Research in Transportation Business & Management 8 (2013) 1–6

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Research in Transportation Business & Management

Editorial: Advances in port performance and strategy

Advancements in port governance, organization and performancehave been significant over the last two decades. As noted by the editorsin our examination of the port literature to 2000 (Brooks and Pallis,2012), “this is a young field, only coming into its own in the last decade.”While port policy on the part of governments was a post-World War IIinterest, the flowering of the field really began with the developmentof newpublicmanagement principles in the late 1980s and the resultingwave of port governance reform in the early and mid-1990s. In the lasttwo decades, scholars studying ports developed multidisciplinary re-search streams and produced a maturing research field (Pallis,Vitsounis, & de Langen, 2010). Given the international character of thesector, and not least the nature of the changes that shape modernports, port researchers initiated international collaborations in orderto identify research gaps and challenges, develop common researchthemes, and then jointly apply meaningful research approaches acrossbroader port samples and link port studies with developing conceptsin other areas of management.

In this vein, in 2001, researchers active in the International Associa-tion of Maritime Economists (IAME) with a research interest in thestudy of port economics, government port policy and port managementapplications formed a special interest group of the association, the PortPerformance Research Network (PPRN). Since then, the activities of thePPRN have focused on port governance reform and port performance,and their attendant implications for port management. This volume ofResearch in Transportation Business and Management builds on, updatesand extends previous output published by PPRNmembers. For example,PPRN members examined port developments in 14 countries linkingthem with port performance, publishing the results in 26 articles inResearch in Transportation Economics (Brooks & Cullinane, 2007). Twospecial issues were published in the scholarly journals Journal of Trans-port Geography and Maritime Policy and Management, the first dealingwith institutional issues in shaping port governance and organization(Ng, Hall, & Pallis, 2012), and the second examining port concessions(Notteboom, Pallis, & Farrell, 2012). All three themes are revisited inthis volume by those studying port governance and port strategiesrespectively, and extended in new and novel ways. In this editorial,we introduce the three sections of this volume, identifying for you thecontribution the individual articles make separately before we discussthe areas where more research is needed.

1. Port governance in the post reform era

Many countries went through an era of devolution and port reformin the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Those efforts documentedin 14 countries in Brooks and Cullinane (2007) have now had plentyof time to mature, indicating that it is now time to assess their impacts.However, only three articles in this volume resulted from the Call for Pa-pers; they attempt to detail the current situation in port governance,evaluate the impact of government efforts and recount the lessons tobe learned by managers dealing with post-devolution circumstances.

2210-5395/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2013.09.002

The first two of these present geographically-narrow examples of tradi-tional case studies of port reform at the country level, illustrating howtwo countries (Libya and Brazil) currently in the throes of port reformare proceeding to change the “rules of engagement” for ports in their re-spective countries. The third is not a traditional study of port reform butrather looks forward to the use of stakeholder management by a gov-ernment desirous of a less private sector philosophy to solve regionalport governance issues.

The starting point for the volume is Ghashat and Cullinane's articleon the future governance of Libya's ports as it provides an applicationof a governance assessment to a country where the situation is notwell-known and has not been studied before. The article makes an ex-cellent contribution to the scholarly literature and will be of interestto many other developing countries seeking to improve port efficiencythrough governance change and devolution in the port sector. Libyaprovides a useful illustration of a country where it has become clearthat private sector involvement is needed to improve port economicoutcomes and yet the port reform model to be imposed by a govern-ment desirous of change is unclear; the challenge for Libya is that sever-al models of devolution are possible but which should the governmentchoose?

In addition to providing documentation on port reform in a countrynot previously studied, the article makes a significant contribution byextending the current research paradigm. Their study model improvesthe way we should all think about port governance, by extending theBaltazar and Brooks (2001), (2007) approach to accommodate stake-holders' objectivesmore explicitly. The authors developed anattitudinalsurvey of stakeholders and, using it, found the guidance needed for thereformeffort. It was very useful to identify the stakeholders' perceptionsonwhich port functions should NOTbe transferred to the private sector.Each country has its own value system (a cultural element) that plays arole in a sense of sovereignty and national identity and this approach ofidentifying the functions believed by stakeholders to be the role of a na-tional government will make each reform effort unique. This is thegreatest contribution of the article as it improves the way we shouldall think about port governance reform if using the Baltazar andBrooks (2007, Chapter 17)Matching Framework as amodel for evaluat-ing the likely outcomes of reform implementation.

