How to enhance company engagement in public-private emergency collaborations in the supply of essential goods

Purpose In crises like natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic, public actors might have to take over responsibility for the population’s supply when the market fails to meet the demand for essential goods. Companies can be valuable collaboration partners for public actors. However, conditions under which companies are willing and able to support public crisis management need to be better understood. This paper aims to empirically investigate expectations and motivation to better understand the motives leading companies to participate in public–private emergency collaborations. To enable successful collaboration, the paper develops crisis preparedness guidelines for state institutions and companies. Design/methodology/approach The authors develop and conduct a survey and statistically analyze the responses of 398 German companies from the food, health-care and logistics sectors. Findings Most companies have already engaged in crisis management and are willing to engage collaboratively. While their preferred contribution to collaborative crisis management is providing resources (e.g. goods or equipment) instead of coordination tasks, they also want to ensure that their business processes are sustained. Among the most promising incentives to increase company engagement are monetary compensation for provided resources and an improved communication policy. Logistics companies are motivated more by relaxing regulations, whereas health-care companies prefer reputation measures. Practical implications The insights provide the basis for public and private actors to foster public–private collaboration and raises awareness of its potential during crises. Moreover, this study promotes the systematic implementation of public–private emergency collaborations. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to empirically investigate the perspective of companies operating in the fields of logistics, food and health-care industries toward public–private collaboration in crisis management.