Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate key critical factors for developing transit trade corridors (TTCs) in optimizing trade and logistics performance, taking into account economic, geographic and political concerns among countries in the Northeast Asia region, which have been dynamically developing TTCs to optimize trade and logistics performance in association with development of transport infrastructure in the Greater Tumen Region located in the Northeast Asia.

This research explores key factors affecting the TTC through a comprehensive literature review in tandem with expert survey. Factor analysis, both exploratory and confirmatory, is employed to further investigate the underlying factors affecting more efficient development of a TTC.

This research has drawn eight underlying factors affecting the design of a TTC: development and policy implications; safety, security and political concerns; environmental protection; financing and investment; soft infrastructure; hard infrastructure; geography and landscape; and corridor performance.

This paper has a limited geographical scope of the Northeast Asia. Therefore, more primary data collection would be useful in future work. Development of International trade corridor and TTC is critical in northeast Asia for moving goods through designated geographical paths. The key factors drawn in this paper contributes not only to promoting its related services and information (across borders) with the provision of policy support and related facilities for TTC but also to lowering logistics costs and improving trades in the northeast Asian region. As a result, the countries in the region will accelerate their regional economies in collaboration with international bodies and framework, such as UNDP, Greater Tumen Initiative and One Belt One Road Initiative.

The eight underlying factors the authors identified in this research will be valuable for policy-makers to design TTCs and consequently the research will contribute to regional economies in northeast Asia by establishing efficient trade and transport routes among the countries in the region.

Developing TTCs is a kind of platform and infrastructure to accelerate cargo movements and people movements in the northeast Asia. Users of TTCs will benefit their businesses thanks to an efficient logistics system and lower logistics costs, which result in promoting international and regional trade in the region.

There has not been any research done on factors to consider in developing TTCs in the world, whose consequence is no readily available reference that can support a systematic assessment and decision-making in development of TTCs. The findings of this research provide a helpful reference for policy-makers, potential users and developers of TTCs to refer in planning and developing them.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze maritime logistics connectivity of ports and shipping networks in the East Sea Economic Rim (ESER) to promote international trade in the context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), considering centrality, primary flow and clustering interaction.

The paper applies a complex network model, using a big data system consisting of an automated identification system, electronic data interchange and distributive and complex data. Three perspectives, including connectivity in trading ports and regions, centralities in the realm of complex network and potential marketing and regional impacts, and sixteen criteria are considered for this analysis. A visual approach has been also applied to highlight port connectivity and ship flows for the reader’s convenience.

The paper shows that port connectivity and maritime logistics are enablers to promote Korean international trade in Northeast China through the ESER, and 25 major ports are well connected to promote international trade in the region with visual data of ship flows by ship type and by flag.

Owing to the lack of port management information systems among the countries in the ESER except Korea and Japan, this paper could not capture cargo types and amounts on board. Port connectivity analysis shows links of the ports in the ESER to major ports in southeast Asia along the Twenty-first Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR). These results contribute to drawing policy implications to promote the ESER and provide suggestions for promoting Korean international trade by enhancing maritime logistics connectivity.

Unlike the existing literature showing descriptive and policy-oriented research related to ESER, this paper applied a vigorous method with a big amount of data to analyze port connectivity and ship flows in the ESER, considering China’s BRI affecting the global supply chain system, maritime transportation, and logistics. In addition, the paper shows how the seaports in the ESER are connected along the MSR.

The purpose of this paper is to test the 5GP concept with measurement of the performance of Busan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai ports, employing a hybrid method of consistent fuzzy preference relation (CFPR), VIsekriterijumska Optimizacija i KOmpromisno Resenje (VIKOR) and PROMETHEE.

The authors developed the concept of the fifth generation ports (5GPs), and apply CFPR, VIKOR and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) to evaluate the 5GPs.

The performance of the ports of Hong Kong and Singapore is close to meet the definition of 5GP criteria. On the contrary, ports of Busan and Shanghai are still behind the 5GP stage in light of the majority of the evaluation criteria’s performance.

This paper studies four ports. More empirical tests are needed to verify the applicability of the 5GP concept toward other ports.

The findings provided port managers with the insight of how to improve their port to meet the criteria of 5GP.

New criteria and higher expectations of existing requirements present challenges to port managers for a need to raise the bar of service standards and develop new competencies.

The authors developed the concept of the 5GPs. Newly developed 5GP contributes to expanding the concepts of first to fourth generation ports developed by UNCTAD.

This study aims to evaluate cargo and eco-efficiency of global container shipping companies (CSCs) and explore the determinants of the CSCs' efficiencies. While the former is derived from the CSCs' operational perspective, the latter highlights environmental issue related to carbon emission reduction.

In the first stage, a two-stage double bootstrap approach of data envelopment analysis (DEA) is applied to derive bias-corrected cargo and eco-efficiency of the top ten global CSCs under the variable returns to scale assumption. In the second stage, ordinary least squares and truncated regression are applied to examine determinants of the CSCs' efficiencies.

The DEA results reveal that the cargo efficiency of the CSCs is higher than their eco-efficiency by about 2.6% under variable returns to scale in DEA. However, the bias-corrected results show that the difference is 2.9%. The overall average efficiencies suggest that the CSCs can improve their cargo (eco) efficiency by 6.9% (10.8%). In the second stage, the regression results show that the numbers of ship, return on assets and asset turnover ratio are significantly related to both cargo and eco-efficiencies, whereas the total fleet capacity positively affects cargo efficiency.

