition 2.2. Methodology in our research 2.2.1. Literature Review Baseline 2.2.2. Research Design 2.2.3. Data Collection 2.2.4. Target Group (Sampling) 2.2.5. Data Analysis 2.2.5.1. Thematic Analysis 2.3. Humanitarian Coordination Model 2.3.1. Systems Thinking & Systems Dynamics 2.3.2. Causal Loop Diagrams modeling “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 66 Chapter II 2.1. Research purpose statement From our socio-constructivist and pragmatic worldview, this research focused on two pillars of work 1) the understanding and description of the shared patterns or dynamics of humanitarian workers in their coordination actions and 2) the motivation to identify "what works" in coordinating actions. This approach allowed this research to capture the authentic experiences of participants within their group settings, offering ethnographically realistic descriptions of the coordination phenomena. As such, this research contributes to the scholarly understanding of the phenomena from a social and behavioral perspective to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian coordination. 2.1.1. Research questions. [Central Question] What are the patterns or dynamics used by humanitarian professionals to perform coordination aims or actions? [Sub questions] • What are the community factors in coordination used by humanitarians? • What are the communication factors in coordination used by humanitarians? • What are the organizational capacity factors in coordination used by humanitarians? • What are the training factors used by humanitarians to perform coordination? • What are the technical assistance factors used by humanitarians to perform coordination? 2.1.2. Working humanitarian coordination definition. In order to have a conceptual clarity in the analysis of humanitarian coordination in our study, and given that coordination can be understood from many disciplines (Castañer & Oliveira, 2020; Schultz & McDonald, 2014) this research work has taken as conceptual understanding of “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 67 the phenomenon from the standard definition used in the United Nations system, since it offers a greater closeness to the experiences of the participants and professional reality: “Humanitarian coordination seeks to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian response by ensuring greater predictability, accountability, and partnership. Coordination involves assessing situations and needs; agreeing common priorities; developing common strategies to address issues such as negotiating access, mobilizing funding and other resources; clarifying consistent public messaging; and monitoring progress.” (OCHA, 2023) 2.2. Methodology in our research 2.2.1. Literature review baseline. In order to satisfy the research objectives of this doctoral dissertation, we determined a two-stage system of approaching the study phenomenon. The first phase of this methodological framework consisted in the development of a systematic review of empirical literature published in academic repositories. This systematic review aimed at identifying published empirical evidence on effective actions to obtain relevant published data on effective coordination practices intervening in humanitarian contexts. The process involved, first, the design of restricted and narrowly focused search queries to retrieve data related to our objectives from a database (Web of Science). The list of queries is given in Annex I of this document. Second, the abstracts of the resulting articles (at the time of the search = 562) were thoroughly reviewed to filter the most relevant ones according to our exclusion criteria (see Annex I). These exclusion criteria helped us to identify specific articles that contained research findings in which our research interests were included. That is, implementation factors, humanitarian settings, and the Theory of Action of Community Coalitions (TACC). As a secondary outcome of our systematic literature review, some of the articles addressing coordination challenges in general were also included in the discussion as a primary source of our introductory theoretical framework. A second evaluation of the relevance of the papers preclassified by "abstracts" was made once the reading of these began in depth. This second assessment allowed, first, to determine in greater depth whether the papers addressed in a relevant way any of the implementation factors of our research, and the identification of “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 68 other relevant studies to be added. At the end of this second assessment, the resulting number of papers reviewed by factor type was community factors = 19, organizational capacity = 49, communication factors = 47, technical assistance = 8, and training = 8. The final reviewed and selected papers (131) were carefully read, and this theoretical discussion was elaborated using Citavi 6 as a reference and knowledge management software (see Annex I and Figure 3). A PRISMA model was followed for the systematic review process (Page et al., 2021) Figure 3. PRISMA model for the systematic review of our implementation factors and empirical data to our triangulation method The results of our systematic review formed one part of the triangulation expected for our subsequent qualitative approach to analysis. The identification of effective practices in relation to these five implementation factors served as the basis and feedback process for the elaboration and development of the second stage of this methodology. This second stage consisted of the development of interviews with expert professionals in the humanitarian sector with experience in program coordination and implementation actions. In this way, the empirical findings found in the systematic review were contrasted with the specific professional experiences of these “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 69 professionals with diverse profiles in terms of type of work, job level, geographical location of work, among other relevant characteristics to increase the integrated understanding of the phenomenon studied. This contrast between empirical findings and subjective professional experiences allowed the elaboration of the results of this research through the analysis methodology described below. 2.2.2. Research design. Our methodological design was composed of the two stages mentioned above, and approached from a social constructivist worldview (Creswell, 2009), as well as an ethnographic qualitative research perspective in order to capture the diversity of determining variables in the execution of humanitarian coordination actions (Wolcott, 1999). This qualitative design started from an emergent design perspective, in which the questions prescribed from our empirical review were subject to change based on the experiences described by the participants (Creswell, 2009). Likewise, this design consisted of an abductive process of analysis (or the combination of deductive-inductive) where the analytical approach focused on the empirical existence of evidence (systematic review) and the comprehensive understanding of subjective experiences (professionals interviewed) to generate further logical reasoning for the explanation of our hypothesized relationships between factors uncovered in the literature review (Thornberg & Charmaz, 2014). By approaching our analysis from an abductive approach, we focus on recontextualizing empirical evidence from immersion in subjective experiences to challenge prior beliefs about the study phenomenon and arrive at new insights from this interaction (Reichertz, 2014). The overall design logic is summarized in Figure 4 in this document. As it is common in qualitative research, our approach requires a well-described framework for establishing the validity or rigor of our knowledge generation process (Creswell, 2007). In qualitative research, this rigor is achieved through the introduction of specific techniques that guarantee an empirical value to the research process. Some of those suggested techniques are the cognitive empathy from which the researcher is expected not only to report other’s views on a specific matter, but to descriptively translate the meaning, consistency, and origins of those views (Small & Calarco, 2022). Similarly, Guba & Lincoln (1989) introduced a generic framework for obtaining scientific rigor in research, which we have used as a strategic framework for these purposes in our study. This framework “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 70 is composed of indicators of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability respectively; for which many techniques have been proposed and used in the field of quantitative research (Nowell, Norris, White, & Moules, 2017). For our study, these four indicators have been understood and supported by the following conceptualizations and techniques described below as proposed by Guba & Lincoln (1989): 1. Credibility: understood as an indicator of confidence to demonstrate that the findings are credible and trustworthy. Specifically, that the findings represent the subjective experiences of the participants, and the subjective bias of the researcher has been reduced. To achieve this credibility, our study relied on the following techniques: a) Triangulation: Triangulation of our findings was achieved by generating empirical relationships between the results of our systematic review and the professional experiences reported in the interviews. This triangulation allowed us to conclude relevant findings from the science published through peer review processes in journals, and the reality faced by practitioners in humanitarian coordination in the framework of our theoretically chosen implementation factors. b) Peer debriefing: this technique incorporates iterative monitoring of the methods and analysis processes used in the study by experts in the field to validate the research design and procedure from theory and acceptable practices in qualitative research. c) Member checks: this technique consists of the review of the results by the participants to ensure that the results presented accurately represent their experiences described and faced during the exercise of their professional actions. 2. Transferability: this indicator shows the degree to which the research process and its findings are capable of being transferred to other contexts similar to that of the study. That is, the capacity of a study to be generalized for the understanding of the phenomenon studied in other “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 71 contexts. The techniques used to ensure our transferability were: a) Thick description: here, researchers must provide a clear and detailed exhaustive description of the methods, the context, and the characteristics of the participants. In our study, this exhaustive description is provided in the form of detailed records, appendices, and illustrations of each of these elements. 3. Dependence: similar to the previously described indicators, the level of dependence of a qualitative study is achieved by demonstrating the consistency and stability over time of the research findings. The preferred technique used for our study was: a) Audit Trail: this technique provides external readers of an investigation with the necessary tools and evidence to trace the logical and progressive process of the investigation in relation to, for example, decision making on relevant changes in methodology, the inclusion of new strategies, the discarding of information, among others. Our research provides the records and rational logic of analysis to ensure that external readers can follow the logical course of decisions made to conclude our findings. 4. Confirmability: the confirmability indicator demonstrates the degree to which the findings are grounded in the data and free of the researcher's biases. By achieving a high level of confirmability, other researchers can confirm the research findings. Confirmability, in addition to being the result of the other rigor indicators, was enhanced in our study through: a) Negative case analysis: with this technique, our analysis process involved an active search for facts that contradicted our findings and including these contradictions and their implications as alternative perspectives. b) Reflexivity: this technique ensures active consideration of the researcher's prior biases and beliefs to increase “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 72 the level of transparency of the process. Reflexivity in our research included a detailed description of the principal investigator's professional background, experiences, and position in relation to the phenomenon studied. In addition, the peer debriefing discussed in the first rigor indicator was integrated as a bias reduction measure. c) Saturation: here, the process of data collection and analysis is stopped when the data has been refined to a point where new information does not lead to new findings. Participant observation To understand the intricacies of the working dynamics in the context of humanitarian coordination, the research process also implemented participant observation (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011). Participant observation, as a qualitative research method, was conducted during the researcher's research stay at the United Nations University Institute. This facilitated a closer institutional exploration with the decision-making processes, training, and other nuances that shape coordination efforts in the humanitarian sector. This methodological choice conforms to the philosophical and research stance taken in our study that human behavior needs, also, to be understood from the organizational reality of these entities, and the meanings that emerge through practice in the field (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994). The decision to use participant observation as another support technique in our study was based on the need to capture the nuances and complexities of organizational and professional interactions in this sector (Dewalt & Dewalt, 2011; Vaughan & Luken, 