The Resilience and Adaptability of Shipping, Ports and Supply Chains to Internal and External Shocks

The COVID-19 pandemic is one example of such crises. The spread of infections globally has created an array of challenges for the maritime industries and the supply chains they support. While many of these challenges have already been addressed, others are still present and will likely persist. The impact of the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak is yet to be fathomed. However, neither the consequences nor the adaptive capacities of shipping, ports, and supply chains have been homogeneous.

The coronavirus crisis is also a reminder that each crisis has distinctive features and, consequently, impacts and responses. While COVID-19 has been an external shock of global scale that rapidly impacted all elements of maritime supply chains, a previous shock of a similar scale, the 2008/2009 financial crisis, was an internal shock caused by a misallocation of capital and investments that led to massive cross-defaults when assets were repriced. A variety of shocks and disruptions, such as the Kobe earthquake of 1995, the Hanjin bankruptcy of 2016, tsunamis or hurricanes (Hurricane Katrina, 2005; Harricune Sandy, 2012), port labour disputes, and Brexit, have challenged the resilience of the maritime industry and generated the need for respective adaptations.

Shipping, ports, and actors along the supply chain demonstrate a variety of capacities to adapt to each of these shocks. These capacities might reflect the variance of risks imposed in each industry, as well as the differing capabilities of actors to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from significant multi-hazard threats affecting and disrupting maritime networks. Such differences might result from diverse strategies, policies, governance practices, or only different approaches to functional/operating parameters.

The special issue is expected to advance theoretical and practical knowledge on the resilience and adaptability of shipping, ports, and supply chains to internal and external shocks. We invite research that improves our understanding of the levels, types, forms, and variations of risks, the resilience, and adaptability of each inter-related industry and the entire maritime transport system, as well as the causes of any observed variations. 

Themes

The special issue will follow a broad perspective focusing on the impacts of all types of internal and external shocks on maritime shipping, ports, and supply chains rather than strictly seeking to develop knowledge about the effects and responses of maritime industries to the COVID-19 pandemic. To be more precise, contributions that analyze the impacts of natural, political, health, financial, or any other type of shocks are welcome.

In particular, we invite contributions examining the following issues:

• A typology of shocks and disruptions, such as economic crises, natural disasters, and geopolitical events.
• The impacts of specific types of shocks on global supply chains; operational aspects, market structure, and strategic behavior of shipping lines and terminal operators;
• The impacts of different types of shocks on port-related activities; 
• Events that triggered long-term structural changes for the maritime shipping, ports and logistics;
• New disruptive risks linked with port digitization and automation, such as cybersecurity.
• The evolution of the adaptive capacity and resilience of ports, terminal operators, and carriers;
• The measures, tools, and initiatives that are available for the adaptive capacity of ports, terminal operators, and carriers;
• Τhe underlying drivers of differences in the impacts of shocks across market segments (e.g., container, bulk, reefer, tanker), between domestic and international transport, or between industries (e.g. shipping, ports, terminal operators, supply chain actors);
• Changes in the strategic behaviour of the market players involved;
• Lessons learned by the reactions during and in the aftermath of economic shocks;
• The economics of disruptions and building resilience of maritime industries.

The above list is indicative and non-exhaustive. Quality research on related matters will also be considered for publication as long as the common theme remains disruption and resilience.

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor being currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.  All papers will be refereed through a peer-review process.

An IAME 2021 Special Session 

Contributors are also invited to participate and to present their research at a special IAME 2021 session on "Resilience and Adaptability of shipping, ports, and supply chains'. The session is expected to advance discussions on the research theme and allow contributors to the special issue to benefit from interactions with the broader community of scholars involved in maritime research.  Find more information here!

Timeline 

Note: This is a tentative schedule and we intend to organize a special issue on the theme during IAME2021. The timeline might be synchronized to the IAME2021 paper submission schedule. Also, the timing will depend on the available publication slot in MEL.

Submission box is closed.

Guest editors

Dr. Theo Notteboom  University of Antwerp theo.notteboom@uantwerpen.be	Dr. Athanasios Pallis  University of the Aegean apallis@aegean.gr	Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue  Hofstra University Jean-paul.Rodrigue@hofstra.edu