Search results

Considering the size and intricate nature of defense supply chains (DSC), there exists a need for a conceptual understanding regarding the precise dynamics of collaboration among the various participants engaged in these chains. This paper seeks to address the gap by investigating the practices that enable or inhibit collaborations and the development of new competencies to effectively employ a flexible response to temporary or more sustained surges in demand. Ultimately, the study aims to develop a theoretical framework relevant to the practical implementation and scholarly examination of contemporary military supply chains.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 51 DSC professionals in 7 embedded cases within an enterprise framework. The resulting transcripts were analyzed using constructs and concepts from a supply chain logistics (SC/L) literature analysis and synthesis relevant to our research purpose. Finally, the results were validated by an industry focus group with 12 participants representing the government, military, industry, and academia.

This research produced empirical generalizations that provide in-depth and systematic exploratory insights into collaboration’s meaning and characteristics within the DSC context. This study culminates by introducing a conceptual model and definition of defense supply chain collaboration (DSCC) and concludes by proposing future research directions.

This study makes a novel and empirical contribution to the SC/L body of knowledge by investigating embedded cases through unique access to informants within an enterprise framework that focuses on the antecedent influencing factors of collaboration within the contextual domain of the DSC and positions a future research agenda.

This article argues that existing research poorly specifies the link between planning and performance because of omitted variable bias. Researchers agree planning is a critical part of creating any new venture. Many researchers assess planning by whether a small firm has a written business plan. Unfortunately, efforts empirically to validate this relationship have been inconclusive. This article proposes that researchers should assess business plans both on the quality of the plan (and the planning process that produced it), and on the quality of the underlying business opportunity. Failure to account for both aspects of a business plan amounts to omitted variable bias, frustrating attempts to accurately estimate the true relationship.

The significant benefits associated with cruise tourism have mobilized port industry, as progressively, a large number of ports are developing cruise operations. Although increasing cruise traffic is a major goal for cruise ports, homeporting constitutes a strategic target of the majority of ports due to its greater economic benefits for both the port itself and its hinterland. The establishment of homeport traffic in a cruise port is subjected to a variety of port internal and external factors. Taking these into account, the paper aims at defining elements that affect the potential of a cruise port to become a homeport.

A sample of 47 Mediterranean ports is selected to form the basis for the implementation of an ordinal regression model which links the likelihood of ports to attract homeport traffic with seven explanatory variables which emerged from relevant literature and are split in the main categories of ports’ and hinterlands’ characteristics. To fit the model into the paper’s data, ports are divided into three categories based on their homeport cruise traffic.

The results of the empirical model signify that both internal and external factors affect the potential of a port to become a cruise homeport. Concerning the internal factors, adequate infrastructure allowing the facilitation of the last generation of cruise ships and the presence of a private enterprise in ports’ operation seems to foster homeport traffic. Additionally, efficiency in operations seems to be a crucial element. On the other hand, the connectivity of port’s; hinterlands, tourist infrastructure and the level of economic growth are proved to be the hinterlands’ elements which increase the likelihood of a port to attract additional homeport traffic.

The model forms a comprehensive evaluation basis for whether a cruise port should intensify its pursuit of homeport traffic, as the estimated coefficients could support port and local authorities to understand their competitive position against other ports and spot their strengths and weaknesses.

The paper contributes in the research dealing with the identification of crucial elements of homeporting from the port’s point of view. Although, it should be mentioned that previous efforts targeting on revealing the characteristics affecting the homeporting potential of ports mostly have been based on questionnaires and expert judgements or empirical models in which the total – and not the homeport traffic – was used as the dependent variable. With the proposed empirical model, home-porting choice analysis is transferred, on the one hand, from the stated preferences level to the revealed preferences level and, on the other hand, from an indirect to a direct approximation of the issue.

A deteriorating security situation and an increased need for defence equipment calls for new forms of collaboration between Armed Forces and the defence industry. This paper aims to investigate the ways in which the accelerating demand for increased security of supply of equipment and supplies to the Armed Forces requires adaptability in the procurement process that is governed by laws on public procurement (PP).

This paper is based on a review of current literature as well as empirical data obtained through interviews with representatives from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration and the Swedish defence industry.

Collaboration with the globalized defence industry requires new approaches, where the PP rules make procurement of a safe supply of defence equipment difficult.

The study's empirical data and findings are based on the Swedish context. In order to draw more general conclusions in a defence context, the study should be expanded to cover more nations.

The findings will enable the defence industry and the procurement authorizations to better understand the requirements of Armed Forces, and how to cooperate under applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

The paper extends the extant body of academic knowledge of the security of supply into the defence sector. It serves as a first step towards articulating a call for new approaches to collaboration in defence supply chains.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) commonly struggle to acquire needed financial, human, and technological resources. The above being stated, recent scholarly research argues that SMEs that are able to successfully navigate the legitimacy threshold are better able to gather the resources they need to survive and grow. This article provides an empirical test of that claim by examining whether the presence of a corporate parent positively influences SME resource acquisition. Results of the study show that SMEs with corporate parents, when compared to like-sized independent SMEs, have higher credit scores, have more complete management teams, use more computers, and are more likely to be on the Internet. These differences are most pronounced for very small firms and diminish in significance as firm size increases. Study implications include the notion that presence of a corporate parent likely represents a successful navigation of the legitimacy threshold, positively increasing SME resource acquisition.

