Environmental innovation and the role of stakeholder collaboration in West Coast port gateways

The paper explores the role of stakeholder collaboration in the adoption of innovations as part of the environmental and sustainability agenda of port gateways. We do this through a comparative assessment of the port of Vancouver, British Columbia, and the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. An inductive research approach is used to identify and assess the initiation and implementation process behind exemplary innovations. Innovation includes new technologies and processes for handling and moving cargo, mechanisms for planning and policy making, as well as financing, implementing, upgrading, managing and operating infrastructure systems. A relatively new arena for competition on the basis of innovation concerns environmental performance. The conceptual framework and empirical evidence suggest that while there may be intense demand for and supply of innovation in port gateways, the complex dynamics of the logistics chain are such that successful innovation requires conscious involvement and collaboration of stakeholders.     

Are the innovation processes in seaport terminal operations successful?

The maritime and port sector is widely considered conservative concerning the ability to introduce innovation in respect to other industries. This may be due to the lack of cooperative interactions among the several players involved. It does not mean that innovation does not occur in this industry. Along with some technical innovations, managerial, organizational, and cultural innovations also take place in the sector. The literature has considered the assessment and effects of the adoption of particular innovation, but still few studies underline the innovation path in a broad sense with a specific focus on terminal operators. The present article aims at filling this gap through a field analysis grouping together case studies developed in different world regions and examining the adoption path of innovation through a mix of three different techniques (i.e. the H- and I-indexes, a Systems of Innovation Analysis, and a Qualitative Comparative Analysis). Research outcomes underline how, even if no unique recipe for success can be found, specific factors (e.g. a ranking of innovation objectives, coordination among actors, and institutions) can influence the achievement of success. The analyses allow suggesting strategic and policy advice that may help link in a better way the innovation drivers with their actual effects.     

Smaller ports’ evolution towards catalysing sustainable hinterland development

ABSTRACT

From simple organizations as gateways for goods and passengers, ports have evolved and transformed into complex organizational systems with multiple functions. Besides providing cargo, logistics, and other kinds of services to its customers, modern ports engage in the development of their hinterlands. Sustainability, evolving from environmental actions over the years, has become the core of many modern ports’ approach towards hinterland development and port competitiveness. While the literature is concerned with and presents examples of large ports implementing sustainability initiatives, the literature is scarce on smaller ports. This article addresses this gap by exploring qualitatively the case of the Port of Aalborg, a medium-sized port in Denmark, and its evolution towards using sustainability for port and hinterland development. The research focuses on the actions behind environmental development at the port. Its evolution is mapped and explored using the analytical framework developed based on the (larger) ports’ development and their roles. The findings from the Port of Aalborg case exemplify how smaller ports can evolve to drive the sustainable development of their hinterlands and contribute to a better understanding of this kind of port.     

The link between economic and environmental performance of the top 10 U.S. ports

Ports currently face increasing demands to address a variety of environmental issues and achieve sustainability objectives. Using insights from the resource-based view of firms, this study examines the link between economic performance (EP) and environmental performance (ENP) of the top 10 U.S. seaports. Geospatial modeling is used to capture pollution incidents that can be geographically dispersed; in addition, both a bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach and an undesirable DEA model are used to measure port ENP and EP. Our findings are in general consistent with assertions that positive EP can be attained in conjunction with good environmental practices. Ports’ capabilities of strategic capital investment in physical assets, collaborative interorganizational processes, and performance monitoring are essential, while they pursue both economic and environmental goals simultaneously.     

Regional governance of port development in China: a case study of Shanghai International Shipping Center

When China enters the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and becomes more involved in the global economy, her major seaports will be pivotal places where the international shipping and terminal operators interact, conflict and co-operate with the local and the central governments. To demonstrate and understand these interactions, this article analyzes the case of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), where the competition, co-operation and governance of Shanghai and Ningbo, the two largest ports on Chinese mainland, concern all stakeholders from the central and local governments of China to the container terminal operators and shipping lines overseas.

