Maria Besiou

Prof. Dr. Maria Besiou is Professor of Humanitarian Logistics and Academic Director of the Center for Humanitarian Logistics and Regional Development (CHORD) at Kühne Logistics University. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Operations Management from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) in Greece. She holds a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from AUTH. Before joining KLU she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Social Innovation Centre at INSEAD, France.Professor Besiou’s specialization is on the field of sustainable supply chain management. Her main research interests are in humanitarian logistics, closed-loop supply chains and stakeholder media. She studies dynamic complex systems, characterized by multiple actors and feedbacks, in a strategic level rendering system dynamics methodology an appropriate tool. Her research focuses on the decision-making of commercial companies and humanitarian organizations, while managing their supply chains. It has been motivated by real problems that these supply chains face such as regulations, limitation of resources, stochasticity, decentralization and monitoring by online communities. Hence, the insights that arise from her research can be transferred to policy-makers and decision-makers dealing with supply chain issues.As a researcher, she is currently involved in the Research Institute on Leadership and Operations in Humanitarian Aid (RILOHA), which seeks to enhance the effectiveness of humanitarian aid via psychological insights, and serves as the Academic Director of the Center of Humanitarian Logistics and Regional Development (CHORD), which aims to bring together the best of two worlds by combining top-class academic research and education with operational training and consulting excellence. Her research appears in several case studies, award-winning papers and peer-review international journals like Production and Operations Management (POM), Journal of Operations Management (JOM), Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (MSOM), California Management Review (CMR), and the European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR). Besiou serves as an Associate Editor in Decision Sciences Journal and the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM), as a Senior Editor of the Disaster Management Department (DMD) of Production and Operations Management (POM), and on the editorial review boards of Journal of Operations Management (JOM) and Production and Operations Management (POM).

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Current professional activity

• Professor of Humanitarian Logistics – Kühne Logistics University
• Director of the Center of Humanitarian Logistics and Regional Development (CHORD) – Kühne Logistics University

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Skills and Interests in Keywords

Publications

Diversity and Inclusion Under Pressure: Building Relational Resilience into Humanitarian Operations

In this essay, our analysis takes important insights on diversity and inclusion from the behavioral literature but critically contextualizes them against the reality of humanitarian operations. Humanitarian operations are characterized by system immanent diversity, particularly between local and expatriate aid...

Anti-trafficking and humanitarian operations: transferring learnings for a better world

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to draw insights from the rich literature on humanitarian operations efforts to combat human trafficking; second, to inspire humanitarian operations researchers to work more on human anti-trafficking. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual...