Improving the resilience of maritime supply chains: The integration of ports and inland transporters in duopoly markets

Abstract

The adverse impact of the outbreak of COVID-19 has reduced ports’ operational efficiency. In addition, ports and inland logistics providers are generally independent of each other and difficult to work together, which leads to time loss. Thus, as the core player, ports can integrate with inland logistics providers to improve the efficiency and resilience of maritime supply chains. This study examines the strategic options of two competing maritime supply chains consisting of ports and inland logistics providers. We investigate the impact of cooperation between ports and inland logistics providers and government regulation on the maritime supply chain by comparing members’ optimal pricing and overall social welfare under centralized, decentralized, and hybrid scenarios. Results indicate that the hybrid scenario is an equilibrium strategy for maritime supply chain, although this strategy is not optimal for governments seeking to improve supply chain resilience and maximize social welfare. Furthermore, observations show that through government economic intervention, both seaborne supplies can be incentivized to adopt an integrated strategy, and business and society can achieve a win—win situation.

The impact of carbon neutrality policies on the stock market from a supply chain perspective

“…Sustainable efforts at the operation and supply chain management (OSCM) level play an important role in a low carbon economy (Das and Jharkharia, 2018;Du et al, 2017). Many previous studies have shown that supply chain network structures, such as supply concentration and degree centrality, will affect firm performance (Chen et al, 2021;Dong et al, 2021) and stock prices (Shi et al, 2022(Shi et al, , 2023. Based on the resource dependence theory (RDT), the most important survival goal of an organization is not only to reduce its dependence on external key resource supply organizations, but also to improve its control over key resources (Hillman et al, 2009).…”

“…Based on the resource dependence theory (RDT), the most important survival goal of an organization is not only to reduce its dependence on external key resource supply organizations, but also to improve its control over key resources (Hillman et al, 2009). To achieve sustainability goals, focal firms need to actively coordinate relationships between supply chain members to deal with dependencies and uncertainties (Schnittfeld and Busch, 2016) and to cope with external risks with supply chain resilience (Shi et al, 2022(Shi et al, , 2023 during the process of implanting carbon neutrality policies. This requires examining the characteristics of resource interactions between focal firms and upstream and downstream members from the perspective of supply chain structure.…”

“…, 2021) and stock prices (Shi et al. , 2022, 2023). Based on the resource dependence theory (RDT), the most important survival goal of an organization is not only to reduce its dependence on external key resource supply organizations, but also to improve its control over key resources (Hillman et al.…”

“…To achieve sustainability goals, focal firms need to actively coordinate relationships between supply chain members to deal with dependencies and uncertainties (Schnittfeld and Busch, 2016) and to cope with external risks with supply chain resilience (Shi et al. , 2022, 2023) during the process of implanting carbon neutrality policies. This requires examining the characteristics of resource interactions between focal firms and upstream and downstream members from the perspective of supply chain structure.…”

The Impact of Revenue-Sharing Contracts on Parallel Shipping Alliances

“…[11] and [5] noted that to succeed, ports must be integrated in the form of a supply chain to face competition. In this way, several papers can be found in the literature that analyze different perspectives of ports and hinterland services integration (e.g., [15,16], or [4]). However, our main objective is to analyze the integration between ports and shipping lines through revenue-sharing contracts.…”