This paper first develops a conceptual framework for analyzing port development in a regional context. The article then introduces the case of the Shanghai International Shipping Center with a focus on the efforts of the Shanghai Government to establish a regional hub port, which also involves two nearby provinces. This case study reveals the course of the decision-making processes and the power networks currently governing the port development in the YRD. Two domains of port governance are discussed: the role of port authorities in port internal governance, and the crucial influences of local and central governments on the port external governance. It provides evidence that the power of shipping lines and international terminal operators are not as prevalent as in many ports in western countries. It is suggested that the lack of good regional port governance in the region is due to structural problems in administration.     

Sustainable development in seaports: a multi-case study

Seaports are a vital part of the maritime transport industry and have a key role in integrated transport chains and regional economies. However, ports are also sites of environmental pollution originating from land-based activities, ship movements and ports’ own activities. It is, therefore, increasingly recognised that economic growth in ports must be balanced with environmental protection and social progress. This has led to enhanced appreciation of the need for sustainable development (SD) in ports. Whilst much has been written about port environmental practices in European and American ports, there is limited synthesis and comparison of sustainable port practices from different parts of the world. Furthermore, in-depth case analysis and critical examination of the practices and challenges of sustainable port development in a globalised era is limited. This paper presents findings from a qualitative multi-case study that aimed to compare sustainable policies and practices of ports in four different continents and to understand the dilemmas, challenges and opportunities they face in attaining SD. This paper reports findings pertaining to the following research questions: (1) What policy frameworks do ports adopt to attain sustainable development? (2) What specific sustainable practices do ports utilise to manage environmental aspects such as air pollution, water quality, ballast water, dredging and disposal of dredged materials, waste disposal, hazardous substances and land/resource use? (3) What are the driving and constraining forces in achieving sustainable development in ports? Port authorities were studied by reviewing documents and secondary data. The following ports were studied: Port of Long Beach (USA), Port of Rotterdam Authority (The Netherlands), Sydney Ports Corporation (Australia) and Transnet Limited that owns and manages South African ports. Findings of the study demonstrate that the SD paradigm has gained momentum, albeit to differing degrees, in the functioning, organisation and the very ethos of case study ports. An important theme from all case studies is that, whilst there is definite progress towards SD, several practices deemed to be sustainable can be controversial and must be critically examined from the perspectives of different stakeholders including shippers, port-related businesses and the local and global community. Lack of data to monitor environmental impacts, economic costs of implementing sustainable practices and complexities of international, regional and national regulations were other constraining factors. On the other hand, reconciling differences between stakeholders and capitalising on economic opportunities, operational efficiencies and cost savings offered by environmental friendliness can advance port SD. Public–private partnerships and policies negotiated by involving all stakeholders were found to foster port sustainability. Most importantly, this study found that, with globalisation, environmental impacts of ports are not always localised. ‘Sustainable’ practices can have unintended consequences in other parts of the world. Therefore, globalisation necessitates a more critical and global analysis of port operations and environment practices in order to be truly sustainable. Although the scope of the research findings is limited to case study ports, the lessons drawn can be constructively applied to any port operating within an institutional system of structured SD.     

Maritime policy and management--30 years issue for Prof. James McConville Editorial: IMO--The economics of intimidation

Organizational Effectiveness (OE) is a rather new concept in the port business literature and not widely studied before. From the systems perspective, this concept focuses on the goals of the organization, the resources needed to achieve these goals, and the relationship between the organization and its environment. The reason behind choosing a systems approach is the significant role of seaports as open systems affected by changes and developments in world trade, supply chain and logistics trends, maritime transport, and technological developments. While seaports are multi-faceted organizations that constitute different interdependent and integrated units in their structure, they can also be regarded as the subsystems of the supply chain system. As being the social and technical systems, port organizations have unique characteristics that should be examined in detail to assess their effectiveness. To assess the effectiveness of port organizations, principally a set of effectiveness measures applicable to seaports should be determined. The main aim of this study is to assess the relative importance of the main effectiveness criteria in seaports and to determine the significance of main inputs and port subsystems which can be referred as the means to achieve effectiveness. By using the systems approach, the inputs, the processes, and the outputs of the port organizations are clearly defined with a conceptual model. Thirty-three statements have been developed under the main categories in the systems model and a two-round delphi survey is conducted, and qualitative analysis of the experts’ opinions is carried out. The results of the delphi survey show that the main port inputs are port infrastructure, equipments, technology, and port labor; the major port processes are ship and cargo operations together with the logistics services, safety and security, information technologies, and marketing; and the most important effectiveness measures for the seaports are productivity, efficiency, service quality, adaptability, information and communication management, profitability, human resource quality, and customer satisfaction.     