2021). This integration in one of the entities of the international system, which lasted about a year, allowed, first, access to professionals and their experiences, given the institutional support, to obtain internal perspectives, to observe the development processes of trainings and simulations, as well as high-level meetings of coordinating entities. This approach allowed for a holistic understanding that facilitated the analysis of our data collected, having an institutional ethnography perspective (Vaughan & Luken, 2021). On the other hand, participant observation, given its inherently responsive and reflective nature, the new insights observed, the iterative nature of this methodology allowed for a constant refinement of the research questions and our preconceived hypotheses (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994), allowing for a more nuanced exploration of issues as they arose about “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 79 number of codes, but which were faithful to the recorded experience. The coding, once completed, was exported as a document for Member Checks with the interviewees, who reviewed the transcripts of the initial sessions to ensure that the interpretation was consistent with their experiences. No inconsistencies were reported between the researcher's analysis and the interviewees' perceptions. Likewise, changes in coding styles, relevant findings, as well as negative cases contrary to our theoretical hypotheses were meticulously recorded in the Memos provided in our appendix material to provide our methodological thick description. Table A. Chronology & Topic Exposure of participants and researcher. Interviewee I1_S1 I2_S1 I2_S2 I2_S3 I3_S1 I3_S2 I1_S2 I4_S1 I5_S1 I6_S1 Date 14/04/23 21/04/23 27/04/23 05/05/23 04/05/23 08/05/23 08/05/23 10/05/23 15/05/23 26/06/23 Duration 44m 42s 1h 2m 25s 1h 32m 11s 1h 41m 37s 47m 22s 59m 54s 1h 0m 45s 46m 58s 56m 16s 1h 22m 27s Follow Up REACHED REACHED REACHED Interviewee I7_S1 I5_S2 I8_S1 I9_S1 I10_S1 I11_S1 I8_S2 I7_S2 I12_S1 I9_S2 Date 29/5/2023 02/6/2023 9/6/2023 12/6/2023 15/6/2023 4/7/2023 10/07/2023 17/7/2023 17/07/2023 21/7/2023 Duration 45m 29s 54m 01s 53m 36s 51m 52s 41m 50s 49m 30s 51m 21s 47m 54s 57m 13s 1h 5m 49s Follow Up REACHED REACHED REACHED REACHED Interviewee I10_S2 I11_S2 I12_S2 I6_S2 I4_S2 TOTAL TIME Date 26/3/2023 02/08/2023 20 Sessions Duration 1h 5m 1h 3m 38s 22h 41m 50s Follow Up REACHED REACHED FAILED FAILED FAILED The analysis of the initial interviews allowed for more in-depth research in the follow-up sessions, particularly for those experiences of priority or those that were not clarified in the first session. In the same way, the experiences lived by one professional were consulted anecdotally with other professionals in their interviews, to generate an isolated internal discussion from which we obtained significant validation insights that increase our internal consistency of the group's overall discourse. The interviews were also consulted with the thesis supervisors, who provided their insights to enrich the conversation and obtain information of interest to this research. Once the follow-up sessions were completed, the experts interviewed responded to a brief survey of professional information to provide further insight into our target group. The second stages of the “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 80 thematic analysis began immediately after the completion of the follow-up interviews. 2.1.5. Data Analysis. 2.1.5.1 Thematic Analysis Our qualitative research framework in this study was oriented, first, toward understanding the determinants of humanitarian coordination that underlie the complexity of response dynamics in these contexts, and second, the especially effective determinants of actions that help practitioners navigate and overcome coordination challenges. In the context of this complexity, our methodology required a technique that was sensitive to it and capable of elucidating patterns or central themes around humanitarian action. Although different approaches and techniques exist in qualitative research that are relevant for our purposes (Creswell, 2007), our analysis relied on thematic analysis as the primary technique for extracting meaning from our data. Thematic analysis is a method in qualitative research "for systematically identifying, organizing, and offering insight into patterns of meaning (themes) across a data set" (Braun & Clarke, 2012, p. 57). Despite its relatively new development compared to other methods in qualitative research, thematic analysis has been widely used in many field (Nowell et al., 2017), including in the humanitarian sector (Stevens, Sharma, & Skeoch, 2022; T. K. H. Young, Pakenham, & Norwood, 2018). Specifically, the methodological purpose for which thematic analysis has been used in our research is to describe a specific reality and delve beyond the surface of that reality to identify patterns in the discourses underlying humanitarian coordination decision-making, as a strategy to respond to the very complexity of the phenomenon and to find alternatives to ineffective actions or reinforce those that have proven effective from practice (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Standardization on the procedure and guidelines for conducting thematic analysis is not consistently conformed in the social sciences (Braun & Clarke, 2006) compared to other methods such as Grounded Theory (Creswell, 2007; Nowell et al., 2017). However, certain scholarly efforts from the exercise of this technique have facilitated the development of frameworks for its use. The systematic process of our thematic analysis was based on the guidelines proposed by Nowell et al. (2017) and Braun & Clarke (2006). By following these models, our design logic shown in Figure 2, our analysis process was shaped by conceptualizing what “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 81 characterizes a theme and to what degree of presence (or proportion) in our data an excerpt must be recurrent to be considered a theme (Braun & Clarke, 2006), as well as by six (6) phases of analysis as proposed by Nowell et al. (2017), as detailed below. Theme/Pattern Conceptualization Theme/Pattern Size What is a theme or pattern in our research study?” What is the prevalence of a theme/pattern in order to be included in our research? Any instances in our data item (interviews) that evidence a significant trend on addressing coordination issues and actions in any of our five implementation factors An instance in our data item has to incur at least 30% in the discourse to be considered a theme. Phases of Thematic Analysis (Nowell et al., 2017) Phase Description [1] Familiarizing yourself with your data The researcher engages with the data in a reflective manner by being cautious of his/her biases and beliefs. [2] Generating initial codes Initial production of codes while identifying instances that are relevant to our topic of study [3] Searching for themes Sorting and integration of codes into possible themes by relying on our defined criteria [ 4 ] Reviewing themes Tuning of themes and search for patterns [5] Defining and naming themes Fitting of themes into the overall narrative of the research [6] Producing the report Wrapping up of findings and description of results along with supportive data such as records and extracts. Table 1. Data analysis process of our thematic analysis based on Braun & Clarke (2006) & Nowell et al. (2017). The thematic analysis was performed in MAXQDA 2022 (VERBI Software, 2021) with a free-coding procedure (Braun & Clarke, 2006), in which the researcher codes fragments or segments of the text with random codes not necessarily related to theories but that highlight the empirical validity of the research objectives (see Figure 6). To increase the rigor of this procedure (Braun & Clarke, 2006), the codes were conceptualized from the content of the empirical data and a dictionary of codes and their definitions added to our thick description (see Figure 7). This procedure yielded a repository of 136 codes (see Figure 8) that will be further analyzed in phase 3 (see Table 1) of our procedure to determine the main themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The iterative and parallel process of interviewing and analyzing the participants interviews also allowed this research to have and deeper understanding of the different perspectives by continuously analyzing previous interviews, writing specific types of memos (such as Follow-Up questions Memos, and Critical Findings Memos) that further feedback the interview process to increase the fidelity of participants’ views, and helped to decrease the biased of the researcher (see Figure 7). This was achieved, for instance, by sending a comprehensive report with he analyzed interview to the participants, for them to confirm the adequacy of the researcher’s interpretation. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 82 Figure 6. A screenshot of the qualitative analysis using MAXQDA 2022 Figure 7. Screenshot of the dictionary of memos in MAXQDA 2022. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 83 Figure 8. Organized codes by frequency of occurrence in our analysis. 2.3. Humanitarian Coordination Model 2.3.1. Systems thinking, systems dynamics, and causal loop diagrams. To increase the relational understanding of the factors identified in humanitarian coordination, as well as the scope of our scientific contribution to the study of this problem, a Systems Thinking perspective has been used (Arnold & Wade, 2015). In modeling the results from a system thinking perspective, our analytical vision was concerned with the relational and interconnected understanding of the different factors, with a holistic (or non-reductionist) paradigm to represent a specific reality, exclusively with those essential elements of that system. Given the complex and diverse nature of the factors influencing humanitarian actions, a systemic (focusing on whole) as opposed to a reductionist (focusing on parts) approach is of greater empirical relevance to capture the internal dynamics of complex systems (Richmond, 1994). Although the conceptualization of Systems Thinking is diverse (Arnold & Wade, 2015), this research followed the proposed definition by the Arnold & Wade (2015) due 114 76 43 39 39 35 33 32 30 30 29 28 27 27 26 26 26 26 26 25 23 23 23 23 22 22 20 20 20 19 19 19 18 17 17 6.76 4.51 2.55 2.31 2.31 2.07 1.96 1.90 1.78 1.78 1.72 1.66 1.60 1.60 1.54 1.54 1.54 1.54 1.54 1.48 1.36 1.36 1.36 1.36 1.30 1.30 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.13 1.13 1.13 1.07 1.01 1.01 020 40 60 80 100 120 Coordination Issues Locals Organizational differences Coordination Experiences Humanitarian Experience Assessment Activities Meetings Personality Emotional Management Lack of Capacity Community Perspectives Internationals Communication skills Politics Information Sharing Unexpected Situtations Technical Assistance Background Self awareness skills Code Frecuency Percentage Segments “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 84 to its critical focus on the purpose of the system (Forrester, 1961), and its analysis practicality, which coherently enables our research objectives: Systems thinking is a set of synergistic analytic skills used to improve the capability of identifying and understanding systems, predicting their behaviors, and devising modifications to them in order to produce desired effects. These skills work together as a system (Arnold & Wade, 2015, p. 675) Out of the eight steps proposed by the authors to perform systems thinking, this research is exclusively focusing on the first three steps where a dynamic hypothesis is built: 1) recognizing interconnections (themes & sub-codes from our thematic analysis) 2) identifying and understanding feedback, and 3) understanding system structure (Arnold & Wade, 2015). For the second step of this framework, this research performed a Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) analysis, commonly used in system dynamics (Barbrook-Johnson & Penn, 2022), to visualize and understand the non-linear causality in a system. CLDs are complex diagrams, and this method “focuses on feedbacks as a key component and organizing structure for complex systems, but also brings the ability to include all sorts of concepts and variables” (Barbrook-Johnson & Penn, 2022, p. 48). In essence, CLDs are contained variables and polarized connections (positive or negative), that explain the dynamic relationship between these variables, as well as reinforcing and balancing loops that describe “a core system engine, which is a set of nodes that are the core of the system (Barbrook-Johnson & Penn, 2022, p. 49) (see Figure 9). Additionally, although CLDs can present specific limitations, CLDs are one of the most comprehensive qualitative procedures in systems dynamics that can potentially be use for mathematical modeling such as Stock and Flow diagrams (Binder, Vox, Belyazid, Haraldsson, & Svensson, 2004; Lin, Palopoli, & Dadwal, 2020). These simulation models are powerful tools to help to understand the complexities of systems and their dynamics and provided insightful analysis of the effects of reciprocal causality among the factors in a system (Gonçalves, 2008). Similarly, the current developments in the humanitarian sector have been keenly focusing on the application of systems thinking process to understand the complexities of their operations, and modeling have been successfully applied and revisited over time (Besiou, Stapleton, & van Wassenhove, 2011; Besiou & van Wassenhove, 2021). However, although there have been recent efforts to integrate systems modeling methods in the system, “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 85 those efforts have been mainly coming from disciplines such as logistics (Allahi, F., De Leeuw, S., Sabet, E., Kian, R., Damiani, L., Giribone, P., Revetria, R., & Cianci, R., 2020). For instance, several publications integration systems thinking and systems dynamics in the humanitarian are consistently focusing on the application of the methods to the supply chain in relief operations (Gonçalves, 2008; Voyer, Dean, Pickles, & Robar, 2018). Nevertheless, the integration of the specific factors from which this research stands are thoroughly missing; giving more theoretical and empirical relevancy to our findings to support a more comprehensive picture of humanitarian coordination systems. Figure 9. A hypothetical causal loop diagram of information sharing in humanitarian settings. 