Discussion thenmoves to Brazil with Galvão, Robles and Guerise ex-amining the institutional and economic changes that the Brazilian sea-port system experienced in the past 25 years. A comparative analysisof the key reforms of the regulatory frameworks and their implicationsfor several aspects of the port system lead the authors to consider theexperience of reform as successful. They focus on two parameters thatgenerate further reform demands—the complexity of the Brazilianport system and the need to secure private investment continuity soas to improve competitiveness of the national port system. Based onthese, the scholars identify the remaining challenges that must beaddressed in order to enhance the quality of infrastructure and improvetransport integration.

2 Editorial: Advances in port performance and strategy

An interesting dimension of this particular article is the examinationof pricing trends and their associationwith the on-going port governancereforms. This discussion is very timely, and particularly informative forthose holdingmanagerial responsibilities, as Brazil has announced furtherreform of the legal and regulatory structure of port contracts at a timewhen contracts at terminals of all types and sizes have almost expired.The article touches the core concept of the most recent port moderniza-tion program, and reflects new thinking about the frameworks forpublic–private-partnerships. This is a welcomed case study for anotherreason as well. In the port literature, there are few cases that examinethe Brazilian port system, much needed at a time when economic andtrade developments in the emerging economies of the BRIC countrieshave received much attention and changes in port governance intend tounlock badly-needed capacity expansion of the port system. Again this ar-ticle exposes the importance of governance research to the understandingof what reforms will succeed in encouraging new business opportunitiesfor public and private investors.

The next article in this section of the volume is Lam,Ng and Fu's articleon stakeholdermanagement in the Pearl River Delta. This article exploresthe challenges of establishing a regional governance mechanism across aport region for themanagement of andencouragement of stakeholder en-gagement. The case of the Pearl River Delta is rather unique as competi-tion between ports is high but tight country-level governance controlexists. All of the ports in the region are under Chinese government over-sight yet each port still competes for business fiercely.

The article provides guidance on an approach that can be taken in aspecific case where governments want to prevent destructive competi-tion in a port region and encourage greater cooperation on topicswhereregional cooperation can achieve major benefits for the group of ports,e.g., where taking a cooperative approach means that ‘the rising tidelifts all boats’. Whether there is national port oversight (as in the caseof China's ports) or a more decentralized port structure in a country,the article provides a model approach to engaging stakeholders forcooperatively-achieved, competitive regional advantage. A note of cau-tion implicit in the analysis is communicated to policy makers strivingfor port reform: given this rather unique set of circumstances, what isproposed will not necessarily transfer to other locations or geographies,a reminder to all that institutional settings are deterministic of whatmight be done.

In summary, we anticipated in conceiving this volume that authorsof those early 14 studies (Brooks & Cullinane, 2007)wouldmake contri-butions assessing the evolution of port governance reform efforts; thischallenge was not met. While these three articles have extended thedocumentation and assessment of port governance and port reform is-sueswith a government perspective, they have not evaluated the earlierreform efforts' success or failure. It is time to hold governments andports accountable for the reforms that took place more than a decadeago. Were they successful and howwas that success measured? Clearlythere is much more research to do to assess the effectiveness of reformpolicy over time, as was proposed by Brooks and Pallis (2008) whenthey suggested that reform–strategy–performance could be a virtuous(or vicious) circle of activity.

2. Port performance measurement

Port efficiency research has long been a dominant theme for port per-formance scholars. The development of key performance indicators hasbecome more refined, and we begin this section of the volume withfour articles on port and terminal efficiency measurement. With the re-cent release of the Journal of Commerce/PIERS® Port Productivity tool in2013, the field of efficiency benchmarking will continue to develop andthe first three articles address efficiency issues. If ports do not proactivelyparticipate in efforts to bench their performance,weexpect that anumberof stakeholders will do it for them, as is the case with this tool based onshipping line assessments of terminal (and port) productivity.

The first of these is the article by Bergantino, Musso and Porcelli onthe measurement of port efficiency within a framework that considerscontextual variables. It has long been argued by the port industry thatbenchmarking technical efficiency is not a useful activity because‘when you've seen one port, you've seen one port.’ In other words, therole of contextual variables plays a considerable role in determiningport performance. The authors have provided those who make this ar-gument with food for thought.