Port economic impact model (PIM) and its planning applications

The provision of adequate port capacity has been essential for Korean economic development, as its foreign trade has been predominantly seaborne. In this respect, efforts have been directed to the development of seaports in order to provide a sufficient level of service for greater national control of foreign trade. The port planning and development process in Korea, however, has not been a total success. This is underlined by the fact that the seaport industry in Korea has not coped with the increased demand, and total seaport capacity has lagged behind need. This paper examines the validity of the port input-output model (PIM) as predictive tool to future planning. Further the value of the PIM as a forecasting tool to the port transport industry in Korea is identified.     

The economics behind the awarding of terminals in seaports: Towards a research agenda

Terminal concessions in seaports have only recently gained interest in academic circles. Issues such as the allocation mechanisms (to be) used for granting those concessions, the determination of the concession term and concession fees, as well as the inclusion of special clauses aimed at assuring that the terminal operator will act in the interest of the port authority and the wider community, are increasingly relevant to both academics and the port industry. So far, insights from established economic theories have rarely been applied to terminal concessions in seaports. It, therefore, remains to be seen which kind of awarding procedure would be best for which type of terminal concession. This contribution provides a detailed overview of the different phases of the terminal awarding process, including a classification scheme for awarding procedures, and contains an extensive discussion on the economic issues that require further investigation. The paper concludes by proposing a comprehensive research agenda on the topic.     

The new governance structure of French seaports: an initial post-evaluation

France undertook a large port reform in 2008, which came into force in 2010–2011. It mostly applies a landlord port model to major French seaports, with the prediction that doing so will restore competiveness. This article presents the 2008 port reform, discusses why it was needed, notably with regard to the underperformance of container traffic, and details how new governing bodies are sharing their responsibilities amongst themselves. To this end, a textual analysis of the agenda items for the governing bodies created since 2011 of the largest French seaport, Port of Marseille, provides a means to compare the items discussed by the former management bodies. This analysis identifies a trend, in which the supervisory board focuses on global issues, the advisory board addresses local issues, and the board of directors considers internal issues. Even if ongoing, this transition creates favorable conditions to work more efficiently and may represent a step toward the better performance of French seaports.     

Logistics resources in seaport performance: multi-criteria analysis

Studying the logistics resource relationship within the framework of the overall performance of the main Iberian seaports performance, this article discusses how to apply the linear additive multi-criteria analysis (MCA) model and principal component analysis (PCA) to such an industry. The model incorporates the contribution of two different performance indicators—operational performance and physical capacity—measured by several indicators. First, we gather the 2009 annual data on the total cargo throughput of 16 seaport container terminals. The PCA method is then applied to attain the loading factor of each indicator and to normalize the redundancy in indicators and thereby generate meaningful results. We correspondingly find (a) operational performance contributed 48.77% while the physical capacity contributed 51.23% to overall performance; (b) the majority of seaports reveal a direct proportionality between their positioning in terms of physical capacity and their overall performance positioning; (c) this relationship changes whenever the difference in indicator value proves significant; and hence (d) this model demonstrates both its applicability and reliability in the case of the Iberian seaport industry and the relevance of encouraging multiple decision-makers to carefully consider identifying key criteria out of a given set of alternatives.     