2.3.2. Causal Loop Diagrams building. The design of CDLs in the modeling of complex systems is based on the construction of causal hypotheses. In our study, the causal links and their polarity, as well as all the variables integrated in our complex system are the result of the literature review and the thematic analysis of our expert interviews. This allows our CLDs to have an empirical support that increases their hypothetical validity and causality in the different instances simulated in our study. The different categories and themes identified in our thematic analysis were all plotted into the modeling software for the coordination drivers and issues variables to be presented as a whole interacting system. There are different nominations and styles for designing “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 86 CLDs, however, our design has followed the indications presented by Sternman (Sterman, 2000) particularly for its organizational approach. In most cases, as suggested, the polarity of the causal links has been obviated, following the author's suggestion that "when you have trouble assigning a clear unambiguous polarity to a link it usually means there is more than one causal pathway connecting the two variables" (Sternman, 2000, p. 146). Although there are variables that could be considered as having ambiguous causal polarities, omitting the ambiguity of polarity between variables has allowed us to further specify the depth of the dynamic relationships between our variables. Similarly, rather than presenting the whole system of our variables affecting humanitarian coordination, limited loops between a small number of variables are presented to focalize the understanding of our findings. The mapping and design of our CDLs has been performed in the Vensim PLE 10.1.1 software.14 14 The Official Website of Vensim can be accessed here: https://vensim.com/ “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 87 CHAPTER III _________________________ RESEARCH FINDINGS & DISCUSSION 3.1. Thematic Analysis 3.1.1. Main Categories & Sub Codes 3.2. Humanitarian Coordination Modelling 3.2.1. The Causal Loop Diagrams 3.2.2. Case Study Application “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 88 Chapter III 3.1. Research Findings & Discussion 3.1.1 Main Categories & Subcodes. The thematic analysis of our research identified two macro categories with their corresponding sub-themes, and these, in turn, with specific sub-codes representing each theme. These two macro categories are Coordination Drivers (1450 coded segments, 33.7%) & Coordination Issues (34054 coded segments, 66.3%). The specific themes for each macro category are for Coordination Issues: Operational Risks & Challenges (22.62%), Interorganizational Issues (13.72%), External Factors (18.72%), Communication & Trust (11.58%), and Resources Challenges (6.13%), and for Coordination Drivers: Personality (6.42%), Communication & Information Sharing (6.45%), Resource & Capacity Building (26.36%), Operational Factors (11.92%), Procedures (3.93%), Collaboration & Networking (8.25%), Leadership & Management (9.27%), Value & Ethics (1.60%), Community Engagement (6.71%), and Learning & Improvement (7.17%), as illustrated in Figure 10 and 11. Overall, the thirty most frequent codes are illustrated in Figure 12, of which the local factors, top-decision making, and formalization degree stand out by far, followed closely by context and operational awareness and Access and acceptance, which we will explain in each of their macro categories. The content analysis is extensive thanks to the intensive sessions achieved with our interviews; however, this analysis seeks to focus on those findings that help us answer our research questions with a higher degree of common occurrence between the literature reviewed and the experiences of the professionals interviewed. A complete list of our macro categories, themes and subcodes can be found in Annex II here in this document and in the online repository of this research project.15 15 The Online Repository of our research can be found HERE. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 95 Figura 17. Two-cases model: security awareness-personal life-emotional management These observations on the emotional or cognitive state of team members mentioned by interviewee P5 also resonate with the experiences described by interviewee P3, describing team members affected, perhaps, by the long exposure to the context, becoming, even, a possible internal threat in the organization. In this particular case, living in confined spaces such as compounds or bases where international agencies are established can become threatening spaces and become a barrier to coordinated teamwork. As mentioned by our interviewee P3, "So yes, some people have been there for a long time, and you can feel that their relationship with other people is a bit weird, and some can even get to harassment, sexual harassment. And sexual harassment, for example, is something that you see there in [the UN Entity] in both missions that you don't see in other places in the world. I've never seen anything like that. You can run into someone like that maybe 1 in 200 or once a year, you can't run into that living in [City] working in the [IFI]. In [Country] and [City] it was a more everyday thing that we had to deal with, especially women (P3, Pos. 107)." Similarly, in terms of security awareness, the interviewees emphasize that there is a certain behavioral component that influences negligent behavior in terms of security. On the other hand, and as illustrated in Figure 18 below, habituation to humanitarian contexts may also induce a certain carelessness or disregard for risk assessment or the following of protocols on the use of security equipment, possibly as a naturalized behavioral “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 96 response to threats or the cognitive desensitization of professionals who are deployed for a long time in high-risk areas: Figure 18. single-code model: security awareness-protocols. Another important aspect as coordination issues detected in the Operational Risks & Challenges theme is the lack of capacity, understood in our study as "events where the lack of capacity in terms of resources or personnel, or even mandates of organizations hampered the development of activities". In general, interviewees P2, P5, P11 and P12 had a higher incidence in this aspect (see Table 4). These interviewees summarize from their experience that lack of capacity is a problem, especially for humanitarian organizations, particularly small ones, that do not have an institutionalized training methodology to build capacity. This may be reflected, for example, in language challenges, or lack of knowledge of the roles of other peer organizations. In the same way, and as we have already mentioned in the results of our literature review, the lack of capacity in communication tools can lead to isolated decision making due to the lack of interaction due to this lack. Another issue that affects and is related to our findings in the literature is the lack of capacity in the recruitment processes of humanitarian aid organizations. This is a problem that has been a problem since the beginning of the humanitarian system, as “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 97 mentioned in our first chapter; however, interviewees refer to significant incidences of recruitment of personnel, including those with criminal records, as a major risk for international aid organizations. On the other hand, and once again affecting the leadership roles of humanitarian aid programs or "missions", our interviewees also find as challenging and certainly significant the lack of capacity of resident coordinators in emergency response, for example, if they come from a more development-related background, which has a direct impact on the quality of the management of the immediate response. Related to this, although more directly, other interviewees also refer to the lack of capacity in leadership, although referred to as a lack of specific capacity in team management and leadership skills, mentioning that the system is highly focused on highly trained technical profiles, but with little experience in leadership and management, which leads to poor decision making. As exemplified by the comment of one of our interviewees, the UN's failure to understand basic principles of camp management and coordination due to this lack of capacity in leaders further exacerbates these issues, "what is more interesting is that the UN and [UN Entity] know how camp management coordination works, we know that there's the CCCM triangle, you have camp coordination agency, that's the UN, you have camp administration, that's the state or the national authorities, and camp management, that's generally an INGO or a local organization, and yet because of the fundamental lack of leadership from [UN Entity] in that response it took weeks to convince them that was the case, it is just a known thing, it should not happened, and they did not understand it, and it is basic things (P12, Pos. 30)". “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 98 Table 4. Summary of code segments: Operational Risks & Challenges > Lack of Capacity P2 (N=1) P5 (N=1) P11 (N=1) P12 (N=1) Lack of Capacity Of our staff and the military and organizations that are only focusing on exercises and training issues. Most of the international actors or NGO actors do not have that, don’t have a dedicated training-exercise branch. So they have to take people out of the normal day businesses P2: 14 - 14 (0) The problem of course was his language skills, and at that time you did not have to have, he was an officer so he should have had his working English skills, but he was fluent in Russian, because he was from the former east part of [Country], and he wasn't trained in English. P2: 46 - 46 (0) So these grass-roots organizations as I call them did not have a clue about anything, and they were more hampering from my point of view than doing anything good even for the people there P2: 56 - 56 (0) and these grass-roots organizations were not professionals and have no clue about anything and were more hampering, and then were asking us for protection and stuff like that, and we were telling them. P2: 56 - 56 (0) And yeah we were only two as I said so we took we made our own decisions and it was also because I mean this was long time ago right so we didn't have e-mail system and on the left e-mail was only provided by the [UN Agency] on two computers at the headquarters so we could ask for permission to use one of their two computers and the accounting which I also had to do then I had to just submit once a month and give it to other colleagues who were in [City] and they would fly it back to the organization and then three weeks later I would get a response of you know if I entered all the data correctly or whatever you know so it was it was very interesting it was all manual. So we really were at our own liberty to do things as we saw fit. P5: 22 - 22 (0) That was the head of mission basically his role would then be tasked with certain aspects of security but there was nobody there in charge of security interesting. P5: 50 - 50 (0) Often, they're recruiting people that have been sacked by other organizations as well because there is no international blacklist to get rid of those scumbags. P5: 85 - 85 (0) I think that was a bit of a mismatch with the team leader, who was, to be honest, that team leader was not our first choice, but it was basically proposed by the regional office at the time to lead the mission, and we had our reservations. So, we knew that there was an issue, we quickly found out there was an issue with her as a team leader that she was not a good match, that she was not strong enough, it was very much trying to be with the Resident coordinator and all that, and as a result we then brought in a deputy team leader who was much more in line with the team and with the mission. P11: 33 - 33 (0) I think if you go a little level higher, for instance, in terms of the sort of resident coordinators, heads of agencies, yeah, you get people that you think like “where did they find them?” Because they do come up through the system, because they are good in something, and then they're ambitious and then they go through the system, and basically have no specific crisis management experience, but what they're often good at is, of course, sort of general coordination, and making sure that they have good relations with the agencies, and with the governments that they work with P11: 60 - 60 (0) Really, there was a complete lack of leadership or direction because the people who were in charge were complete amateurs who were fighting with each other, and it was ridiculous. P12: 13 - 13 (0) Leadership, particularly, I think the UN is a bad example of underplaying and undervaluing soft skills like leadership and management. The UN recruit people who are skilled in their area, and they are less interested in their leadership and management. P12: 18 - 18 (0) So, you have senior level UN people who have either no experience of leadership or management to that point or are not good at it. So, you have key decision makers in a humanitarian collective response who frankly don’t know what they are doing in terms of leadership and management. P12: 18 - 18 (0) “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 99 External Factors. The second most mentioned theme in Coordination Issues is External Factors (25.8%). As mentioned in our previous chapters, humanitarian action is subject to many external dynamic factors that can affect the sequence of actions. In our study, these external factors are integrated into various aspects (sub-codes) of which politics (31%), international presence (22%), and country factors (15%) represent the majority of incidents identified in the individual experiences of our interviewees. Political aspects include "events or experiences in which organizations and (or) individuals had their own activities being affected by political matters in the context of operation". With 84 coded segments and an overall presence of 91.7% (11 cases), this is perhaps one of the most transversal aspects to all our interviewees and, particularly, it has an essential character for the understanding of coordination as a complex phenomenon linked to other factors, in this case, logically, coordination issues (54 co-occurrences) and the subcodes of access & acceptance (21 co-occurrences) and top decision-making (15 co-occurrences). The respondents with the highest incidence of political aspects of humanitarian coordination were P11, P9 and P7 (Figure 14). Political factors can directly affect access to people and aid. For example, in one of the cases mentioned by P7, relief efforts were significantly affected by country-specific laws that "shielded" access to warehouses where humanitarian aid was stored, without which humanitarian workers could not plan their activities. It is important to highlight from this experience, and as our interviewee quotes "...but I had the feeling that the military has a little bit of leftover from previous days. [Country] had a very difficult end of socialism, obviously so" (P7, Pos. 26) the political and social history of government institutions can influence the relations that humanitarian agencies have, in this case, with the military apparatus, which also lacks experience in relations with international actors. Similarly, P7 also points out how the centralization of government actors over the leadership of the response can lead to a decline in the interest of coordinated activities, when the rest of the actors perceive the purposes of the meetings, for example, as politicized and with genuine humanitarian disinterest on the part of the state, which is perceived as a leadership irrelevant to the objectives of the aid entities. Similarly, actions by humanitarian organizations can be significantly constrained by “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 100 state authorities, for example, in the excessive monitoring of publications that these entities make when operating within a country's sovereignty. This is evidenced by many of our interviewees, "we had the Prime Minister's office who said, every time more or less the UN was mentioned somewhere in an article or press release, they were immediately saying "okay you have to delete that". We had one time an [International News] team working with us, going to places with the helicopter, and we also [received an] official letter coming from the government that "this is completely unacceptable. Who do you think you are?" So, we said, "we are we are currently working here, I mean on your request". But no, this is not how the cookie crumbles. So, I have experienced both sides, really. Some are seeing it as totally exciting being with the UN, and others, no way" (P7, Pos. 120). On the other hand, one of the most relevant and consistent findings among interviewees in terms of political factors has to do with country-specific factors and the impact on political reputation of the presence of international actors, specifically humanitarian assistance. UN assistance teams, for example, through the experiences of our interviewees, concurrently evidence resistance from local authorities, who try to maintain their, as our interviewees mention, "pride" and demonstrate that they can address the situation, and usually show some suspicion about the objectives of these international entities, "these things caused them to have fears, unfounded fears, but fears that when the United Nations arrives in support, it is going to evaluate, to see if they are doing well or badly, and nothing to do with it, it is not the intention, it is not the intention" (P8, Pos. 151). Similar to this are the regional dynamics and sensitivities that have been critically called an aspect that blocks the development of the activities. Since the localization agenda of humanitarian response, many regional entities have been constituted and territorial competition for operational participation is a problem certainly present in modern humanitarian action. The competition between regional and international agencies for the "leading role" has been found to be a very important issue in modern humanitarian action as critical for access in affected areas, which requires some political sensitivity and specific skills of the personnel deployed to manage these sensitivities. However, as mentioned by one of our interviewees, this situation is further complicated by the lack of clarity and agreement on what the role of these regional entities is, and their “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 101 lack of capacity in some areas: "so that is why we said OK, let us not call it [UN Entity] because it will just raise eyebrows and you know, people will think we will step on their toes and their sensitive. It is a bit petty, but it is just that kind of regional dynamics which you of course see in many regions" (P11, Pos. 47). It is important to mention that this competitiveness is not a minor dynamic in humanitarian coordination, but rather a rather complex aspect that can affect the dynamics of teamwork, even leading to the marginalization of international actors, which can eventually affect the quality of the mission's objectives and the motivation of staff deployed in the field when they are required, to quote our interviewees, "out of the official picture". Interorganizational Issues Our third theme is interorganizational issues (18.8%). This category is closely related to the other themes mentioned, especially the external factors, but with an internal look at the specific processes of each organization. It is not surprising, therefore, that some of the sub-codes or aspects highlighted by our interviewees in this topic are organizational differences (37.2%), national authorities (16.6%), competition (16.1%), military interactions (11.6%), and reputational risk (6%), as main aspects in this topic. Internally, and as has been discussed in our theoretical framework, it is to be expected that the clash between organizations operating in the same context is complex and difficult to integrate when the objective is to operate in a coordinated manner. Our interviewees continue to refer to problems already mentioned and reviewed in previous studies, however, some of our findings demonstrate that polarization between humanitarian agencies continues to be common in modern operations. Not surprisingly, for example, the highest cooccurrence of organizational differences mentioned by our interviewees is with competition and high-level decision making, as well as being significantly described as a coordination problem rather than an advantage (e.g., if you think about the diversity of services) Our interviewee P9, for example, strongly emphasized the weak integration that exists between the UN system and other INGOs, at all levels of action, wasting a potential for action that is essential for the quality of humanitarian assistance. This lack of integration is seen by our interviewees, for example, at the strategic and operational levels, where policy and guidance formulators are generally distanced from the operational reality of “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 102 humanitarian action. There is a certain degree of frustration shared by our interviewees regarding what they describe as "the big shots," who tend to have more competitive relationships and distances, for example, when comparing staff deployed in the field: "that's why we need [INGO] [which is] taking from tactical level to the operational level. If those two could ever work together, it would be amazing, and they can. On top level at senior level, forget it is absolutely like small kids that this is my shop, this is my toy, I'm not sharing my toy, and so on." (P9, Pos. 26). Obviously, this is exarcebated by the number of organizations deployed in the field: "for me, it was always that my own motivation stops when I see [the sector] having these humanitarian actors with thousands of actors with a thounsand different mandates working on very different funds". (P7, Pos. 102), which could further polarize coordinated action, as a result of the invidualization of actions that could, among other reasons, be related to the moral defense of each mandate and compliance with the guidelines set by the donors of each organization, something recurrently mentioned in our study. This clash or difference in mandates is pronounced when agendas and mandates differ considerably, for example, in interactions with military entities. From the experiences of our interviewees, particularly those with experience in armed peacekeeping units, there is a certain degree of reluctance on the part of humanitarian organizations to share information with the military as a precautionary measure to ensure privacy of their users. However, interviewees with experience in the military sector criticize to some degree these inter-organizational dynamics, especially in the slowness with which they happen, even when the intention is to safeguard the welfare of these same users or humanitarian personnel: "I contacted them once, and they gave me the information, but that took a little bit longer, I think they had to check if they were allowed to do that. But I was asking them could you please, I send them an email where I had all the medical stations and warehouses in northern [Country], and I was just asking to check it and add new ones if they have new ones, and they asked why, of course, and then I told them well because I want to put them on the no-strike list, so everybody is aware not to drop a bomb there, and then I received the coordinates from their facilities." (P2, Pos. 114). Even more critically, we found that interactions between lead agencies in the humanitarian response continue to dispute their territoriality given their organizational differences. For “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 103 example, in cases of refugees and displaced persons, our interviewees describe how decision making and the deployment of operations can be slowed down by differences among the "top dogs" in the system. This lack of collaboration is reflected in some of the experiences collected in which these failures incurred, for example, in the weakening of the response that was ultimately exploited by state authorities to implement their agenda: "I think the government knew that we were not organized, that we did not have a clear voice, and they took advantage of that to really enforce quite punitive restrictions on the refugees' lives, they were able to exploit the weakness of coordination." (P12, Pos. 8). Of course, this competitiveness for organizational differences and interests is not specific to non-governmental agencies. Other interviewees also highlight that the same differences and polarization of response actions are present in state apparatuses and civil protection agencies, which may prevent, for example, the development of healthy inter-team links given political differences, even in simulation or training contexts, as evidenced in Figure 19 below. Figure 19. Single-code model: organizational differences. Communication & Trust Our fourth theme identified as coordination issues is communication and trust (15.9%). In turn, this theme contains specific issues identified by our respondents, which include negative interactions (42.5%), trust (31%), supportive interactions (24%), as main issues, followed by data protection (4.5%) and off- “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 104 normal vibes (2.2%). Communication and trust are among the factors explicitly reviewed in our literature, and from our implementation frameworks used. In internal team interactions, for example, our interviews highlighted that in day-to-day interactions, communication and trust can be affected by different emotional states or perceptions among colleagues. During his time in the compound of one of the UN missions, for example, P3 described "you could tell that some people were a bit off. Maybe because of the time they had been living there. But you could feel that there was something off in the compound and maybe it was because of that people staying there a long time." (P3, Pos. 108). These perceptions could affect the internal dynamism within the team, and impede the lightness with which the relationships necessary to deploy coordinated actions can take place. Directly connected to this are the statements made by our interviewee P4, with experiences in internal armed conflict zones, when he highlights that humanitarian agencies should establish clear induction processes where personnel to be deployed in conflict zones understand the risks and the psychological and physical demands of the job: "and I think like a lot of that comes to me directly from being an athlete. I think like constantly looking at like not giving up and like, you know, fighting till you can and like having those, I think it's a very personality driven function. I don't think it's for everybody, and I think it's very, very good to be and it's OK. It doesn't need to be for everyone, but people should be well aware of the complexities of signing up for something like this" (P4, Pos. 27). In this sense, emotional and physical wear and tear could be an important aspect for communication at the individual level, so it is logical to report, for example, that interactions of this aspect are related to team dynamics and upset responses. In the same way, we have identified inter-area experiences in which communication was not effective, for example, due to underlying competitiveness in relation to different aspects pointed out by our interviewees. One such occasion clarified by P3, where his experience of transferring to another team within the same organization was well received, which limited, among other things, access to vital information, such as reports, which directly affects the specific performance of this position. In addition to the lack of communication attributed to team leadership about this transfer, our interviewee attributes this failure to welcome and subsequent limited communication as “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 111 like there's not like a large-scale thing to actually go and do something." (P1, Pos. 193). 