This study aims to examine ship loading strategies during large-scale military deployments. Ships are usually loaded to a stowage goal of about 65% of the ship's capacity. The authors identify how much cargo to load onto ships for each sailing and propose lower stowage goals that could improve the delivery of forces during the deployment.

The authors construct several mixed integer programs to identify optimal ship loading strategies that minimize delivery timelines for notional, but realistic, problem variables. The authors study the relative importance of these variables using experimental designs, regressions, correlations and chi-square tests of the empirical results.

The research specifies the conditions during which ships should be light loaded, i.e. loaded to less than 65% of total capacity. Empirical results show cargo delivered up to 16% faster with a light-loaded strategy compared to fully loaded ships.

This work assumes deterministic sailing times and ship loading times. Also, all timing aspects of the problem are estimated to the nearest natural number of days.

This research provides important new insights about optimal ship loading strategies, which were not previously quantified. More importantly, logistics planners could use these insights to reduce sealift delivery timelines during military deployments.

Most ship routing and scheduling problems minimize costs as the primary goal. This research identifies the situations in which ships transporting military forces should be light loaded, thereby trading efficiency for effectiveness, to enable faster overall delivery of unit equipment to theater seaports.

The cruise industry has witnessed steady growth, with passenger volume increasing from 17.8 million in 2009 to 30 million in 2019. In the context of global competition and an uncertain business environment, competition in business has changed dramatically from battles of “firm versus firm” to “supply chain versus supply chain”. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to understand the cruise industry from a chain perspective, which has not drawn widespread research attention.

This paper brings together the insights, opinions, concepts and frameworks from a literature review of different disciplines (maritime shipping, tourism management, logistics management, operations management and supply chain management) and analysis results from 22 semi-structured interviews to make an early attempt to conceptualise the cruise supply chain (CSC).

The cruise supply chain is elaborated on the process, the role of each entity and its characteristics by comparing with the maritime supply chain and tourism supply chain. Based on the understanding of the CSC, two specific characteristics of the Chinese CSC are examined, which need further investigation.

The CSC is articulated with detailed processes and characteristics based on the literature review and empirical study. The findings of this paper not only advance the knowledge of the supply chain in the cruise industry but also highlight the importance of further research on the CSC.

The research objective of the paper is twofold. First, it scrutinises the current state of the art concerning adopting the most popular social media by European port managing bodies (PMBs). Second, it investigates the use of social media in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategies of European PMBs.

The paper carries out online field research on the use of social media by the top-25 European ports. Then, it provides an in-depth case study of the use of Twitter by the Port of Rotterdam for CSR communication. Finally, a content analysis of the tweets published in the 2017–2019 timeframe is performed.

Empirical results demonstrate the extensive use of social media by European PMBs to reach a wider array of stakeholders. Uneven approaches emerge considering port sizes and cultural clusters. The content analysis shows that one-third of tweets published by the Twitter account of the Port of Rotterdam address CSR issues, especially green initiatives, advocating the use of social media to communicate CSR.

The study focuses on the European domain. A broader sample of ports worldwide should be examined to further investigate the drivers affecting PMBs' strategic adoption and use of social media, mainly to communicate CSR.

The paper provides port managers with insights to strengthen CSR communication. Given the increasing pressure of the public opinion on environmental and social issues, the ability of European PMBs to communicate their CSR commitment through social media represents a key driver when searching for consensus of stakeholders and “licence to operate”.

The paper adds to the existing maritime logistics literature by introducing a promising field of research.

The interest for collaboration among small and mediumsized enterprises and innovation has been highlighted, in recent times, due to the acceleration of technological changes and to increasing international competitiveness. Many small firms, with rigid structures and weak entrepreneurial dynamics, experienced difficulties in becoming innovators. Some of these firms can adopt collaborative agreements because these relationships enable them to get the necessary innovative activities, know-how, and exploit opportunities, which they cannot achieve alone. This study examines the motives for the formation of collaborative agreements in industrial Portuguese SMEs and presents some empirical evidence concerning collaboration as an important vehicle for the innovativeness of these small firms. The findings were based on a sample of 92 firms/collaborative agreements.

This paper recommends new criteria for selecting seaports of embarkation during military deployments. Most importantly, this research compares the current port selection criterion, which is to select the seaport with the shortest inland transport time from the deploying installation, to the proposed port selection criteria, which are to select the seaport based on the shortest combined inland and oceanic transit time to the destination theater.

The authors construct an original integer program to select seaports that minimize the expected delivery timeline for a set of notional, but realistic, deployment requirements. The integer program is solved considering the current as well as the proposed port selection criteria. The solutions are then compared using paired-samples t-tests to assess the statistical significance of the port selection criteria.

This work suggests that the current port selection criterion results in a 10–13% slower delivery of deploying forces as compared to the proposed port selection criteria.

This work assumes deterministic inland transit times, oceanic transit times, and seaport processing rates. Operational fluctuations in transit times and processing rates are not expected to change the findings from this research.

This research provides evidence that the current port selection criterion for selecting seaports for military units deploying from the Continental United States is suboptimal. More importantly, logistics planners could use these recommended port selection criteria to reduce the expected delivery timelines during military deployments.

Several military doctrinal references suggest that planners select seaports based on habitual installation-to-port pairings, especially for early deployers. This work recommends a change to the military's current port selection process based on empirical analyses that show improvements to deployment timelines.