The ship owners’ stance on third party ship management: an empirical study

The last four decades have seen the rise of third-party ship management and its evolution into an industry in its own right. Specifically, the present study reviews independent ship management with a view to identifying those contemporary parameters, relating to several environmental forces that can be considered to be conducive to the employment of professional ship managers. The focus of the investigation is on the comparison of two traditional maritime centres, Greece and the UK, which have been chosen after a thorough selection process and found to serve in the best possible way our research objectives. An analytical examination of the ship management sector in Greece and the UK is undertaken looking into the ship owners’ viewpoint on a number of key issues. The analysed data yielded some very interesting results.