3.1.1.2 Coordination Drivers: main sub-themes Our second macro category was coordination drivers. These are empirically understood in our study as the "experiences, actions, resources, activities, or any other aspect of the humanitarian action that were mentioned as key to achieve coordination among agencies" (see Annex II). Our group of experts, based on their experience in time, geographic scope, and by type of intervention, mentioned many of these critical aspects to achieve coordination. Some of these were framed as present and highly institutionalized activities in the humanitarian system, and others as critically absent or with limited integration. Among these, our identified themes for this macro category are Resource & Capacity Building (29.1%), Operational Factors (16%), and Leadership & Management (10.2%) as the main themes most mentioned among the participants (the rest of the themes can be consulted in Figure 22 below, and which we will describe integrally with the main themes). An overview of the different themes and aspects of these is shown in Figure 23. Figure 22. Coordination Drivers macro category sub-themes Resources & Capacity Building This theme has been defined as "all the required resources (in all its kind) to guarantee that the services can be provided and for humanitarian personnel to feel that the specific outcomes can “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 112 be achieved", and is directly linked, as we will discuss below, to our theoretical frameworks of implementation science. In particular, our participants have emphasized specific aspects of this issue, for example, staff capacity. Specific recommendations from our analysis in this regard are, for example, the need to have sufficient and dedicated staff for coordination as an activity in its own right, and not an adjacent one. Staffing constraints as well as geographical distances between operational areas and operations centers may push organizations to de-assist coordination spaces: "it was also that many organizations were quite [understaffed]. So, they said "ok, we are only a few people. If you go back to [City] for a meeting, that's a point" (P7, Pos. 28). More indiscriminately, some of our participants acknowledge the incompetence of humanitarian staff in specific skills and at different levels, calling into question even the inherent purpose of humanitarian work. For example, P7 & P12 refer strongly criticize the lack of capacity in program leadership and coordination that delayed decision making and evoked a response from the communities themselves to self-manage: "So, no, certainly, just absolute amateurs, really, trying to come up with an initiative like that in the current collective response architecture is impossible." (P12, Pos. 34); or the lack of professional capacities that are clouded by "good intentions" that risk the quality of services, when the sector is collapsed by a "bunch of punks": "the humanitarian sectors loses completely credibility, people from all over the world who seek their own I don't know, purity of heart or whatever or more making themselves happy instead of really helping the people, that's really the point where the humanitarian sector loses its credibility." (P7, Pos. 102). These incompetencies or lack of capacity was framed in certain aspects or subthemes throughout the subjective discourse of our participants. Figure 24 shows an analysis of these key aspects of staff capacity and their relationship to other coordination drivers and coordination issues. Mainly, in this figure we also present a co-occurrence analysis of the codes related to the staff capacity aspect of communication skills, since it is the aspect most frequently mentioned by our participants in the overall discourse. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 113 Figure 23. Hierarchical Code-Subcodes Model: Coordination Driver’s Themes “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 114 Figure 24. Code Co-occurrence Model: Staff Capacity & Communication Skills Communication skills were mostly related to positive interactions and negotiation and mediation in our discourse intersection analyses. Communication skills are highly required in humanitarian work as an essential tool for navigating the complexity of operational contexts. Our participants have provided us with several scenarios where communication skills can be key to coordination and specific implementation (visualized in depth in Table 5 for participants with the highest occurrence). For example, in simulation training, P1, in armed conflict contexts, recommends taking into account the basics of communication such as effective attention to the needs and difficulties of others, breath control, which can be affected by physical ability, use of short sentences, as well as emotional management of verbal response that can differ from person to person, e.g., avoiding shouting. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 115 Table 5. Summary of code segments: Resources & Capacity Building > Communication Skills P1 (N=1) P5 (N=1) P9 (N=1) P8 (N=1) Communication skills Communication skills, adapting to other people's needs. So, they were in teams with like three or four people and when you have like one people with like, I don't known listening and not being able to walk so fast, whatever it's you know, it plays a role. P1: 26 - 26 (0) And yeah, and the communications aspect really don't yell at people and also, just don't. And even if you do happen, but maybe not. You know that kind of thing. P1: 36 - 36 (0) Ohh yeah, I think communication skills. I really think like the first skill is that helped me, it sounds profane, but I guess it isn't, you know, continue breathing. Because that is something that when you're really stressed that very often just doesn't stop in a way. Try to make short sentences, this is what's happening now, be very frank about it being like, I do not know what I have to do, and I need you to help me now. What are my options? Can you list options? Things like that. P1: 69 - 69 (0) I think you need a lot of selfconfidence for one and then approachability is the second one and they go hand in hand because you if you're arrogant then you wouldn't get responses from people that you require information from, and at the same time if you are too shy to ask you wouldn't get also the information you need. P5: 54 - 54 (0) So, I think that's key that you listen to everybody for the right amount of time basically, it doesn't matter if they're of certain professions or others; and that also you can communicate in one way or another. P5: 54 - 54 (0) So, it's I think yeah, it's very hard sometimes, but very soon I gained the trust of everybody because of that because they realized you know I'm very clear in the communication. P5: 58 - 58 (0) So, information is key and especially if you talk to everybody nicely especially drivers and everybody, it saves your life. I mean everybody working in this area will tell you that it's very clear that it depends so much on the local goodwill to operate that's fascinating. P5: 59 - 59 (0) But, though, again, visual effects, through constant discussion and building rapport with the various stakeholders, especially the military they saw that we were actually there and be able to provide something that they could use. Then it opened up slowly. P9: 5 - 5 (0) But transparency is very much being able to feel the atmosphere, put the finger on the ground, get out, get your fingers dirty for them to see why you are here, explain why you're here and invite them into your house. P9: 19 - 19 (0) But transparency is everything in sharing the information, answering their questions, P9: 21 - 21 (0) Also, at that level of team leader, when we can share that information, we can see how valuable it is and that's where again, the human character or characteristics, or the ability to appreciate somebody else and respect them, and being open yourself, and I would say a couple of beers and cigarette in a mission always helps. You know something to loosen up the situation so P9: 27 - 27 (0) It is to tell them, “Uh, you have this idea, what a good idea, wouldn't you like to tell this person about it so that you can work together?" [I try to mediate] and try to look for the positive while minimizing all the negative things you may think. P8: 38 - 38 (0) What we did was that they took us, and we asked them to stay in one place while we went inside the village or to the evacuee center where we went. The army took care of us up to a certain point, and from that point on we would say well now we need to walk because we are going to talk to the people, always trying to be as polite as possible so as not to offend anyone. P8: 82 - 82 (0) We had a long conversation, where I explained to him, with the cluster approach in hand, how things should be done, with the support of the [UN Entity] representative between the two of us, explaining to him that you could not diversify the funds in that way. Then, she told him “You enter with us in this place", it was a work, talk, or meeting of about three hours where finally, the gentleman said "well, okay, I agree" and so it was reflected in the document. It was a negotiation, not an imposition. P8: 136 - 136 (0) “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 116 An important example to highlight that is transversal to many of the topics of coordination drivers related to communication skills is the one provided by P1, when recounting her experience as a panelist with military personnel and other stakeholders, where she integrates his recommendations mentioned above, and we visualize in Figure 25 below. In this experience, it is possible to rescue from our analysis the relationship of communication skills with other aspects found in our study. When analyzing the story, for example, it is important to note that the professional describes a communicational experience that is hindered by the individual values of the professional and her professional appreciation, but within her professional duty and organizational frameworks that limited her. In turn, emotional management from the overwhelming event is again noted as an important skill for operational effectiveness, even if one has the prior knowledge or ability to execute the task: "And then I was stressed. I don't know [why] I had a hard time speaking good French, which usually is a language that I find pretty easy, but it was bad, it was really bad. And I mean, it's not only for me personally bad, but I really thought this this could have seriously wider implications." (P1, Pos. 223). Figure 25. Single-Case Moel: P1 Experiences on communication skills and related factors. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 117 This experience resonates with the statements mentioned by other participants in our study, especially regarding other aspects of staff capacity, such as physical health or mental capacity to exercise activities such as self-awareness or focus mindset. Both skills are mentioned transversally in the discourse of our participants as elementary tools for positive coordination and efficiency of operations. For example, to create transparency and an environment conducive to trust, P9 suggests a clear and coherent communication with the organizational identity and objectives of the professionals in the field, which must be clearly transferred to the counterparts: “But transparency is very much being able to feel the atmosphere, put the finger on the ground, get out, get your fingers dirty for them to see why you are here, explain why you're here and invite them into your house. My team leader was from [Country] and for the first time that I saw he made sure that there were cookies and tea, coffee, always available, lots of water and said "share, share, share, whatever we have, just share it" We had our own tent for our team and that was at the other end of the camp where nobody else was allowed.” (P9, Pos. 19) On the other hand, three other participants recurrently mentioned the capacity for self-assessment and awareness of one's own limitations and actions performed (or to be performed) as a critical skill, for example, to analyze possible threats in environments, for better time management and contact with operational reality, to avoid negative impacts on interorganizational relationships, or assessments based on preconceptions that risk a more fluid inter-organizational relationship, as illustrated in the following sequential excerpts: “So, for me personally I've identified I'm not so good in cold environments. Because I physically myself don't feel so well, I don't speak so much with other people as in warm environments, and so this is something if you don't know that about yourself then it's hard because you might put yourself into situations where you actually should not be.” (P5, Pos. 55) “And really seeing the time aspect of it, I feel that that's what happens sometimes. Because sometimes these situations aren't even much longer than 3 minutes, they just feel much longer. And then be like "ok, this is really bad right now" and assuming it's 12:10, then it would sometimes help me do things like, “Oh yeah, this is really fucked up right now. But by 12:20, the situation might already have evolved. So. This is gonna be fine.” (P1, Pos. 70) “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 118 “In terms of how it is useful to talk to people because we all go with preconceptions, that is, everyone, everyone, there is no person who arrives in a country without