Over the last few years, the progressive scarcity of land for greenfield projects in ports and the enormous financial resources required to realize new terminal facilities have induced international terminal operators (ITOs) to enter in various types of agreements. In particular, ITOs have growingly resorted to equity joint-ventures (EJVs) to develop new infrastructures and share project risks.…
The recent proliferation of inter-firm collaborative linkages within the container port industry is progressively shaping a complex architecture of voluntary ties among terminal operators, i.e. an inter-organizational network. Within the overall industry network, some stable groups of densely interconnected firms emerge suggesting the existence of “cliques” where firms repeatedly cooperate …
The recent economic downturn has intensified the need for cooperation among carriers in the container shipping industry. Indeed, carriers join inter-firm networks for several reasons such as achieving economies of scale, scope, and the search for new markets. In this paper we apply network analysis and construct the Cooperative Container Network in order to study how shipping companies integrat…