Economists studying the technical efficiency of the industry havelong used both data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontieranalysis. Yet there has been little attention paid to specific variables ofinterest to port managers when looking at these results. The most pro-found of these variables is the extent to which the local conditionsalter the ability of a port to achieve optimal technical efficiency. Draw-ing heavily on the economics literature, and bringing in some novel el-ements (i.e., a wider set of inputs to DEA analysis, all available fromsecondary data), the article provides a valuable contribution to the busi-ness and management community: it is possible to isolate technical in-efficiencies due to port operating practices from those caused byconditions beyond the control of port managers (the contextual vari-ables). The authors suggest some key elements to consider in perfor-mance evaluation. The study of 30 ports over the period from 1995 to2009 demonstrates that contextual variables play a significant role inoutcomes, whereas population density is not the critical factor manyoften argue. It is interesting that governance changes and efforts spentin improving accessibility paid off for the study ports, and particularlythat governance impacts were obvious in a shorter time frame thatthought likely by Brooks and Pallis (2008). Guidance to both govern-ments and port managers are takeaways from this research that de-serves a close read.

The second article in this section is by Wilmsmeier, Tovar andSanchez. They examine terminal efficiency in Latin American portsover a period of seven years, also with an eye to examining contextualfactors in addition to the usual efficiency factors evaluated in mostport efficiency studies. This article examines port efficiency at a terminalas opposed to port level, and this is an important contribution, particu-larly in light of the focus by the Journal of Commerce's new berth pro-ductivity tool at both port and terminal levels. The article's assessmentof efficiency evaluation in the region is insightful, and its key contribu-tion is to add a variable of port type to the examination of efficiency.Transhipment terminals are found to have a more difficult task inresponding to external demand shocks arising from shipping line strat-egies than terminals with gateway and hybrid roles. The future of portefficiency performance measurement needs to contemplate perfor-mance at the terminal level as an integral component, as is illustratedby the examples given in this article.

For those wishing to drill down to efficiency at the level of equip-ment choice is the very useful research article by Yang and Chang.They conduct a performance assessment of various types of yard equip-ment (rubber-tired gantries or RTGs) in order to identify the best equip-ment choice at a Taiwanese container terminal. What is creative aboutthis article is its focus on measuring performance in terms of green-house gas production, a new area of interest tomany container terminaloperators. The focus is not one simply on the fuel savings to be foundfrom switching from traditional RTGs to electric-powered ones, butalso the impact of CO2 emissions, a factor of increasing importance togovernments seeking to reduce the environmental footprint of thetransportation industry including port activities. As the issues of climatechange, port labor health, and port community air and noise quality riseto the top of port management agendas, it is research of this type thatwill get the incremental improvements needed for the ‘green ports’agenda.

The fourth article with a keen focus on port efficiency is also under-taken at the terminal level. Ferrari, Puliafito and Tei examine how portefficiency indicators may be incorporated into terminal concession con-tracts so as to gain productivity improvements over the time and life of

3Editorial: Advances in port performance and strategy

the concession agreement. As many port concessions are increasinglylong lived (as noted by Farrell, 2012; Pallis, Notteboom, & de Langen,2008), and terminals have access to information that they do notshare with ports under many port governance arrangements, thistopic of what and how is very timely. The authors discuss the benefitsof such an approach and provide the very useful illustration of thePort of Genoa for the proof of concept. As concessions come up for re-newal, this article provides input that will be worth consideration bypublic policy managers.

In addition to identifying and assessing current best practice effi-ciency measurement models at both port and terminal organizationallevels, a number of ports are also interested in developing ‘quality ofservice’ or effectiveness performance indicators. These measurementprograms take a broader user perspective on how well ports perform.Two additional articles focus on recent efforts in North America andEurope to examine how well ports deliver the services expected bytheir stakeholders.

Port users perspectives are often lost in the drive to gain productivityimprovements in ports. In the first of two articles looking at port effec-tiveness measurement, Brooks and Schellinck illustrate how to system-atically evaluate port effectiveness in user service delivery and addressconflicts between various measurement approaches to service quality.Drawing on research done for the American Association of Port Author-ities, they exploit a determinance–performance gap analysis using nor-malized pairwise regression to identify for individual port managerswhat users perceive the port's performance to be, rather than focus onmeasuring customer satisfaction. The study explores both performancequality indicators held in common across user groups as well as thosespecific to each of three user groups (shipping lines, cargo interestsand supply chain partners). In trying to explore what determinesusers' evaluations of port service delivery, they find that shipping linesand supply chain partners place greater value on factors related tospeed of cargo handling and general timeliness of port activities, whilecargo interests are muchmore likely to be interested in a port's respon-siveness and customer relationship/problem-solving processes. Mostimportant, this article uses data from one port to illustrate how portmanagers might use the results of the approach to make investmentand marketing decisions for that port, and demonstrates that resultsfor each port are unique by user type.

Contributing to the search for meaningful indicators for the mea-surement of port performance, de Langen and Sharypova develop an in-termodal connectivity index. When port authorities and policy makershave the ambition to handle a larger share of traffic volumes through in-tegrated intermodal transportation that better expands the port-to-portconcept to a door-to-door one, a better connectivity between ports andintermodal terminals in the hinterland is critical. However, while con-nectivity measures have increasingly been applied to maritime net-works, and attention has been paid to intermodal connectivity to/fromports (ITF, 2008), the development of relevant indicators has beenmissing. Following the path of indicators applied elsewhere (includingthe Liner Shipping Connectivity index developed by UNCTAD, andindicators applied in airports), the scholars construct an intermodalconnectivity indicator using data from26major Europeanports. This in-termodal connectivity indicator evaluates the transformations of porthinterland networks compared to the state of the network in a referenceyear, and can be applied either to one specific port, or to a group of ports.Thus, this article contributes by setting standards and drawing conclu-sions about appropriate data definitions that can increase the use ofport performance indicators and, importantly, enable stakeholders tomonitor the system and make better choices. Major challenges remain,themost profound being the identification of away to link the evolutionof intermodal connectivity to intermodal volumes.

Within five years, we believe that it is likely that port performancebenchmarking will happen on both efficiency and effectiveness vectors,with orwithout port cooperation in the process, as users become increas-ingly engaged in understanding and measuring end-to-end supply chain

performance in order to improve their own business competitiveness andcreate value for their customers.

3. Port strategies

Over the past 15–20 years, competition andmarket dynamics follow-ed a tsunami of port devolution programs inmany countries, and the roleof port authorities has been structurally altered. Strategic managementtheories inform research conducted and prove valuable in identifyingthe strategic intentions of port authorities and their stakeholders. Thethird section of this volume answers questions about what strategiesport authorities have developed, or need to develop, and what best prac-tice lessons may be learned from the activities observed in the sector.

The article by Van der Lugt, Dooms and Parola leads this section, ex-ploring strategy-making by port authorities (PAs). As port authoritiesevolve from landlord entities that are strongly embedded in the publicdomain to more autonomous ones exploiting private sector strategies,the authors conclude that PAs emerge as hybrid organizations withstronger performance requirements than they were previously chargedwith. The authors examine the strategic objectives that such entitieshave, and which activities they need to develop in order to serve theseobjectives. Following the concepts developed in the field of manage-ment strategy, the article analyzes how modern PAs differ from fullypublic or private spheres in terms of eight variables, namely ownership,funding, value capture, social control, environmental challenges, decisionprocesses and structures, managerial values, and goals for performanceassessment. This analysis leads to their identification of the key strategicchallenges faced by these value-sharing organizations. Searching forways that port managers might effectively respond to such challengeswith the help of strategic management concepts and the authors discusshow four different frameworks (transaction cost economics, competencebased perspectives, relational views, and co-evolution respectively)might inform managerial decisions at port level.

This research is important on two fronts. First, while certainly the dis-cussion on the role of the PA is not new (see: Goss (1990a, 1990b) semi-nal papers on port authorities, and Notteboom and Winkelmans (2001)study on port strategies), defining the precise nature of modern port au-thorities and the strategic challenges they face are worth revisitinggiven the dynamic nature of the market, the increasing number of actorsinvolved, and the practical implications of these for the governance ofports. Second, the authors bring concepts from corporate strategy andpublic management research to port studies. When going beyond the ex-ploratory discussion contained in the specific article, these conceptsshould prove useful for strategic analysis and subsequently strategy for-mulation by port managers and public policy makers.