The foreign non-fuel cargo-traffic demand of the major British seaports in 1980 and 1985, a Markov Chain approach

Projections of the future traffic demand of British seaports are of great importance to port management bodies because of the huge capital investment required for installing modern port facilities. In this paper, the author uses a first order Markov Chain model to forecast the non-fuel cargo traffic demand of the major British seaports in 1980 and 1985.     

Placing dryports. Port regionalization as a planning challenge - The case of Hamburg, Germany, and the Süderelbe

This paper emphasizes dryports in the context of port regionalization. It specifically deals with dryports as a challenge for planning, policy and metropolitan governance in the vicinity of seaports. The starting point is the ongoing spatial shift of terminals, distribution centres and port related developments towards the hinterland of mainports and the associated planning conflicts, raising negative impacts such as congestion, land consumption, land use conflicts and neighbourhood conflicts. The paper discusses these challenges against the empirical case of the Süderelbe-region in the Southern hinterland of the port of Hamburg, Germany. It focuses on the often neglected yet highly controversial issue of land use and related traffic flows. Further it reveals how these conflicts are being managed at the regional level. The main contention of the paper is that port regionalization triggers substantial planning conflicts different from those that are known from core port areas, due to the associated demand for land and infrastructure and also as a result of the often poorly developed institutional framework to solve these problems.     

Dynamics of Russian dry ports

The transportation of cargos in containers has been intensively developing over the last decades. The world pace of growth in container transport is about 11% annually while in the Russian Federation from 2003 to 2007 the average growth was 21%. Container transportation is going to increase due to the construction of huge infrastructure projects for the Winter Olympics games in Sochi 2014, which implies the transportation of the required material flow. Foreign car assembly on Russian territory is developing, supplied by component parts delivered from Japan and the Republic of Korea, as well as from China that now bring 21.3% import container transport to Russia. About 60% of Russian container traffic passes through seaports Saint Petersburg, Novorossiysk and Vladivostok. The scenarios for increasing capacity to meet demands ahead are enhancing the productivity of seaports sites or leading to the creation of terminals in the hinterland. Although the phenomenon of dry ports is spread all over the world, in Russia none of the seaports has sufficient number of these facilities. The inland terminals of Russian seaports will be analysed from a dry port perspective. Despite the impediments, there are ecological and economical benefits that are discussed in the article. The advantages to the transport chain suggest that dry ports are a promising area for Russian seaports’ welfare.     

Innovation types in the Finnish maritime cluster

The Finnish maritime cluster is an important sector of Finland's economy. However, literature on innovative activities within the cluster is limited. This article focuses on Finnish shipbuilding and marine industry firms. Several innovation types are identified. These are analyzed according to general characteristics of firms. The data is from a survey of 148 shipbuilding and marine industry companies; most of the variables are ordinal scale and are analyzed with standard statistical survey methods. Considering the significance and past technological achievements of the sector the results indicate surprisingly low radical innovation related-activity and attitudes towards it. As well, the results provide no evidence to support previous research, suggesting that the shipbuilding and marine industry produces more organizational than technological innovations. The innovativeness of the firms varies according to distinct characteristics such as size, intensity of in-house and collaborative R&D activities, and level of internationalization. The empirical results provide a platform for policy implications and directions for future research; innovations concerning environmental efficiency are raised as an important future area of development.     

Economic policies and seaports: The economic functions of seaports

This paper argues that the economic functions of seaports are to benefit those whose trade passes through them, i.e. through providing increments to consumers' and producers' surpluses. Whilst recent developments in the technologies of seaports (containers, bigger ships, more rapid handling of bulk cargoes) have increased technical efficiency, they have also provided such economies of scale as to reduce some opportunities for competition and, therefore, the probability that cost reductions are actually passed on in this way. For this purpose port costs need to be considered in their entirety, i.e. as generalized transport costs per tonne, comprising money, time and the risks of loss, damage and delay. Such cost reductions will lead to expanded trade in a variety of ways.

This statement of the economic function of seaports is contrasted with views that they should try to increase employment in their locality, or that they should maximize profits.     

