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 growingsize of vessels and the development of intermodal transportation have causedcompetition amongst ports and terminals to become intense (Song 2002 2003 2004;Wortelboer-Van Donselaara and Kolkmana 2010; Lee and Song 2007). Nowadays aport cannot maintain a monopoly status as it did in the past. To adapt to increasingcompetition ports and terminals are forced to implement new strategies (Song 2004).One approach to remain competitive in the changing business environment is theimplementation of collaborative initiatives between ports. By collaborating with otherports and terminals benefits can be obtained that cannot be achieved alone. Due tothis relatively new development literature regarding collaborative practices within theport industry is quite rare. Detailed investigations regarding the drivers benefitsbarriers and facilitators are with a few exceptions completely absent. In additionSong (2004) mentioned in his paper of port co-opetition that a questionnaire surveyor interview-based research can overcome his content-analysis-based research andhelp to build a solid theory. Due to the identified research gap this dissertation aimsto make a contribution to the field of horizontal collaboration between ports andterminals.