Horizontal Collaboration in the Maritime Industry: Ports and Terminals

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Supply, Production, Logistics, grade: A, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, course: Maritime Logistics and Supply Chain Management, language: English, abstract: Several trends, such as globalisation, the growth of shipping alliances, the growing size of vessels and the development of intermodal transportation, have caused competition amongst ports and terminals to become intense (Song, 2002, 2003, 2004; Wortelboer-Van Donselaara and Kolkmana, 2010; Lee and Song, 2007). Nowadays, a port cannot maintain a monopoly status as it did in the past. To adapt to increasing competition, ports and terminals are forced to implement new strategies (Song, 2004). One approach to remain competitive in the changing business environment is the implementation of collaborative initiatives between ports. By collaborating with other ports and terminals, benefits can be obtained that cannot be achieved alone. Due to this relatively new development, literature regarding collaborative practices within the port industry is quite rare. Detailed investigations regarding the drivers, benefits, barriers and facilitators are, with a few exceptions, completely absent. In addition, Song (2004) mentioned in his paper of port co-opetition, that a questionnaire survey or interview-based research can overcome his content-analysis-based research and help to build a solid theory. Due to the identified research gap, this dissertation aims to make a contribution to the field of horizontal collaboration between ports and terminals.