A citation network analysis of sustainability development in liner shipping management: a review of the literature and policy implications

ABSTRACT

Based on an analysis of 253 related papers drawn from the Web of Science database, this study examines holistic sustainability research in liner shipping management literature using a citation network analysis (CNA) approach followed by a qualitative analysis of findings. We identify four major research domains, namely shipping performance, port selection and management, shipping markets, and environment, as well as related sub-domains of shipping performance. We discuss the current research trends and focal issues in these domains with a focus on their implications for policy development. Our results indicate that while the sustainability discourse in the literature has developed and matured significantly over the last decade, generating valuable insights for practitioners and regulators alike, it still struggles with blurry terminology and a lack of holistic frameworks jointly addressing the different aspects of sustainability: Economic considerations of liner shipping are still the main concern, while environmental and social issues are less regarded in the academic discourse. Furthermore, we identify a dearth of studies rooted in managerial or economic theory. In this regard, our study provides insights on the scope of the holistic sustainability discourse in liner shipping management, its contributions to theory and practice, and its implications for the further development of policies addressing sustainability in liner shipping management. We advocate further construct development for sustainability in liner shipping, as well as empirical tests of the antecedents of sustainability practice adoption in the industry for future research.     

An investigation into the suitability of an enclosed seaport for cruise ships the case of Leith

This paper considers port infrastructure, in terms of the physical limitations placed on vessel size, at the major cruise ship ports in northern Europe. Physical design characteristics and vessel size restrictions common to these ports are identified. The same physical design charactersitics and vessels limitations are considered in the context of a port with cruise ship ambitions, viz. Leith. The subsequent analysis suggests that infrastructure design weaknesses at a given port, in this case the presence of an entrance lock and tidal delay, may act as a deterrent to cruise ships. Primary data gathered from cruise lines and from observation of cruise ship activity at Leith supports this hypothesis. These findings have implications for both seaports and cruise lines.     

The impact of dry port operations on container seaports competitiveness

The concepts of intermodal logistics and distribution networks have made integration of the inland freight distribution system essential for an efficient container seaport system. Inland components, such as dry ports, which exist within the seaport system, have become important in shaping the performance and competitive strategies of container seaports. Owing to the importance of interdependence between dry ports and container seaports, this paper aims to investigate the impact of dry port operations on container seaport competitiveness. It conducted an empirical study in Malaysia through 120 online surveys to key stakeholders of dry ports, including freight forwarders, shippers, seaports, rail operator, shipping lines, and haulers. The data collected were analysed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The results from EFA show that Malaysian dry port operations have impacts on seaport competitiveness. These include enhancing seaport performance, increasing service variations for seaports, improving seaport-hinterland proximity, increasing seaport trade volume, and enhancing seaport capacity.     

Financial and environmental impacts of hypothetical Finnish dry port structure

One main theme of European Union’s in transport policy statements has been the increased role of railways in the reducing environmental impacts and costs of transport activity. One option to increase the modal share of rail transport is to utilize the dry port concept, particularly applicable to general cargo. At the Port of Gothenburg (Sweden) use of this concept in combination with rail transport has led to a reduction of CO₂ emissions, and lower transport energy costs. The main objective and motivation of this research work are to examine through analytical models, how this same dry port concept could be implemented in the Finnish transportation network, with estimates of the benefits being gained.The research method of this study is macro gravitational models of distribution. Main input data for the models are distances and population in the area. The approach aims to research, how relative transport costs behave by increasing the number of dry port distribution locations. For the actual computation work the authors apply linear integer programming. Based on the results, the authors argue that relative transport costs can decrease considerably by increasing the number of dry ports, up to the level of six locations. This is considerably less than what is the current situation in Sweden. The found solution also differs from Sweden as the fragmented Finnish seaport system enables using numerous seaports instead of one, which further decreases inland transportation distances and volumes considerably. At the same time forthcoming sulphur emission reduction regulation (for sea transports) might impact the transportation network structure by decreasing sea transport and the number of seaports used. This might lead to a further increase in land-based hinterland transport.