The next article by Parola and Maugeri brings an additional dimen-sion to the discussion of modern port evolution, and the strategy-making intentions that PAs need to develop. In the field of portmanage-ment and strategy-making, ports have a broader stakeholder communi-ty to consider. Given the considerable development of citizen activismover the past decade, stakeholder management is today an increasinglyimportant strategic activity for portmanagers. The array of conflicts fac-ingportmanagers has grown as they adjust from themore narrow focusof meeting regulatory and legal requirements to the broader activitiesthat include addressing the concerns of citizens and taxpayers.

Parola and Maugeri create a taxonomy of the emerging conflictsources and parties, providing guidance to port managers about whatkinds of conflicts they must address and how these situations mightbest be managed. This is not the first time that scholars have tackledthis topic adopting a stakeholders perspective (previous examples in-clude Dooms & Verbeke, 2007; Dooms, Verbeke, & Haezendonck,2013) but this particular article contributes by endorsing a multidisci-plinary approach.While the research is admittedly still at an explorato-ry stage, portmanagement and economicsmeet sociology andprovide avaluable ontology and taxonomy of the type of conflicts, and ultimatelya research agenda that goes well beyond specific contexts, case studies,

4 Editorial: Advances in port performance and strategy

or a single disciplinary viewpoint. The drive of the editors of this volumeto select it, out of all articles that were presented at the annual confer-ence of IAME 2013 Conference as the RTBM Prizewinner to be includedin this volume, is that this article can be an agenda setter for future re-search on an issue that merits future attention.

Moreover, the article also focuses attention on a critical emergingconflict arising from the tendency of port cities to perceive their portas a ‘foreign body’ rather than as a force fostering local socio-economicdevelopment. Economic benefits associated with well-functioning portstend to spill over to communities broader than just the city where theyare located, while negative port impacts, mostly related to the environ-ment, land use and traffic congestion, affect the communities wherethey are located. The importance of the issue is such that mapping theprecise nature of the port–city relationship has recently been a theme ex-plored at the international level (OECD, 2013). The search for strategies toaddress such local conflicts is of practical importance for both ports andport–cities.

Given the complexity of seaport supply chains and stakeholder rela-tionships, organizing for logistics innovation is a key component in pro-active strategy-making by port managers. The article by De Martino,Errichiello, Marasco and Morvillo on the role for port authorities in lo-gistics innovation provides a framework for port managers to thinkabout logistics innovation,with practical examples for the portmanage-ment team to consider. Its significant contribution is the frameworkprovided in Figs. 2–4, and the concepts in general that port practitionersshould find useful in C-suite strategizing about possible courses of ac-tion to harness information, knowledge and networking for innovationand value creation for port partners. This article will be particularly use-ful to those ports that are entrepreneurial in their efforts to grow busi-ness and provides a very early application of innovation research tothe world of seaports.

In a completely different vein, Parola, Satta, Penco and Profumo as-sess the issue of disclosure and corporate social responsibility in the an-nual reports produced by port authorities. This is a critical topic for goodgovernance practice by management and this article focuses on thequestion of openness and transparency to all stakeholders, not just thegovernments or other public agencies to which many port authoritiesreport. Furthermore, it exploits the ability to conduct content analysis,a technique seldom used in the port management literature, and acrossmore than just the usual ports examined by single-country researchers.While disclosure rules under Anglo-Saxon corporate governance modelshave been the subject of numerous studies for the past two decades, thefield is new for other governance models and the port industry hasbeen particularly slow to adopt new thinking. The documentation of gov-ernance reporting practices in this industry is quite limited, with the ex-ceptions of Brooks and Pallis (2011) assessment of the role of Boards ofDirectors in ports and Comtois and Slack (2007) report on green practicesby ports. This article is therefore a welcome addition to this volume andhopefully will initiate a new stream of research.

New strategies and the risks associated with them is the theme ofthe article by Dooms, Van der Lugt and de Langen. The authors focuson the internationalization component of port authority strategy. Theydo so by discussing and analyzing the case of the Port of Rotterdamand its recent developments in terms of establishing an internationali-zation strategy. At the center of their attention are the content and themotives of this strategy, the type of projects in different countries, therisks of such a strategy, and the organizational characteristics neededfor its deployment.

