Essays on Strategy Analysis for Seaports

By Elvira Haezendonck
May 2005
Garant
Distributed by
ISBN: 9044111531
240 pages, Illustrated, 6 ¼ x 9 ½"
$65.00 Paper Original

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The increasingly competitive market environment in which port clusters operate today imposes new requirements on port strategy analysis. Many port authorities and port operators now realize that a static approach to cost leadership, a sole focus on inherited factor advantages and simplistic reliance on new infrastructure to attract or retain clients, are no longer sufficient to guarantee a port's competitive success. They need to offer greater value added to port users, as well as to society. Hence, this new market environment forces ports to reconsider their present strategic position and to reflect on the strategic options for the future.

In order to understand the underlying dynamics of building a sustainable competitive advantage, quantitative as well as qualitative elements need to be integrated in port strategy analysis. A resource-based port strategy analysis, the foundations of which are developed in this study, should thereby enable a port to correctly describe its present competitive position, but also provide tools to achieve a better understanding of the underlying port specific advantages. Such an understanding could well make the difference between merely maintaining versus substantially improving a port cluster's competitive position.

The book builds upon an in-depth survey of economic actors in the Antwerp seaport cluster, with a specific focus on the container and conventional cargo clusters. It attempts to answer the question why these particular port clusters are more competitive than similar clusters in other ports. In order to answer this question, the study develops and extends a number of formal tools of strategy analysis that should be useful to both port authorities and port operations.

Contents:
Chapter 1. Introduction to Strategy Analysis for Seaports:
      Concepts and Strategy Approaches
Chapter 2. The Competitive Position of Seaports:
      Introduction of the Value Added Concept
Chapter 3. The Competitive Position of Seaports in the Hamburg-Le Havre Range:
      An Extended Strategic Positioning Analysis
Chapter 4. Introduction of an Ecological Dimension in Seaport Portfolio Analysis
Chapter 5. The Competitive Advantage of Seaports
      A Porterian Approach to the Antwerp Seaports' Competitiveness
Chapter 6. The Core Competences of the Antwerp Seaport
      An Analysis of Port Specific Advantages
Conclusions and Policy Implications

Business Communication


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