Horizontal Collaboration in the Maritime Industry

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.