Establishing a commercial presence abroad is an increasingly com-mon port practice, and this article provides lessons from the biggestport of Europe, and a pioneer in this approach. The article also indicatesthat a ‘copy and paste’ approach is a poor path to follow. In particular,the authors analyze the different economic and institutional contextsinwhichports operate, the role ofmultinational companies that operatein a port cluster (irrespective of whether this is home base or not), andthe (minimum) scale of the activities as three vital elements affecting

the details an internationalization strategy. The contribution of this arti-cle to port strategy is that it introduces notions developed in the inter-national business literature, taking into account the peculiarities of theport sector. This study provides an example of the need and usefulnessfor port performance and strategy to be informed by broader conceptsin the literature.

Research into port concessions and financing is still growing asmanyports struggle to ensure that these engines of economic developmentcontinue to function in a post-recession world. There is particular inter-est in assessing the outcomes of competitive bidding procedures underweaker economic market conditions and in analyzing performance-based contracts (e.g., those containing throughput guarantees, environ-mental stipulations, and so on). There is also particular interest in therole of public–private partnerships andprivate equity funds in developingport facilities.

In the next article, Baird examines private equity ownership of portauthorities and port lands in the unique case of U.K. ports. In the U.K.,a private sector approach to port authority governance has been usedsince the time of the Thatcher Government, rather than following themost common model of retaining public port authorities who lease/concession port land and operations to private terminal operators.Baird explores the motivations behind private equity ownership ofports in the U.K., which include access to high profits in an industrywith significant barriers to entry and low risk. He concludes that privateequity port owners focus on high profitability, with only limited invest-ment in creating new port assets and an exit strategy of on-selling toother private equity owners. His concern is that the debt burden ofthese highly leveraged ports means that there is very limited creationof new port assets of benefit to port users and the wider U.K. economy.He concludes that the private equity model of port ownership, opera-tion and regulation is not conducive to creating a competitive nationaleconomy.

Immediately following Baird's article, we present a critique of Baird'sarticle by Farrell. She believes that the conclusions drawn by Baird donot fully reflect all of the contributing factors to the state of private eq-uity firms' investments in U.K. ports, pointing out contextual elementsnot discussed in Baird's article. Baird thenwrites a rejoinder to her alter-nate view.

While Farrell has done some practitioner work in the U.K. arena onport investment (but does not use that base of work here) and Bairdhas no conflict of interest, we see that this debate about the role of pri-vate equity is a core decision element of port strategy-making, particu-larly from a government governance perspective. We believe that thethree articles in combination (Baird's article, Farrell's critique andBaird's rejoinder) should be read together, and in order, so that readerswill fully appreciate one of the most important strategic managementissues for ports—how they structure for success andwhether that struc-ture accomplishes what is best for the nation, the port, the economyand/or civil society/taxpayers. In the broader view, ports must servemany stakeholders and how they balance the interests of those stake-holders has multiple impacts of a far-reaching nature.

Among the key conflicts that ports face is the considerable concernexpressed by citizens in local communities about water and air qualityconcerns, and from a broader constituency about global warming andthe contribution that shipping and port activitiesmake to it.What activ-ities are effective in addressing these stakeholder concerns? The lastthree articles in the volume provide a timely examination of current ini-tiatives at the port level, as well as those more broadly influential, withthe intention of assisting port managers in developing an environmen-tal benchmarking framework. The aim is to identify gaps where newstrategies might be developed and new metrics identified to measuresuccessful greening of the port industry.

In this vein, Dooms, Haezendonck and Valaert provide a dynamicgreen port portfolio analysis studying changes in strategies and driversof economics and environmental performance over the period 1999–2010. The sample is a range of European inland ports. A key finding is

5Editorial: Advances in port performance and strategy

the need to differentiate betweenmetropolitan-supporting and industry-supporting ports and develop a port greening portfolio accordingly. Theempirical research in the article provides a conclusion that cannot beignored when developing such portfolio: metropolitan-supporting portscommonly score worse in terms of economic and environmental per-formance. While this might reflect structural and factor conditions, likevariations in logistics developments, port managers and stakeholdersundoubtedly have to take this into account when formulating theirstrategies.

