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Logistics play a vital role in today's economy. As the critical component in the supply chain, logistics is a sector able to be translated as a competitive weapon to the businesses and the nation. Malaysia is a developing country which, laid in the middle of the trade route between west and east, constantly eyes the opportunity to exploit the logistics sector as a platform to bring out its domestic products to the international market and to bring in investment from the global players. Good transport infrastructure and conducive business environment are the ingredients for positioning Malaysia as a hub of logistics activities at the regional and global level. One of the initiatives to achieve the objective is the commencement of Digital Free Trade Zone as a regional e-commerce e-fulfillment hub and drive export of Malaysian SME via e-commerce. As the government is looking toward shifting manufacturing approaches from labor-intensive to capital-intensive strategy, the container ports and airports are equipped with the state-of-the-art technology to ensure efficient movement of cargoes and passenger at the terminal. The progress of logistics and transport activities in Malaysia, coupled with recent development in the commercial and business-related projects, maybe becoming the most important reasons why the foreign investor should consider investing in Malaysia.

Hal Gregersen is one of the pioneers of the field of global leadership. Along with J. Stewart Black and Allen Morrison he created one of the early foundational competency models in the field that was published in their book, Global Explorers: The Next Generation of Leaders (1999). Since that time, Hal has studied the skills associated with innovative leadership with Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer. A good introduction to this research is their award-winning book, The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators (2011). His most recent book, Questions are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life (2018), explores the art of questioning – a skill he argues is critical to leadership productivity. We were curious about Hal's research journey from the study of global leaders to his current research focus – the power of questions – and he graciously agreed to be interviewed for this volume of Advances in Global Leadership. Hal is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Before joining MIT, he taught at INSEAD, London Business School, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Brigham Young University, and in Finland as a Fulbright Fellow.

Since the sixteenth century, Panama has been an important logistic node for communication between South America, North America, and Europe for trade and load transit. Panama ports move more than 700 million tons per year while Panama Canal moves 325,428,407 tons, according the statistics of 2014. Most of the maritime cargo moved through Panama is transit and transshipment cargo. Consequently, and due to the geographical position and future opportunities based on the expansion of the Panama Canal, Panama could be a strategic hub of global trade flows. This is an opportunity to develop value-added logistics services (VALS) in Panama Canal. Thus, this research aims to present a preliminary analysis of VALS industry in Panama, identifying critical variables that could enhance these services. This is a survey-based research, using interviews with the main suppliers of VALS in Panama and some of their customers. The methodology applied to analyze the data is means-end value hierarchy model (MEVHM), which was used to understand VALS industry in Panama and identify what is valuable to customers. Results showed that each VALS provider serves a mean of 20 companies, 22% of them are national clients while 78% are international clients, which recognized the geographical position as their main reason to work with logistics experts from Panama. Furthermore, 92% of them were very satisfied or satisfied with the service received. Main VALS in Panama are labeling, tagging, and packaging. In contrast, areas to be improved are customs procedures, national logistics processes, product’s traceability, competitive prices, and human resources training.

To examine the EU ‘Short Sea Shipping’ (SSS), its ‘motorways of the sea (MoS)’ and green ports, within short sea maritime logistics.

To present past research and report recent developments speculating on future trends.

The dominance of SSS over road is questioned; as road transport has expanded, hubs are expected to become larger and fewer with feeders. Road transport is not certain to follow SSS and its four motorways. This result was responsible for the relocation of industry from West to East and North–East inter-port competition.

The SSS ship size and port are undefined; specific data on these concepts are unavailable.

‘Door-to-door’ services are highly sought after in this sector, but difficult to establish.

The green element introduced here, mainly for ports, will dominate future discussions because of the high importance given to climate change.

This chapter outlines for the first time the development of the policy on EU Eco-ports, the relocation of industry, the West–East port competition, the MoS and the long-term deterioration of SSS logistics which is likely to persist in the future.

Recently, China has taken steps to open up its international air transport services at a higher level during its 14th Five-Year Period. As one step, a number of pilot free trade zones (PFTZs) have been launched with different tasks for foreign economic cooperation based on institutional innovation. Some cities in these zones have been chosen to develop airport economy by liberalization of the fifth freedom traffic right (FFTR). Considering the different economic situations between passenger and cargo market following the outbreak of the coronavirus, this chapter focuses on its implication of the FFTR for air cargo and airport economy in these cities. Some air service agreements (ASAs) between China and other countries have contained the arrangements on the FFTR. However, this study argues that such arrangements are too general and need further negotiation and policy support for practical utilization. FFTR liberalization may drive cargo growth and economic development in the cities which have gained such policy support, but it may also bring competitive pressure on Chinese airlines. Furthermore, the FFTR liberalization policies do not guarantee an immediate positive result in fostering airport economy, and much work is needed for better utilization of the FFTR in China.

This chapter reviews and analyses the contemporary development of liner shipping, port development and competition. It begins with a comprehensive review on the latest developmental trends of liner shipping and business strategies, as well as their impacts on port development and competition. Then, it discusses the responses of ports, past, present and (likely) future, in addressing these new demands and challenges. A very important point from this analysis indicates that, in the past decade, port development and competition have gradually evolved from being individual, technical efficiency-oriented to become more regional, economic efficiency-oriented. At the same time, ports have also moved out of their rather passive positions and undertaken positive steps to avert the traditionally strong bargaining power of shipping lines. This illustrates that port development and competition is a continuous morphological process which can change dramatically within a rather short period of time. This chapter provides a new perspective on port development and competition and a decent platform for further research.

Outward foreign direct investments (FDI) by Turkish firms in the new millennium show intriguing geographic distribution pattern and unlike the predictions of classical theories of FDI. In this study we contribute by linking the observed pattern of outward FDI with Turkish firms’ motivation for investment across national borders. We enrich research by collecting and analyzing FDI motivation data at the firm-level for a very important but less researched developing country: Turkey. Content analysis of text material on the foreign investments made by 211 Turkish firms reveals that Turkish firms primarily perform FDI in European developed countries for reasons other than conventional, namely, market- and strategic-asset-seeking motivations. More importantly, Turkish firms seem to be using the European countries to (1) present themselves as a European Union company, (2) make use of special features of these countries to expand their businesses within and to other countries and, (3) make use of the favorable tax treatment policies available to foreign investors. Surprisingly, our analysis shows that in spite of its small size, the Netherlands is a preferred destination for Turkish FDI over other Western European countries due to its strategic location and favorable investment policies.