preconceptions, it is impossible. What you do is to get rid of those preconceptions when you talk to people, when you talk to people and you manage to get rid of those preconceptions, you can do a better job, a better job, in terms of what is really needed in a given place.” (P8, Pos. 47) “Then, at a certain point, the team leader, who is a surgeon, told me “You know what, this is as far as I got, you become team leader and I will do what you tell me to do", so I told him “Fine, I became team leader, but if I make a decision, I will abide by the decision." (P8, Pos. 148) Moreover, communication skills are closely related to negotiation and mediation in humanitarian operations. In turn, negotiation and mediation have been identified as vital to the access and deployment of operations. Negotiation is critical, for example, in negotiating with government actors, particularly when mandates or objectives differ with humanitarian actors. In one example, the police commissioner demanded equipment in exchange for allowing UN trainings to continue: "It's a hard negotiation because in this case, for example, the police Commissioner, would push for equipment and he would say "I'm Stopping all [UN Entity] trainings in [Country] like I, I don't want any more trainings unless we receive equipment." (P3, Pos. 139). This led to a negotiation involving high-level officials and donors, with the UN entity having to emphasize the other benefits it provided, such as stipends or trainings for police officers: "So, then it's for the head of office of [UN Entity] even someone from [Regional Office] or a high management and the donor, even the ambassador of the [Country] they meet the police commissioner; they push and it's a negotiation in the terms of there are other things that we are providing." (P3, Pos. 139). In this example, we can see other related issues in terms of coordination drivers, for example, leadership at high levels, something that has been identified as inefficient in the previous examples in our first section of coordination issues, or the influence of donors and acceptance by local authorities. Likewise, mediation is used in practice as a tool to assist coordination by advocating for the interests of the parties and lessening interpersonal tensions that may exist between authorities or representatives which, in turn, could prevent or delay the start of humanitarian activities. Our interviewees describe these actions as the necessary (though often non- “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 119 existent) connection between key decision-makers, who may have professional differences that vary in cause: "So, what I am trying to find out is what is useful in this person's ideas for the solution of the problems that the decision maker is having. If what is useful to me is 10%, well, that 10% is better than nothing for the decision maker. So, what I try to reach is an agreement between the person with the idea and the decision-maker so that somehow, I take that 10% and the person with the idea feels heard and the decisionmaker can solve the problem, which is the intention." (P8, Pos. 38). This mediation can also be presented in defense of local knowledge to address emergencies and post-emergency actions, such as infrastructure reconstruction, but advocating for the perspectives of affected people and local knowledge that usually collectively possess knowledge to address their own needs. This mediation appears against the "common" or standard provisions of emergency intervention programs with predefined actions that are not necessarily contextualized and that could benefit from adopting local measures, as exemplified below in a postearthquake intervention experience: “The [Country] mission, the government wanted to rebuild cement houses, and we told them no, that what they had to do was to take advantage of the historical knowledge of the people to build mudbrick houses, but earthquake-resistant mudbricks. So, what they were going to spend on building cement houses, they should spend on professionals teaching people how to build better houses, because in fact people had already started to rebuild houses. So, when you see that the mission has a direct and immediate effect through the direct suggestions or concrete actions taken by the team, that is what gives you the satisfaction that this was a good mission, and you leave happy.” (P8, Pos. 52) In terms of negotiation, the rest of the participants in our study identified as positive factors for coordination the building of rapport with other stakeholders, with an important emphasis on relations with military entities. Within this same sphere, the ability to navigate sensitive issues and information management, and the capacity of staff in specific skills such as insight to understand the diversity of dynamics and interests, or the formulation and communication of clear objectives as negotiation techniques that facilitate access to areas of operations. Similarly, it is common to find in the discourse of interviewees the technical skills to facilitate negotiations, increase acceptance, and gain access through persuasion by influencing the perceived benefits of local actors or stakeholders, which are other themes identified in our “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 120 coordination drivers category. For example, decision making can be influenced by using quick and agile mapping of actors and power dynamics in the context of operations, which is already institutionalized in coordination organizations: "So, I think part of our methodology and setup is to do quick mapping like a quick actor mapping and a power mapping of where the pressure points are to influence decision making. (P11, Pos. 20). This technical skill, for example, the creation of maps and management of information in formats visible to local authorities, has been cited as effective in persuading actors to recognize the value of humanitarian actors and facilitate their place at the coordination table: "So I used my [NGO] team and I said "OK, anything, all the information we have now, put that into a visual map now" So we printed 5 or 6 maps and then before the next big meeting, we put them all up on the wall. And that created something amazing in that room because everybody came in, there was a bit of, you know, what's going on? What's this stuff? And then we just left it there. And after a while the interest was so evident that they couldn't even continue the meeting without people looking around." (P9, Pos. 3). However, this negotiation should not be seen, as identified, as win-win terms, our experts advise negotiation flexibility focused more on streamlining things or a common vision, than on achieving the specific objectives framed for each mission, and with an emphasis on the invidual's capabilities to manage those dynamics: "People, people, people, I'm serious. Because it boils down to who you are, and what's your capability is and negotiating. Negotiating doesn't mean the price. It also means negotiating the best way forward, coordination, negotiating a response, let's say, agreeing on a way forward that could help all parties to do it as quickly and as efficiently as possible." (P9, Pos. 41). This is something that relates to another aspect of our identified issues, which is the composition of the teams. Within this category of resources & capacity building, our experts have emphasized a large percentage of their subjective experiences of coordination to team composition as the coordination driver. Although this may not come as a surprise in our study, the diversity of actors and professionals in humanitarian contexts can pose a significant challenge when it comes to "getting together" and implementing coordinated actions. Team composition can facilitate inter-team relationships by, for “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 127 Table 6. Summary of code segments: Operational Factors > Context & Operational Awareness P1 (N=1) P2 (N=1) P6 (N=1) P7 (N=1) P8 (N=1) P10 (N=1) Context & Operational Awareness Because just really like the very technical aspect that I knew all the names of the different control centers, names of agencies you know who could be, what are like, who are the people in charge because that is like these exercises that we did for you know basically really copyrelapse scenarios. So that was just really like the very practical knowledge and was good, like the factual knowledge was good. P1: 35 - 35 (0) For example, the [UN Entity], they did not have any clue about why the military was there for. So, we were there to enable them to do their work, to train the security forces of [Country], so the Police Forces, and they didn’t have any clue why we were there, and did not understand that without us, without the military, they would not been able to conduct their mission. P2: 75 - 75 (0) and then I told him please look at the UN security council resolution, there you can see that [IGM] is able to do anything [IGM] wants to do, and he was not able to understand, and he was you are not allowed to do that, and that was hilarious because [Country] Police then came to us and were apologizing for this guy from the UN. P2: 75 - 75 (0) But also it allows us to understand the wealth of information, and effort that are put into disaster assessment and you, you walk away from the courses as participant having a I would say a very clear understanding of what you can expect and who you can lean on for different pieces of information at different times in the response P6: 7 - 7 (0) So, it becomes very clear that, you know within the first 72 hours which partners will do what and what you should expect to have available in terms of information for forming a common understanding of situational review. P6: 7 - 7 (0) Then it's a little bit difficult. They have their procedures, was not clear by the time how reporting should work, how this cooperation really unfolds, but honestly their team leader at that time, [Name Removed] from the [RE] I knew him for a long time, we were deployed before together in different circumstances, so there was really no problem at all to work together. P7: 15 - 15 (0) Unfortunately, the local UN was very blank in ideas how the response can really evolve, they did training, they had a lot of flag raising events. But then if you ask them how can response to high altitude communities really happen? Big question mark on the UN side P7: 41 - 41 (0) What I did was not put people in charge of places where they could make a mistake who already had a position. That is, I did not put the chief of police in charge of the police to do a police job during the exercise. I put him in charge of something else. For example, the Minister of Security I put her as a victim intentionally. P8: 14 - 14 (0) So, what I did was to put her as a victim, intentionally. And when she was rescued, she asked me. Why did you put me as a victim? And I explained to her why this, and she told me, now I perfectly understood the times, one hour for a victim is not the same for a person at a desk. P8: 14 - 14 (0) We made a distribution of days and visits and schedules, and from then on, I began to feel a little clearer. We had meetings twice a week with the rest of the organizations that were working in the area, and in those meetings, I began to understand a little more what it was all about, how it worked. P10: 43 - 43 (0) I am not used to working with international organizations either, for me the names of the organizations were also new, because they are not in my country, something like [INGO] which is known by everyone was new to me, and so on P10: 43 - 43 (0) “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 128 In other experiences, the leadership assignments, i.e. the profiles of these leaders, may not necessarily be the most appropriate for each type of response. As discussed in our literature, humanitarian assistance has several cycles or stages, and humanitarian agencies may have overlapping responsibilities during operations, which may affect the leadership of missions. P7, in one particular case discussed cross-cutting with other experts in our study, the leadership assignment for a mission was not the most effective, and there was an argument by the team leader with the team in general, possibly due to a lack of understanding of the type of response or differences in professional specializations or conflicts of interest, which, for this particular case, our expert regrets the professional behavior of the team that escalated to foul language: "and it was very interesting for me to see, [because] I have never seen a [UN Entity] that was in the open, we had done more or less a briefing session with the whole team, and even swear words came out, flying around. It was so bad." (P7, Pos. 126). As evidenced in our Figure 27 below, the experiences of field staff and the overall director of that specific organization's teams, during the assignment of mission leadership it is important to consider the specific profiles and skills of those leadership roles, but also the regional arrangements of managers or top-decision making that could interfere with the assignment of those roles. This is regretted by our expert director interviewed, since there is a certain operational impotence when it comes to the assignment of these profiles, despite their reservations about the assignment. However, our management expert interviewed reflects on this experience and offers certain important coordination drivers that have been achieved thanks to the organization's active and continuous learning, through the establishment of monitoring mechanisms and objective frameworks that are theoretically close to what is suggested by our reference theories as the degree of formalization of coalitions: “So, what we learn from that was to really make sure to have the right leadership and to take corrective actions if that is required. But of course, that's then sensitive and political and all that. But what we also took from that is that our mission objectives need to be formulated very specifically, very early in the mission, and what we then did around 2019-2020 we developed a mission monitoring framework that has much more specific mission objectives, [although] still standard.” (P11, Pos. 33). “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 129 Figure 27. Leadership failure with in-field and director’s level experience comparison of experiences. Although, from the perspective of other experts, the speed with which the system absorbs the experiences, systematizes and generates practical knowledge to improve the quality of its responses is not as fast as it should be and this may have many causal factors, but essentially they are framed by our experts in the time dedicated to coordination platforms, especially those that depend on external personnel with contracts in other organizations and other countries, and to the limitation of funds that is exponentially aggravated in the system. A specific experience lived by one of our experts was an incident where armed persons followed the humanitarian convoy, but, as it did not escalate to an armed confrontation, there was no systematization of the experience. As we have discussed in the literature review, this is not a recent problem in the humanitarian sector, however, the need for systematization of experiences in a timely manner continues to be recommended by our experts as a significant coordination driver that is limited by the factors mentioned above, and others that we summarize in Figure 28. