INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE OF HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATIONS: THE CASE OF KENYA RED CROSS SOCIETY

Abstract

Information management plays a pivotal function in humanitarian aid and disaster management. The effective management of information and its application in the relief supply chains boosts the efficiency of the humanitarian operations. There has been an upsurge in incidences of disasters, both native and artificial in Kenya leaving devastating effects to the human population. This has been contributed to by the underdeveloped information system of the majority of the humanitarian organizations in Kenya. This informed the objective of the study which was to determine the effects of information management on the performance of humanitarian organizations. The study adopted a descriptive survey research with Kenya Red Cross Society as a case study. The findings revealed that information management had a positive and significant effect on the performance of humanitarian organizations in disaster management. This implied that information management systems would enable humanitarian organizations to monitor the entire logistics value chain in all locations with integrated systems providing real time visibility of demand forecast information, inventory levels and distribution schedules. Hence Humanitarian organizations should adopt modern and robust technology in information and communication that would guarantee accurate and timely information and at the same time allow for real-time visuality along the logistics chain.