1 Introduction
During the past few decades, a sharp increase has taken place in the number and scope of collaborative agreements involving seaports and a variety of actors in these portsā vertical and horizontal value chains . These collaborative agreements have been the subject of a large number of studies in the scholarly literature. Far-reaching port integration is hardly a new phenomenon, as illustrated by the well-known Copenhagen-Malmƶ cross-border alliance, which dates back to 2001. However, it has been especially in the post-2008 period (starting with the āgreat recessionā) that worldwide managerial and scholarly attention has been devoted to deeper and broader collaborative arrangements involving seaports.
New forms of collaboration , including ācoopetition ,ā meaning the joint occurrence of cooperation and competition, have become common among seaports and among internationally distributed value chains. Such coopetition has become associated with sophisticated, new governance approaches to achieve efficient seaport functioning, often in spite of local, political resistance. The main features of these new governance forms are twofold. First, they include accounting for a broader range of benefits and costs associated with seaport activities, which have often become linked to a wider set of stakeholders . Second, these governance forms also recognize the need to assess carefully the distribution of costs and benefits across geographically dispersed economic actors, as a precondition for long-term seaport viability, growth, and economic performance , in terms of value creation and capture.
The new collaborative efforts thereby need to build on sound economic efficiency principles, with a focus on reducing costs, gaining scale and scope economies, and creating value-added across international logistics chains. New equilibria are being created, mostly with decentralized market power among, inter alia port authorities, cargo handling companies, industrial enterprises, exporters, distributors, shipping alliances, hinterland transport providers, and inland terminals. In line with Pitelis and Teece (2010), it could be arguedāwithin the context of international value chains āthat all of the above actors are involved in co-orchestrating port ecosystems . The uniqueness of these ecosystems is the collaboration between on the one hand; footloose multinational enterprises or firms located in foreign countries, and on the other hand; highly localized companies, embedded in clusters , with the port authorities often acting as linchpins or even ālead institutionsā at the heart of these ecosystems. Important in this respect is the focus on joint opportunity generation and value creation throughout localized clusters and the international ecosystem. These ecosystems should therefore not be viewed as attempts to achieve collusion or market power , but rather as efficient governance systems with economizing properties, and sometimes with unexpected (but typically beneficial) spillover effects. For example, deep knowledge about partners embedded in a cluster may lead to a reciprocal reputation for reliability, cascading up or down the value chain, to affect other linkages among the partners involved (e.g., in the sphere of a common corporate social responsibility strategy).
2 Port Authorities as Co-orchestrators of Ecosystems
In order to create and capture value beyond the confines of a single company or beyond narrowly defined, geographic cluster borders, ports need entrepreneurial management capabilities that can actually foster ecosystem co-creation , in line with Pitelis and Teece (2010), Iansiti and Levien (2004), and Van der Lugt and De Langen (2018). Such management capabilities allow securing the longer-term viability, growth, and economic performance, in terms of value creation and capture, of individual firms, localized clusters, and international value chains .
Building upon modern resource-based view thinking, applied to the port context (see, i.e., Haezendonck et al. 2001; Gordon et al. 2005), this book explores the underlying motivations and decision-making processes adopted by port managers, to design and establish ecosystems that may reach far beyond the conventional geographic borders of seaports, with a view to create and capture value for the long term, and taking into account the goals and aspirations of a wide array of partners and other stakeholders .
We observed that some port authorities have selected a āportfolio approach ,ā combining various forms of long-term strategic collaboration, whereas other ones have opted for a āstagedā approach , with increasing levels of resource commitments over time. A first stage might involve the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), whereas the final stage might be associated with a full-fledged merger or acquisition of another economic actor in the value chain . Early collaboration efforts are typically associated with high uncertainty and steep learning curves. Over time, a stronger familiarity ensues with the other actors in the ecosystem , and the related social capital creation with ecosystem partners can then reasonably lead to higher resource commitments, albeit often (necessarily) associated with reciprocal commitments so as to avoid the ādark sideā of unilateral commitments (i.e., opportunistic behavior ).
The organic processes described above, with escalating levels of reciprocal resource commitments, and virtuous cycles of social capital creation, often require not only formalized ācontracting ,ā but also relationship-building mechanisms in governance design. Especially when they focus on relational elements in ecosystem creation, port managers become the de facto co-orchestrators of global logistics chains , often operating in concert with a variety of other co-orchestrators such as global shipping companies . Here, much in line with Kanoās (2017) analysis of value chain mapping, it is important to search for resource complementarities among ecosystem partners, so as to craft viable win-win governance approaches. If successful, ports de facto morph from system-integrators at the local or regional level, into co-orchestrators of ecosystems that are geographically much more widely dispersed.
3 Building Competitiveness Through Spatially Dispersed Value Chains and Localized Clusters
Many port (authority) managers are presently engaged in collaborative agreements with partners located in both their proximate geographic area and far beyond this area. The economic drivers of such cooperation can vary widely and include goals as diverse as an expected, stronger competitive position to attract and retain traffic flows, better access to capital, or an improved, overall control over the logistics chain . From a governance perspective, the cooperative agreements can range from top-down , government-influenced alliance formation to bottom-up , collaborative projects, and from long-term market contracting to full-fledged mergers. Much has been suggested, but little is actually known and researched about the performance outcomes of these cooperative efforts, especially in terms of overall, governance efficiency features and the related competitiveness of the economic actors and value chains or clusters involved. This book seeks to fill this dual knowledge gap.
In Chapter 2, we develop a new governance perspective on portāhinterland linkages and related port impacts . Many stakeholders in a portās hinterland now demand tangible economic benefits from port activities, as a precondition for supporting port expansion and infrastructural investments. We use a governance lens to assess this farsighted contracting challenge. We find that most contemporary economic impact assessments of port investment projects pay scant attention to the contractual relationship challenges in port-hinterland relationships. In contrast, we focus explicitly on the spatial distribution of such impacts and the related contractual relationship issues facing port authorities or port users and their stakeholders in the port hinterland. We introduce a new concept, the Port Hinterland Impact (PHI) matrix, which focuses explicitly on the spatial distribution of port impacts and related contractual relationship challenges. The PHI matrix offers insight into port impacts using two dimensions: logistics dedication, as an expression of Williamsonian asset specificity in the sphere of logistics contractual relationships, and geographic reach , with a longer reach typically reflecting the need for more complex contacting to overcome ā...