The results of this study can help the inefficient CSCs make strategic decisions to improve their performance. For example, their business experience and capacity may be contributing to their efficiencies. However, this study only focuses on the container market among the three main markets, namely, dry bulk, wet bulk and container.

This study highlights an environmental issue in the shipping industry. While CSCs are operating their cargo efficiently in general, they should also put green initiatives into their business operations for the long-term sustainability.

This paper presents an overview of the recent development of Eurasian rail freight in the Belt and Road era and further evaluates its service quality in terms of transit times and transport costs compared to other transport modes in containerised supply chains between Europe and China.

A trade-off model of transit time and transport costs based on quantitative data from primary and secondary sources is developed to demonstrate the market niche for Eurasian rail freight vis-a-vis the more established modes of transport of sea, air and sea/air. In a scenario analysis, further cargo attributes influencing modal choice are employed to show for which cargo type Eurasian rail freight service is favourable from a shipper's point of view.

At present, Eurasian rail freight is about 80% less expensive than air freight with only half of the transit time of conventional sea freight. Our scenario analysis further suggests that for shipping time-sensitive goods with lower cargo value ranging from $US1.23/kg to $US10.89/kg as well as goods with lower time sensitivity and higher value in a range of $US2.46/kg to $US21.78/kg, total logistics costs of Eurasian rail freight service rail is cheaper than all other modes of transport.

As an emerging competitive solution, Eurasian rail freight demonstrates to be an option beneficial in terms of transport cost, transit time, reliability and service availability, which offers a cost-efficient option enabling shippers to build up agile and more sustainable supply chains between China and Europe.

Our study firstly provides a comprehensive assessment of present Eurasian rail freight including a thorough comparison with alternative modes of transport from a shipper's point of view.

Belt and road initiative (BRI) is a transcontinental endeavor strategically connecting supply chains (SCs) and economic infrastructures to ignite business activities and achieve trade benefits. However, the rising global SC failure costs and risks associated with this initiative (owing to unique geopolitical, economic and mega-connectivity involving over 70 countries) necessitate examining BRI SC risks. Yet, research on the subject remains limited, and the purpose of this paper is to address this gap in knowledge.

A two-pronged approach was taken. First, a data sample of 554 articles was analyzed and 178 articles found relevant were used to present a systematic, structured framework of risk factors along operational, economic, financial, social and security dimensions. Then informed by the theory of risk management and supplemented by literature evidence, we have built a BRI SC risk model.

The results presented through the model show that BRI SCs face a combination of risks triggered by operational processes, informational and environmental (PIE) deficiencies. Findings show that lack of risk and liability management, unbalanced risk-sharing partnerships, lack of transparency, inadequate project evaluation, incompatible corporate governance structures and cyber security all pose threats to BRI SCs specifically and SCs in general.

Academically, the results facilitate theory development by identifying and proposing seven risk factors and modeling relationship among them and BRI SC risks outcome. The results also extend application of theory of risk management to SC context.

The findings provide a decision-making tool for managers to assess risk factors in their SCs, thus enabling improved decision making to avoid, mitigate, transfer or accept risks.

Identifies and proposes a set of seven risk factors that drive BRI SC risks. Develops a model of BRI SC risks which help build theory of SC risk management.

This paper's purpose is to suggest that manufacturers strategically place soft orders for assembly materials with suppliers in Silk Road Economic Belt countries who probably doubt the realization of the soft orders placed.

First, a two-stage Stackelberg competition is constructed, taking into account the supplier's trust level in formulating the decision process in the assembly supply chain. The authors then provide a buyback contract to coordinate the supply chain, in which the manufacturer obtains enough supplies by sharing some of the perceived risks of not fully trusted suppliers. Furthermore, the authors conduct a numerical study to investigate the influence of trust under a decentralized case and a buyback contract.

The authors found that all supply chain partners in Silk Road Economic Belt countries experience potential losses due to not fully trusting certain conditions. The study also shows that, in Silk Road Economic Belt countries, operating under a buyback contract is better than being without one in terms of assembly supply chain performance.

On the one hand, the authors only consider the asymmetry of demand information without considering that of cost structure information. On the other hand, a natural extension of the paper is to integrate single-period transactions into the multi-period transaction problem setting. As all these issues require substantial effort, the authors reserve them for future exploration.

Doing business with not-fully-trustworthy partners in Silk Road Economic Belt countries is risky, and this study reveals how trust works in global cooperation and with strategic reactions in situations of partial trust.

The negative consequences of corruption for a country's development have been identified in Chapter 1. Corruption is ubiquitous and is found in “all political systems, at every level of government, and in the delivery of all scarce public goods and services” (Caiden, 1988, p. 6). Corruption is a universal problem, and governments all over the world have introduced measures to tackle this “social pandemic” which has “many faces” and is “the most challenging obstacle to economic development” (Campos & Bhargava, 2007, pp. 1–2).

The service sector is at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialization similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the eighteenth century. Robotics in combination with rapidly improving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, cloud, big data and biometrics will bring opportunities for a wide range of innovations that have the potential to dramatically change service industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role service robots will play in the future and to advance a research agenda for service researchers.

This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, robotics and AI literature.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it provides a definition of service robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts their features and capabilities with those of frontline employees, and provides an understanding for which types of service tasks robots will dominate and where humans will dominate. Second, this paper examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to service robots, and advances the service robot acceptance model. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered services at the individual, market and societal level.

This paper helps service organizations and their management, service robot innovators, programmers and developers, and policymakers better understand the implications of a ubiquitous deployment of service robots.

This is the first conceptual paper that systematically examines key dimensions of robot-delivered frontline service and explores how these will differ in the future.