The Importance of Strategic Leadership for Port Management: A Delphi Research on Top Managers of Turkish Private Ports

Abstract

Ports have a key role in facilitating trade, playing a critical interface between sea and land based transportation. They are essential parts of international supply chain networks. Considering the strategic importance of ports, there is a need to evaluate strategic leadership perspectives of port management in this chain. The purpose of the study is to analyze the strategic leadership perceptions of top managers in Turkish private ports and to evaluate their main motives for giving importance to strategic leadership at port management. The study used a three-round Delphi technique to collect data. A questionnaire was conducted among 12 top managers at nine private ports in Turkey between March and August, 2014. Most of the private ports included in the sample are the members o f TURK LIM (Port Operators Association of Turkey) and their major is containerized cargo. The findings presented here indicate that there is an increasing need for strategic leadership characteristics of top managers of private ports. The findings reveal that it is critical for top managers of Turkish private ports to have strategic leadership qualifications for such reasons as customer loyalty, human resource management and turn over rate, international integration of ports and volatile market conditions in shipping business.

Academicians Viewpoint on Port Managers Prior Competencies in terms of Environmental Sustainability Performance of Container Port Enterprises in Turkey

“…Due to shortage in the studies on the competencies required at port management, this discovery method has been adopted as it enables revealing independent views. This technique has been used in researches aimed to determine manager competencies and characteristics [36][37][38].…”

Leadership Practices among Islamic Private Secondary School Principals in Southern Thailand: Validating a Model of Strategic Educational Leadership

“…This is not impossible to achieve if leaders engage in strategic educational leadership practices. An extensive body of research has verified the role and importance of the nine components and attributes of strategic educational leadership on school outcomes and effectiveness (Ahmad, 2017;Emiroglu et al, 2014;Kriger & Zhovtobryukh, 2013;Theodore, 2014;Williams & Johnson, 2013;Enas, 2016), where strategic leadership as a package is an essential ingredient for the sustainability of schools and various other bodies and organizations (Sarfraz, 2017). 2021) examined the practices of strategic leadership (SL) of 374 principals at 85 secondary schools in a Malaysian state and discovered that their level of SL was very high (M = 4.32, SD = 0.42), correlating positively with students' outcomes (M = 4.53, SD = 0.37).…”