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This paper aims to study the implication of the stochastic gross-profit-per-day objective on the ship profitability and the ship capacity and speed.

The paper has used the mathematical model and the solution methodology given by El Noshokaty, 2013, 2014, 2017a, 2017b, and SOS, 2019.

The paper finds that if the ship owner follows the rate concept and the cargo demand forecast, he can improve the profitability of his company and be able to select the proper capacities and speeds for the ships used.

The findings are not only useful for the shipping or other cargo transport companies but also for businesses like gas reservoir development, car assembly lines in the industry, cooperative farming and crop harvesting in agriculture, port cargo handling in trade and road paving in construction.

The contribution of this paper lies in notifying the ship owners of the possible profitability improvement and the consequences of building ships of larger capacities and slower speeds.

Conventionally, shipping companies have invested in large ships to achieve economies of scale. More recently, high speed ships have been proposed as a means of achieving timely service for customers and improving shipping performance. Yet another solution offered here is to boost the cargo handling speed at port allowing for a higher number of annual round trips. Both the cost efficiency and timeliness of shipping service can be improved. The economic trade‐offs between the investments in cargo handling and ship propulsion technologies are formally analysed by taking the round trip frequency as the key to performance. The theoretical analyses as well as the practical cases studied indicate that investments in cargo handling technology, such as automation of container terminal operations and hatchless self‐loading ships, have indeed considerable profit‐making potential for shipping companies. Other technology investment opportunities appear less promising: ship propulsion due to energy consumption and environmental concerns; and larger ships due to low customer responsiveness and risks of low capital productivity.

This paper aims to highlight the importance and need to include carbon emissions from international transport in the sourcing decisions of corporate organizations and the calculation of national emissions inventories (NEIs).

The paper proposes a method of attributing emissions from international transportation in global supply chains and calculating their impact on the economic sustainability of corporate organizations through a carbon price.

An application of the original model developed in this paper showed that international transport emissions can have an important effect on NEIs. An example of the imports of manufactured items from China and Germany to the USA showed a 3 per cent increase in emissions from manufacturing activities in the USA.

Introducing carbon pricing on international transport emissions is expected to motivate corporate leaders to include emissions from international transport as a factor in their sourcing decisions.

Inclusion of international transport emissions along with the imposition of a carbon tax are designed to act as disincentives to generating emissions from supply chain activities. It is argued that the implementation of the model may provide long-term benefits associated with reduced emissions and a level playing field to organizations which use efficient technologies in manufacturing.

It is recognized that the implementation of a carbon tax on international transport emissions may face resistance from several stakeholders, including governments of exporting countries, corporations and customers, due to an increase in cost.

This paper provides an original method to include emissions from international transport in supply chain decisions.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the profitability of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as a shipping lane from the financial perspective of shipping companies under post 2020 sulphur regulations.

This study develops profit estimation model, and the profitability of the NSR is assessed for a Handymax Medium Range (MR) tanker vessel using scenarios in combination with spot market earning levels, the regulation compliance method and destination ports. The required freight rates are calculated to justify the decision of shipowners to transit a tanker from the Baltic spot market to the NSR navigation.

Results suggest that the required freight rates from the Arctic trade to justify the transit to the NSR are higher than the actual agreed rates in the past, which implies low viability of the NSR as a regular shipping lane. It was also found that the required freight rates are affected by the spot market earning levels, compliance method and duration of the voyage.

This study takes a new approach on assessing the NSR viability by comprehensively assessing the annual profitability and including the spot market trade as an opportunity cost for the NSR shipping. Despite various scenarios used in this study, a sensitivity analysis would be useful for future research.

This study suggests how much freight rates a shipping company would need to charge if it were to offer tanker shipping services to four major Asian ports while simultaneously operating at the Baltic Sea during the remainder of the year.

This study adopts a market-oriented approach by incorporating both earnings and costs (including opportunity costs) in the profitability model rather than merely analyzing the total cost of shipping via the NSR. This study also analyzes impact of IMO 2020 Sulphur regulation on the NSR profitability.

This paper aims to explore the effect of interlocking directorates on agency conflicts and corporate performance in the shipping industry.

The authors use social network analysis to discover central nodes in the network of personal and corporate connections in an international sample of 110 listed shipping companies.

Assessing network structure, the authors find that the network of corporate leaders is denser than the network of shipping companies. The network of shipping companies is populated with many isolated nodes; the network of shipping executives and directors is populated with many cohesive groups in which the longest distance between two corporate leaders is two companies. The authors find that interlocking corporate leadership can help resolve agency conflicts in the shipping industry, bearing a negative effect on the magnitude of agency costs. The extent of leadership overlaps is associated with board size, financial leverage and profitability. The relationship between profits and interlocks is bidirectional, implying that interlocking directorates bear a positive effect on asset returns.