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 130 Figure 28. Active learning and systematization of learning in-field and director’s experiences comparison. These failures in leadership, despite being recognized in the processes of systematization of experiences, in the speeches of our experts, the incompatibility of leadership profiles or the misallocation of leaders in intervention contexts is a complex problem difficult to address, but where training, negotiation, and specific traits of the leaders can contribute to containment: "Yes, you have quite a number of resident coordinators that come from a development background. First of all, they may not have enough awareness about emergencies, they may not have enough awareness about what [UN Entity] is doing, what [UN Entity] is doing, or the different tools and services. They may not have enough experience in crisis management or humanitarian coordination. So, those are all factors that can sort of lead to mismatch or misunderstanding of what needs to be done." (P11, Pos. 37). “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 131 Within the framework of this entity of our interviewee, the training of their teams to navigate these types of problems, with institutionalized tools that are updated and shared with the teams during their training courses: “And so, we, in our handbook, and this is what we stress in our various trainings and missions, basically some of the key success factors, and we have a nice infographic on that if you like, and it's also in the handbook. If you look at the key success factors for an [UN Entity] mission, there's a lot of them, but let's say on the top of the pyramid of that is basically a matter of trust, so trust with the government, trust with the Resident Coordinator, humanitarian coordinator, so those are at the top of that pyramid of success factors. A second success factor, or let's say closely related to that is that there is agreement on the terms of reference or mission objectives, and that those are feasible, so it's not like pie in the sky.” (P11, Pos. 37) This is endorsed by one of our experts who is a veteran in interventions of this type, recognizing that training, but also the specific personality traits of the subjects are an important component in navigating these complex systems in humanitarian response: “So, it just goes to show that it there's so many variables at stake, it's such a complex environment. I would say it takes many years; some people are born with the skill other people develop over the years to be able to navigate in that whole complex stakeholders’ environment. And everything boils down to people. That's my bottom line. Everything boils down to people. You can come out with the most fantastic tools, mechanisms and drones. You know you got the whole flying with helicopters and fancy toys, and have fun and do that, but it boils down to the people at the end, and if you're not able to get information from the people, then you have not done your job.” (P9, Pos. 24) However, the association of leadership and response effectiveness with specific personality traits and training is not unique to any of our experts. This association has been common and cross-cutting in the discourse as essential for humanitarian personnel to positively achieve their objectives. In the case of personality (or the individual as an efficiency variable or driver) only one expert interviewed did not address the issue directly. And although, from a scientific perspective, it is important to recognize the possible bias that our interviewees had in participating in these interviews with prior knowledge of the (psychologist) profile of the researcher, it is important for the subjective evaluation of the experiences to expose some of these comments. As described by P3, in his experiences working in “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 132 conflict zones: "In my time we had two different heads of office and that is something that also matters because the personalities in the UN matter a lot. So, it's very different with one boss than with the other." (P3, Pos. 24). This is not a random comment, and we have tried to conduct a cross-cutting discussion with all interviewees in relation to this comment, to try to counter-argue the logic behind it. For P3, in his experiences, organizational leadership varied according to the different personalities of the managers for whom he worked in his program, for which it is necessary to set out the full experience below: “We had to train many police officers across [Country]. It was something that made us very busy, and my boss, so the head of office was both head of office of [UN Entity] and Program manager of this program. So, she was very busy and. She tried to be on top of everything. She didn't have time to coordinate with other teams of [UN Entity] in depth. She would help them as much as she could because he was the head of office, so she was responsible for the security of everyone. She was responsible for everyone, but she was very focused on the implementation of the [Program]. And I think it was a matter of focusing on that and not focusing so much on her role of head of office. The second head of office was not a person that would go so much in depth on the details of the [Program], although he was still the program manager. But he would delegate more the little things, the administrative things, he would delegate more on us and then he would have a role of more representation, communication with her agencies, trying to get more in depth on what other [UN Entity] teams were doing, representing us all. So, for example, if meeting with a counterpart, with the police Commissioner, for example, he would talk about all the programs of [UN Entity], or he would even advocate for a [Topic] program, even if it was not within our unit. [Topic] was part of [UN Entity], but it was another team that was leading on that, but he as a head of office he was more advocating for everyone. And I think it's in a way because he liked that role more and he wouldn't go so much in details to the nitty gritty of the [Program].” (P3, Pos. 29-30) The dependence of the course or the dynamics of the programs on the personality of the leader is something frequently mentioned by the other interviewees. This could, among other things, directly affect coordination relations, integration of services, increase or reduce competitiveness: "But again, based on personalities, if you have a good cluster coordinator, you will have a good response, if it is someone who is old, tired, and burnt out from the UN system then you are not going to have a quality response." (P12, Pos. 43). One place where this influence of the leaders' personality on the humanitarian response can affect the “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 133 quality of the response is in the authoritarian fixation of the leader's way of working, and his monopolization of actions: “At that time, I was working with [INGO] which is kind of a mapping and assessment, and we were trying to support the collective response with maps, with assessments. And yeah, we produced a lot of maps and camp profiles, they did help, but it was still leadership based on personalities of individuals. You can have all the evidence, you can have the multi-sector needs assessment, you can have your site profile, and you are a WASH cluster coordinator and you think x, y, z, you don’t have to change your mind.” (P12, Pos. 42). This passage is important because it is consistent with other aspects mentioned above, such as the general willingness of managers or senior positions to assign leaders who may not have the necessary tools to exercise a good coordinated response. Similar to this experience is P8's effective mediation in resolving a coordinated action leadership problem, where an agency representative requested that his agency take the lead, even though, by protocol, it was not appropriate: “I finally managed to make the [UN Entity] people understand that the lead cluster was another agency and not them. But this took a while, because I think this is a matter of personality more than mandates. Because the man who was from [UN Entity] was quite hard to understand and he wanted to take things forward, because he wanted money for [his agency].” (P8, Pos. 131). In this sense, this experience is confirmed by the comments made by P7, in relation to the fact that the profiles of humanitarian workers, especially those who work internationally can be difficult to manage: "Many people who go out internationally it's great what they do, but they have a very strong self-confidence also and they're really focused on their work, like 'that's me, and my work and my role in this emergency.'" (P7, Pos. 67). Some of the important strategies mentioned by our interviewees for managing personalities that interfere with coordinated work are maintaining professional commitment to the task, advanced negotiation and mediation skills, maintaining mutual respect and sensitivity to professional or cultural differences: "also, at that level of team leader, when we can share that information, we can see how valuable it is and that's where again, the human character or characteristics, or the ability to appreciate somebody else and respect them, and being open yourself, and I would say a couple of beers and cigarette in a mission always helps. You know something to loosen up the “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 134 situation so." (P9, Pos. 27). The use of charismatic leaders and advanced soft skills, rather than technical expertise, were also identified as positive in coordinating actions: “And the same thing happened at the sub [UN EOC] level, the coordinator we had was a person who was very attentive to how we felt, very focused and professional in his work. With a very calm character, also very sure of what he was doing. What they generated at the work team level was that we felt confident in what we were doing, we felt comfortable in what we had to face, and this was also transmitted to the rest of the organizations and the interventions that were made.” (P10, Pos. 120). Also, problems with dealing with complex leaders or people in powerful position should not be ony approach from a in-field level. Knowing when to communicate problems to higher positions is recommended for dealing with leadership issues, as it is adviced by our director’s level expert interviewed: “I find it super interesting how to deal with that. In a lot of ways these people are also very insecure, because they come into a new situation that's out of their comfort zone, and so they stick to some of their practices, and you have to be ready for that to make maybe interventions, whether in public to steer them in the right direction, and sometimes then you need to escalate that to higher levels. Sometimes it can't be solved and then you need to escalate it.” (P11, Pos. 61). Both coordination drivers and issues as a wide range of factors that have to be carefully taken into account while deploying in humanitarian operations. As we have shown, our experts have vastly covered several of those factors, including some of those that have been also disccused in our theoretical approach and review. As a conclusive remark for this section, it is important to highlight that all the coordination drivers and issues explained in this section are part of the core and common factors within the discourse of our experts. Although several other specificities are not covered in this section, our next section on Complex Systems and Causal Loops Diagrams will try to model all the factors that we have thouroughly discovered in our literature review and the thematic analysis with our experts. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 135 3.2. Humanitarian Coordination Modelling 3.2.1 The Causal Loop Diagrams. In order to provide a more causal-driven analysis of humanitarian coordination, we have applied causal loop analysis from complex systems dynamics. This analysis is helping us to offer a tool beyond correlational thinking, so the applicability of our findings can be more explanatory for practitioners involved in humanitarian operations and are keen to understand the complexities of implementing coordination actions. Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs), as introduced in our methodological chapter, are practical tools that help with this aim, by tracing the drivers and feedback dynamics in the whole system, expressed in different circumstances or instantiations of that system (Barbrook-Johnson & Penn, 2022). Of course, our CLDs are based in our literature review, our theoretical frameworks, and our empirical findings from our expert interviews; thus, the extend of our analysis can be broad, and therefore, has been limited to critical aspects of the system. Specifically, those involving our research questions. We have successfully identified patterns of causality and feedback in our coordination system, which allowed us to build up a complex interactive system made of a diverse range of variables that can help to understand coordination from a more holistic approach in comparison to existing literature using complex systems in humanitarian studies. CLD 1: Ready to respond. One of our first analyses with Causal Loop Diagrams was the understanding of deployment or engagement in humanitarian responses. Our research has revealed many important interactions or causes that can obstruct or facilitate the engagement of humanitarian actors on the ground. In turn, the speed of response has been found to be a critical variable to consider in our causality analyses because, one, it is vital to save lives and prevent negative escalation of the effects of the emergency and, two, because it is a variable subject to many other factors that can condition and frustrate the response, as we have found by our interviewees. In Figure 29, we show a complex CLD that integrates multiple variables that this specific instantiation affects the speed of the response. In this representation, we “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 136 Figure 29. CLD 1: Ready to Respond “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 143 project managers, for example, for staff training programs such as drill exercises. These exercises have been rescued by our professionals as one of the best sources of creation and strengthening of skills that make coordination effective. Particularly, the communication skills obtained in these trainings -and by other possible sources identifiedare causal factors of the efficiency that can be obtained in the negotiation and mediation processes, which eventually translates into an increase of trust between the parties. As we illustrate in our Figure 31, this causal link between negotiation and mediation with trust is highly critical according to the experiences of our experts, and often requires fine skills to navigate complex scenarios, deal with people (or profiles) of different types and, on many occasions, to have a senior institutional rank that streamlines institutional deadlocks and trust processes with authorities. Of course, and as we show in our CLD 3, both variables are often affected by many other factors in the dynamics of humanitarian contexts. Once trust has been gained, in this case, especially through the interference of high-level, trained or highly experienced staff, our Causal Loop Diagram describes a path of managing external dynamics as a consequence of gaining trust. Gaining trust with local authorities is not only a positive achievement, but also increases the number of interactions with these actors, especially when it comes to cross-border operations and increased decentralization. In this situation, humanitarian staff face the likelihood of navigating more complex scenarios permeated by political interests that require political savviness to obtain the expected results and not compromise the background work provided, on many occasions, by diplomatic staff or senior levels to ensure the operability of field staff. However, our analysis shows that, although humanitarian organizations are becoming increasingly professionalized in these skills, and some of our interviewees in senior management affirm the intentions of field staff to have these skills, the system tends to rely on more experienced and diplomatic career staff to manage these political interactions, which generates some centralization. This centralization is discussed in our results as a reinforcing loop that could increase bureaucracy and risk less practical policy discussions, getting lost in the amplification of these processes, as visualized in our reinforcing loop R2 (The Talking Loop) in Figure 31b. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 144 Figure 31. CDL 3: Negotiation, Training and High-level dynamics. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 145 Figure 31b. CDL 3: The Talking Loop As a suggested measure to curb the exponential growth of this loop, some of our experts suggest reformulating the system, the way funds are managed, and the centralization of some processes in bureaucratic loops that penalize the speed of response or become too detached from the objective reality of the programs by amplifying exponentially in the political interests of the system and emergencies. CLD 4: The complexity of Quality of Assistance Earlier in our theoretical discussion we highlighted the complexity of using the term "humanitarian effectiveness" in humanitarian operations. In our results, the variable "Quality of Assistance" appears in many of our loops, which demonstrates the complexity and multifaceted nature of considering a humanitarian intervention "effective". In our CLD4: Quality of Assistance, presented in Figure 32 below, we present an instantiation of the humanitarian coordination system to appreciate only some of the interactions of this variable and its behavior in the rest of the complex system constructed. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 146 In the first instance, if we look at QoA in a narrow view, as shown in balancing loop B2 (QoA: Short Run), increasing trust as a primary strategy to ensure acceptance and access may be counterproductive to the ultimate goal of increasing QoA. Increasing trust, again, from this short perspective and for this specific instantiation, would increase interactions with authorities, which could lead to a significant increase in the bureaucratic processes of operations, as many interviewees have experienced, and we have described in our thematic analysis. In turn, this increase in bureaucracy has operational costs in the speed of response that directly have an adverse effect on the quality of assistance. As countermeasures to this restrictive effect in this loop, other phantom variables appear that may have an adverse effect on the increase in bureaucracy, such as the influence of personnel in top-decision making positions, as we explained above. Similarly, the drop in speed of response can be adjusted or prevented by measures such as profile flexibility, which allows professionals to adjust their job profiles to varying context conditions and respond more nimbly to unforeseen demands, information sharing, which is usually one of the main causes of delay highlighted by our experts, or resource allocation. On the other hand, if we expand a bit the analysis at the causal ramifications on the quality of care, as described in the reinforcing loop R2 (QoA: Medium Run) of our CLD 4, increasing trust between parties can have positive impacts that amplify the increase in the quality of care. In other words, increasing trust reduces competitiveness (although it does not necessarily eliminate it) between organizations, which consequently also reduces the lack of interaction. For its part, the exchange of information through frequent face-to-face or digital interactions helps professionals to increase their security awareness, for example, through meetings or digital hubs or information repositories. By increasing security awareness and accompanied by other phantom variables such as adaptive leadership, this leads to a reduction in unexpected situations, thus increasing the quality of assistance by having fewer adjustments to programs due to unforeseen variabilities. Another interesting analysis that emerges from the visualization of the dynamics of quality of care is that it is also subject to organizational capacity and the formalization of procedures, as argued from the concept of degree of formalization in Community Coalitions Action Theory. As depicted in our Figure 32a, the connections marked in red reflect the causality between three variables that guarantee access and acceptance. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 147 Figure 32. CDL 4: Quality of Assistance “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 148 Figure 32a. CDL 4: Quality of Assistance: Organizational Capacity Efficiency in program implementation, as argued by our experts, coupled with the perception of benefits by local authorities can increase the presence of international aid agencies. All this causal chain is positive for the organizational growth of humanitarian agencies, however, not having sufficient organizational capacity and formalization of implementation closure processes can factor in the quality of assistance. As exemplified in our Figure 32a (in blue lines) greater presence of international entities also means an increase in the turnover rate of staff, who are identified in our literature review and interviews as having poor and short-lived hand-over and takeover processes, which ultimately reduces the quality of assistance in the long term, for example, in the sustainability of programs or achievements. CLD 5: An instantiation of Access & Acceptance In a similar analysis, our CLD 5 details one of the instances of the dynamics of access and acceptance of humanitarian organizations in program implementation contexts. On many occasions, the professional experiences of our interviewees, in different emergency contexts, found their point of access and acceptance in the interaction and dialogue with different actors (e.g., state authorities, nongovernmental armed actors, local and religious organizations, among others). Others suggest access points in goodwill and friendship ties with colleagues known from other interventions, as well as a strong “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 149 emphasis on soft skills. In the first case, access gained through dialogue and negotiation processes with other actors may increase the reputational risk of the organizations, as they are linked (through dialogue or interaction) with the parties in question. Figure 33. CDL 5: Access & Acceptance Our thematic analysis highlights many of these interactions and the emphasis placed by our experts so that these interactions are taken with great caution with excessive practices such as not holding meetings behind closed doors, but rather in open spaces. One of the most recurrent examples is interactions with military entities, which could increase reputational risk and lead to a reduction of these interactions, as discussed in the balancing loop B2 of our CLD 5 above. However, this more conservative stance, usually applied by many current humanitarian organizations, could have positive impacts on the quality of assistance, reducing side effects, unexpected events resulting from reputational risk interactions and containing other variables such as negligent behaviors and increasing pre-deployment background work. This, in turn, would have a positive effect of “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 150 increasing, for example, security awareness, and eventually the quality of care, in this specific instance of our modeled complex system. As we have seen, the modeling of complex systems in humanitarian coordination can be highly complex and involve multiple causal ramifications that are limited, exclusively, to the sensitivity of our observations and the instances selected to expose our findings. However, despite the complexity involved in mapping the integration of our variables found in our first phase of research with which these complex systems have been constructed, the narrowing and focusing on some of the behaviors of these variables allows us to comprehensively understand the macro effects on the system when modifying the exposed variables. “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 151 CHAPTER IV _________________________ CONCLUSIONS 4.1. Main findings of the study 4.2. Theoretical Contributions, Limitations & Future Research 4.3. Practical implications & conclusion “THAT IS A LONG RIDE” A qualitative study on humanitarian coordination from a comprehensive approach. Granados-Chahín, S. 152 Chapter IV 4.1. Research Findings & Discussion 4.1.1 Main findings of the research study This research has aimed to study the different factors that humanitarian professionals use in the practice of humanitarian aid and emergency assistance to optimize the coordination of services. Starting from our comprehensive methodology, we have tried to understand theoretically and empirically the practice of humanitarian coordination to try to offer a more comprehensive understanding that contributes to the existing science related to this topic of study. Next, we will focus our analysis to expose the main findings in relation to our objectives and research questions set out in chapter III of this paper. Community factors used by humanitarians in coordination. Certainly, the factors of community adjustment and involvement of affect is one of the most important factors identified theoretically and empirically in our study. Already exposed as essential for the effectiveness of implementation by Wandersman et al. (2008) and Durlak & Dupre (2008), our findings are consistent with this theoretical approach on several specific points. First, the active participation of locals (Abaya et al., 2020; Menashy & Zakharia, 2020) is crucial for effective implementation and, although often challenging, our experts suggest a variety of strategies to make humanitarian coordination less centralized in international or institutional actors. Among them, transparent approach with clear objectives, reduction of false expectations, constant but cautious dialogue, active and participatory service with recurrent consultation with local experts (such as religious or community leaders), respect and cultural sensitivity are some of the practices most mentioned by our experts. Coordination with locals is an effective tool to reduce risk, amplify knowledge of the context and optimize resources, as a measure to address the lack of familiarity discussed by other authors (Abaya et al., 2020; Canavera et al., 2016; Nabi, 2014).