The article provides recommendations for port managers of bothmetropolitan supporting and industry-supporting ports. Among thecommon recommendations applying to all of them is the need to en-dorse a network approach, involving several stakeholders, in order toaddress greening issues. It also provides a note of caution: spatial pro-ductivity differs between ports based on their particular configuration.Thus, attempts to benchmark or simply copy strategies employed inother productive ports are not advisable. Conceptually, the authors callfor a research agenda that will establish ‘green port portfolio analysis’as a tool supporting port strategy formulation.

How port managers develop strategies about climate change will bea significant topic for debate in the coming years. In their article on cli-mate change and the adaptation of port strategies, Ng, Chen, Cahoon,Brooks and Yang use a structured interview approach to examine thestrategic plans of four Australian ports. This article investigates themindset of port managers, what strategies are being planned to adaptto or mitigate climate change impacts, and how they interact with gov-ernment to prepare for climate change impacts. For many ports aroundthe world, this issue is not yet top of mind. The authors note that it is ashame that the level of engagement in the issue by port managers inAustralia does not provide stronger guidance for port managers else-where on the globe. There is a lot of work to do! This article at least be-gins to frame the discussion and provides food for thought for furtherresearch on this topic.

The last article by Cepolina and Ghiara assesses the emerging role ofICT infrastructures in shaping port authority activities. They do sothrough a concrete analysis of an exercise that took place in Italy andthe broader Mediterranean region in order to develop a co-modalitycenter (and ultimately a Motorway of the Sea project that would shiftcargoes from road to sea-going transport). A vital parameter that under-lies the analysis is the recognition from the outset that national legisla-tive frameworks might act as either accelerators or impediments to thepresence and use of such infrastructures at port level. With port author-ities having to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the specif-ic policy context in place and overcome the limitations implied by thiscontext, the article provides a welcome analysis of how port authoritiescan develop an interoperability platform for interconnecting existingICT modules so as to grasp the competitive advantage enabled by suchapplications.

4. What's next for research in the field?

The 20 articles that are included in this volume advance scholarly re-search in portmanagement in amostwelcomed sense. The combinationof conceptual advances with practical results produce concrete recom-mendations for those responsible in setting port governance structures,but foremost for those formulating port strategies and/or implementingport performance metrics. Such combinations have not always beenpresent in published port studies; we are pleased to see the continuingmaturation of the field of port management research.

However, the 20 articles leave a number of gapswe see as needing tobe addressed. It is our belief that the most of these gaps to be filled arefound in the port governance stream. Thewave of devolution of port ac-tivities and port governance that prompted the revisiting of port strate-gy has already been in place for two decades in most countries. Theassessment, however, of the existing governance structures and theirinfluence on the evolution of effective strategy formulation and

performance measurement is somewhat lacking. The extent of fit ofgovernance as imposed by public policy managers with the contempo-rary market dynamics faced by port managers remains somewhat un-aligned (to use a Matching Framework perspective), thus creatingconditions that hamper the ability of ports to respond to the challenges,risks, and conflicts arising froma continuously changing environment. Itappears to have been too easy for port scholars to focus on describingthe reform agenda and too difficult to design a study to assess whetherthat reform has been successful. What is ‘success’ for a national port re-form program? Perhaps, as pointed out by Ghashat and Cullinane in thevery first article in the volume, we need to have a standard tool to iden-tify what citizens and port industry personnel view to be the hallmarksof success and thenmeasurewhether that has been achieved. As editorsof this volume, we throw down the challenge to port scholars that it iscritical to evaluate and measure the performance of what has beendone in order to know what needs to be improved upon in future. Weneed to move beyond reform to assessing governance effectiveness.

Interlinked with the above, but separately, scholars need to workwith governments and industry to contribute to the debate on the fi-nancing and provision of port services. What needs to be changed inthe existing port governance structures and strategies so as to enhancethe growth and development of port services? While the issue ofconcessioning port terminals has in recent years gained the scholarly at-tention that it deserves (with the work of the Port Performance Re-search Network being instrumental on that front), we still do not haveenough data on whether concessions are serving governments (local,national) well and, if not, which elements need to be redefined, fine-tuned or added in order to serve in the best interests of the stakeholdersthat ports and governments choose to serve.