The authors map the relational structures in the social networks of companies and company leaders in the shipping industry and discover the cross-sectional determinants of interlocks in the shipping industry. The finding about the effect of interlocks on profitability and agency costs bears policy implications for the design of corporate governance in the shipping industry.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new method for life‐cycle costing (LCC) called activity‐based LCC by employing the comprehensive activity‐based life‐cycle assessment method. A real‐life case study of a platform supply vessel operating in the North Sea is utilized to present the method, illustrate an implementation, including results, and discuss the benefits. Furthermore, due to the inherent uncertainty in LCC, handling of uncertainty is emphasized. A crucial side‐effect of handling uncertainty by employing Monte Carlo simulations – as activity‐based LCA prescribes – is the greatly enhanced tracing of critical success factors. Such tracing enables the shipowners to increase long‐term profitability by focusing on what is critical to their success. Also, a design option of using heavy fuel oil versus marine gas oil is investigated.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influences of total quality management (TQM) and supply chain integration (SCI) practices on firm performance (FP) of container shipping industry in Singapore.

A survey was conducted with 159 container shipping companies in Singapore to examine the interrelationships between SCI and TQM practices and FP. A stepwise multiple regression analysis using SPSS version 14.0 was performed on the data.

Statistical results suggest that both TQM and SCI practices have positive effects on service quality and FP but at different extents, while TQM also contributes positively to SCI.

The small sample is the main limitation. The findings bear important implications for further research as understanding these dimensions can help to position key changes and industry improvement that will increase revenue and reduce cost to the container shipping companies in Singapore.

This research provides guidelines for shipping managers on how to implement the SCI and TQM practices appropriately to boost their FP to the fullest extent.

This study has unique implications for social sustainability especially the container shipping industry, which is hard pressed to combat the challenges within the logistics/transportation sector.

This is perhaps the first study that examines the influence of SCI and TQM practices on the performance of container shipping firms that helps them see beyond the silo mentality and focus on greater value addition in FP.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and clarify “irrationality” problem through the maritime industry practices and leading incentives behind common investors.

This paper includes a review of broader business and economics literature; review of shipping business practices and detection of institutional pathways and misleading mechanisms behind the irrational preferences; investigation of data (for some arguments); and introduction of a theoretical approach.

There are several industry practices and norms well established and followed by decision makers, which may cause and initiate illogical and irrational (long-run) preferences. Short-termism is an erroneous habit of common shipping investors, which is embedded and forced through traditional financial math (i.e. discounted cash flow), financial system (e.g. initial public offerings with high-frequency transactions, interest rate governance and asset valuation mechanism) or flawed contracting tradition (i.e. commission bias).

Both shipping business and financial institutions need to redesign their working mechanisms, evaluation systems, risk detection and assessment procedures. As discussed in Section 4.7, commission-based (float) services must be converted to regular flat rate payments with long-term contracts to protect investors from rational choices of intermediaries in the short-run which encourages investor’s irrationality. Having a long-term service contract will also improve sustainability of intermediaries and lower their business risk (win-win).

The impact of this paper is two-fold. First, it raises critical questions about professional decay and drawbacks of some traditional instruments in the shipping business. For the first time, this paper emphasises on various challenges which deteriorate credibility of the industry and causes ill-defined investments. Some arguments have extreme priority for strengthening the foundations of the industry. Second, this paper establishes a new stream of scholarly research highlighting weaknesses of conventional economic approach and demand for outsourcing other schools of economics (e.g. institutional and behavioural) into the shipping business.

The globalization of market and production activities with unequal distribution of market demand and resources has accelerated the demand for shipping services. Public concerns about environmental issues and the impacts of shipping service providers’ green shipping practices (GSPs) on the reputation and performance of multinational companies (MNCs) motivated the authors to test the impact of shipping companies’ GSPs on MNCs’ loyalty by considering timeliness and perceived value as moderators. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The data were collected from 141 MNCs and analyzed using the partial least squares technique.

The results show that company policy and procedure, shipping documentation, shipping equipment and shipping materials have significant effects on MNCs’ loyalty. Furthermore, timeliness positively moderates the impacts of shipping materials and shipping design on compliance, while perceived value positively moderates the effects of shipping equipment and shipping design for compliance on MNCs’ loyalty.

The results provide insight for shipping service providers on GSPs that may lead to MNCs’ loyalty by considering the roles of lead time and freight rate.

The results extend the literature by testing empirically the impacts of GSP of shipping companies on MNCs’ loyalty and also by investigating the moderating impacts of perceived value and timeliness.

Short-sea shipping (SSS) plays an important role in regional transportation networks by supporting regional trade and improving inter-modality. In particular, countries in north-east Asia, such as China, South Korea and Japan have been served well by local SSS services. While SSS markets in Northeast Asia (NEA) have been developed by bilateral routes with sub-markets, the market structure of each sub-markets varies depending on concentration and competition levels as well as government intervention. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the market structure of SSS markets in the Northeast Asia.

Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and concentration ratio are adopted to measure the market concentration from 2013 to 2017 for SSS markets in NEA. Additionally, the balance between supply and demand is investigated by measuring the capacity utilisation factor (CUF) based on slot capacity.

The market structure in the NEA SSS markets is influenced by firms’ behaviour under different levels of governmental intervention. Shipping firms in a market with more governmental intervention in market entry tend to focus on balancing supply and demand rather than increasing market share, whereas firms in a market with less intervention (and more competition) tend to increase their market share by pursuing efficient capacity management.

The period of data set is limited to 2013–2017. Furthermore, prices or revenue for specific routes are not available.

This paper sheds light on the market structure and behaviour of players in SSS market. In addition, the work has value to measure capacity utilisation based on slot capacity.