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Humanitarian logistics has for a long time been argued to be a new discipline. Now that even the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM) has existed over a decade, it is time to take a closer look at its evolution. This article provides some understanding for the developments of humanitarian logistics over the past decade, reveals current trends and discovers what lies behind the curtains in the humanitarian logistics and supply chain management discipline.

This article brings in developments and discussions in humanitarian logistics practice into the research domain.

The article conveys the concerns of humanitarian logistics practitioners to research. These include the backlash from the COVID-19 pandemic as a prime current concern, and also other longer-term issues and developments.

The themes identified in the article can be used to inform a research agenda in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management. The article revisits a framework of global events and their cascading impacts to include non-linearities and multiple disruptions from evolutionary disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article argues for more collaborative and co-designed research to increase the relevance and impact of humanitarian logistics.

Wider societal views are brought into the area of humanitarian logistics.

The article highlights the gaps that remain in humanitarian logistics and supply chain management research.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss questionable research practices (QRPs) in business research, particularly in the logistics and supply chain management discipline, in light of antecedents influenced by the current academic environment and the consequences for academic rigour and relevance to stimulate thinking and debate among the academic community.

A literature review and autoethnographic approach were used to examine these issues based on over 60 years’ collective academic experience of the authors. Data were collected from discussions among the paper’s authors as well as recounting open discussions with other academics and journal editors to collate their observations.

Evidence is provided of issues the authors have seen first-hand where antecedents in the academic environment influences QRPs, which then detrimentally affect research rigour and relevance, integrity and proper contributions to ground-breaking research and knowledge advancement.

This paper is based on personal observations and experiences of the three authors as well as open-ended discussions with others in the academic community. Suggestions are provided for various academic stakeholders to address these issues.

Practical implications are only provided for academics in their roles as authors, journal editors and reviewers.

Encouraging the academic community to eliminate QRPs to improve the rigour, relevance and quality of research will provide more credibility and integrity resulting in better impact and outcomes for society at large.

The value of this paper is in stimulating thinking and debate among academics to return to core issues and values in academia opposed to focusing on narrow university goals focussed on other antecedents of QRPs.

Based on a framework developed by Kovács and Spens, this paper seeks to assess the use of the three different research approaches in logistics research; discuss the use of different research methods within the three research approaches; find and discuss applications of the abductive research approach to logistics problems.

Content analysis is used in order to categorize the different research approaches. While content analysis commonly uses smaller units such as paragraphs, sentences, words or characters, this study used entire articles as the unit of analysis. The scope of the review encompassed five years (1998‐2002) of articles in IJLM, IJPDLM and JBL. A total of 378 articles was reviewed and categorized.

The findings of the study corroborate earlier studies regarding the main research approach used in logistics. Published logistics research is hypothetico‐deductive, with a strong emphasis on using survey methods. Nevertheless, inductive as well as abductive research is gaining importance. However, most logistics articles do not explicitly discuss the research process, nor the approach used. Therefore, a call for more explicit statements of the research approach is suggested.

The review of the articles is limited to three main journals in the field. A more comprehensive view of research approaches could be obtained by broadening the review to include also other types of research.

The paper provides a framework and guidelines to researchers for explicitly discussing the research approach used in logistics articles.

The paper provides an overview of the research approaches used in logistics research.

Within the emerging research field of humanitarian supply chain management (HSCM) the use of existing theoretical concepts and frameworks to provide explanation and understanding of the phenomena under scrutiny is not yet well understood. There is still a lack of research on which theoretical approaches are used in this field, and to what extent this emerging field “borrows” theories from other disciplines. The purpose of this paper is therefore to deepen the understanding of HSCM from a theoretical point of view by identifying and evaluating the use of theories in HSCM literature.

A literature review is conducted based on academic journal articles included in a well-recognised and publicly available bibliography on HSCM articles (Tatham, 2015). A content analysis is applied to the articles in terms of level of theory, research methodology, disaster management stages, disaster types, and disaster name/region.

A trend towards using more established, “middle- range” theories, is evident. However, the use of theoretical approaches is not evenly spread between the different phases of disaster relief. A strong emphasis on SCM as a background discipline is also mirrored in the choice of theories used, which indicates the solidification of humanitarian logistics as a primarily supply chain discipline. The lack of use of other theoretical perspectives and grand theories is, however, still evident, which provides an interesting research agenda for future research.

The use of the bibliography limits the generalisation of the findings although some trends are evident.

This is a first review of theories used in HSCM. It provides an overview of the state of the art of HSCM research but contributes to the maturation of research in this field. The paper concludes with a research agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to present a brief overview of the field of humanitarian logistics and supply chain management and outline the scope of the new Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM). It further aims to highlight the variety of humanitarian logistics research and summarize the articles in the inaugural issue.

Results from an e‐mail survey with editorial board members are presented. The survey is used to further shape the scope of JHLSCM.

The journal draws on a variety of research streams in humanitarian logistics. This is seen as its richness but also as a challenge.

Humanitarian logistics is an emerging field. There is still a lack of good empirical research and research with rigor as well as relevance. More research needs to be done in developing countries and by researchers from these.

Even though there has been collaboration between humanitarian and commercial organizations, there is also a need to establish humanitarian‐academic partnerships to improve training, education, as well as research – which should ultimately manifest itself in an improvement of practice.

Humanitarian logistics research needs to rediscover its aim to serve beneficiaries.

This paper is an introduction to the inaugural issue of a new journal, JHLSCM.