With respect to port strategy, this volume identifies many new ave-nues for further research. Multidimensional approaches to handlingconflicts with port constituencies, the potential use of internationaliza-tion strategies by port authorities, and the opportunities offered bytechnological developments to port managers are all themes recom-mended by the scholars contributing to this volume. Perhaps most im-portant, given the state of our global commons, the discussion abouthow we green ports and address climate change will require us to de-fine, and set up, a measurement system for port ‘greenness’. The goalsof performance measurement, the precise indicators to measure the ef-ficiency and effectiveness of port performance, and the tools by whichmeasurementmay be undertaken need further focus and development;that is, they need further study by both scholars and port policymakersand managers. There is much more measurement of port performancestill to do.

References

Baltazar, R., & Brooks, M. R. (2001). The devolution of port management: A tale of two coun-tries, presented at the World Conference on Transport Research, Seoul, July.

Baltazar, R., & Brooks, M. R. (2007). Port governance, devolution and the matching frame-work: A configuration theory approach. In Mary R. Brooks, & Kevin Cullinane (Eds.),Devolution, port performance and port governance. Research in Transport Economics, 17.(pp. 379–404).

Brooks, M. R., & Cullinane, K. (Eds.). (2007). Devolution, port performance and portgovernance. Research in Transport Economics, Vol. 17, ElsevierOxford.

Brooks, M. R., & Pallis, A. A. (2008). Assessing port governance models: Process and per-formance components. Maritime Policy and Management, 35(4), 411–432.

Brooks, M. R., & Pallis, A. A. (2011). Port governance. In Wayne T. Talley (Ed.), Maritimeeconomics—A Blackwell companion (pp. 491–516). : Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Brooks, Mary R., & Pallis, Athanasios A. (2012). Classics in Port Policy and Management.Camberley, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Comtois, C., & Slack, B. (2007). Restructuring the maritime transportation industry: Globaloverview of sustainable development practices. Retrieved from. http://www.mtq.gouv.qc.ca/portal/page/portal/Librairie/Publications/en/ministere/etudes/rtq0701.pdf

Dooms, M., & Verbeke, A. (2007). Stakeholder management in ports: A conceptual frame-work integrating insights from research in strategy, corporate social responsibilityand port. Proceedings of the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME),Athens, July 2007.

Dooms, M., Verbeke, A., & Haezendonck, E. (2013). Stakeholder management andpath dependence in large-scale transport infrastructure development: The port ofAntwerp case (1960–2010). Journal of Transport Geography, 27(1), 14–25.

6 Editorial: Advances in port performance and strategy

Farrell, S. (2012). The ownership and management structure of container terminal con-cessions. Maritime Policy & Management, 39(1), 7–26.

Goss, R. O. (1990a). Economic policies and seaports: Are port authorities necessary?Maritime Policy & Management, 17(4), 257–271.

Goss, R. O. (1990b). Economic policies and seaports: Strategies for port authorities.Maritime Policy & Management, 17(4), 273–287.

International Transport Forum (2008). Port competition and hinterland connections:Summary and conclusions. Discussion paper 2008–19. Paris: OECD (http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/jtrc/DiscussionPapers/DP200819.pdf)

Ng, A., Hall, P., & Pallis, A. A. (2012). Institutions and the transformation of transportnodes. Journal of Transport Geography, 27(1), 1–3.

Notteboom, T., Pallis, A. A., & Farrell, S. (2012). Terminal concessions in seaports revisited.Maritime Policy & Management, 39(1), 1–5.

Notteboom, T., & Winkelmans, W. (2001). Structural changes in logistics: How willport authorities face the challenge? Maritime Policy & Management, 28(1),71–89.

OECD (2013). The competitiveness of global port–cities: Synthesis report. Paris: Organisationfor Economic Cooperation and Development.

Pallis, A. A., Notteboom, T., & de Langen, P. W. (2008). Concession agreements and marketentry in container terminals. Maritime Economics and Logistics, 10(3), 209–228.

Pallis, A. A., Vitsounis, T. K., & de Langen, P. W. (2010). Research in port economics, policyand management: A review. Transport Reviews, 30(1), 115–161.

Mary R. BrooksRowe School of Business, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

Corresponding author at: Rowe School of Business, DalhousieUniversity, P O Box 15000, Halifax B3H 4R2 Canada.

E-mail address: mrbrooks@dal.ca.

Athanasios A. PallisUniversity of the Aegean, Chios, Greece