Thursday, 11 September 2014
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics
“Port Management Studies”
Guest Editors:
Michaël Dooms1 and Francesco Parola2
1Assistant Professor, PhD, Solvay Business School, University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
2Assistant Professor, PhD, University of Naples “Parthenope”, Naples, Italy, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
1. Introduction
The use of (strategic) management theory in port research has been increasing since the 1990s (Woo et al., 2011), both on the level of the management and strategy of individual stakeholders in the port supply chain (such as port operators and port authorities) as well as on the level of interrelations and interdependencies between different port stakeholders. A comprehensive overview of concepts from strategy theory used in the context of ports is found in Van der Lugt et al. (2013). Whereas a dedicated journal on port management does not exist (yet), recent issues and volumes on transport and maritime related journals have shown increased interest, see e.g. volume 8 (October 2013) of the Research in Transportation Business & Management (RTBM) journal, edited by Brooks and Pallis. Also within broader research communities, such as the European Academy of Management (EURAM), a port strategy track will now be organized for the 3rd time, showing the interest of management and strategy scholars for the port industry as an interesting field of application.
2. Rationale and main topics
For this special issue, we expect cutting-edge research on Asian ports, blending recent insights from the strategic management literature with current tendencies and challenges within port management and strategy. Emphasis should be awarded to cross-regional differences and similarities, comparing Asian analytical dimensions with those of other geographic contexts.
The intrinsic characteristics of the port industry, which is highly internationalized and includes a large plethora of public and private stakeholders,make this sector an ideal field for challenging extant management theories. This industry, indeed, is composed by a variety of actors, e.g. port authorities, local and central governments, terminal operators, shipping lines, logistics providers, etc., which are protagonists of a wide array of dynamic interactions. Each player deserves ad-hoc analytical frameworks and the complexity of the overall competitive picture needs to address consolidated theoretical streams, such as Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), Resource-Based View (RBV), internationalization (stage) theories, Relational view/Business ecosystems models, Stakeholder (Management) Theory, etc.
In this regard, the questioning of the above theoretical underpinnings may bring out the uniqueness of the port industry, which, ultimately, can contribute to theory building across management and strategy studies and international business (IB) literature.
The following tendencies and challenges, and associated research questions, have been identified. The focal organization within the research should be port authorities and port service providers. We expect contributions on following topics – a more extensive brief with references and potential research questions for each topic is to be obtained through the guest editors:
a) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in ports
b) New types and forms of strategizing for ports
c) Stakeholder Management in ports
d) Corporate communication strategies in ports
e) Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in ports
f) International strategy for ports
g) Innovation strategy in ports
We accept both theoretical and empirical contributions ensuring rigorousness and reliability of the analytical framework. For empirical contributions, both quantitative and qualitative, as well as case study based approaches are welcome. We also encourage research comparing Asian ports with approaches in other port regions (e.g. North America, Europe). Also, research mixing perspectives and providing cross-perspective insights (e.g. CSR and innovation, etc.) is encouraged.
4. Deadlines
Full paper submission 28th February 2015
Notification of acceptance/revisions,
(invitation to IAME 2015 paper development workshop) 31st May 2015
Paper development workshop (IAME Conference 2015) late August 2015
Paper final acceptance 15th October 2015
Publication (est.) December 2015
Manuscripts should be sent directly to both guest editors. Authors who are uncertain about the suitability of their papers should contact guest editors.
Final papers are requested to follow “Guide for Authors” instructions of the Journal.
The Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics is an open access journal published by Elsevier B.V. in collaboration with Korean Association of Shipping and Logistics. The Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics is published with cooperation of Chinese Maritime Institute and Japan Society of Logistics and Shipping Economics.
Journal website
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/the-asian-journal-of-shipping-and-logistics/
Guide for Authors
http://www.elsevier.com/journals/the-asian-journal-of-shipping-and-logistics/2092-5212/guide-for-authors
5. References
van der Lugt, L., Dooms, M.& Parola, F. (2013), “Strategy making by hybrid organizations: The case of the port authority,” Research in Transportation Business & Management, Vol. 8, pp. 103-113.
Woo, S-H., Pettit, S. J., Kwak, D-W. & Beresford, A. (2011), “Seaport research: A structured literature review on methodological issues since the 1980s,” Transportation Research Part A, Vol. 45, No. 7, pp. 665-687.