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This paper investigates the integration of leadership training into IT curricula to develop current and future skills needed by the IT job market. The technical and non-technical skills required for IT professionals are presented and a conceptual model for including leadership training in technical courses is outlined. To implement this model, we adopted the Problem-Based Learning approach to teach an IT course. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered, through a survey, from 52 undergraduate students in the College of Information Technology at Zayed University. Our results show that our adopted approach was successful in teaching IT skills as well as developing leadership skills. Given these findings, we highlight the importance and feasibility of integrating leadership development on a daily basis within technical courses to develop both the technical and non technical skills required by the job market.

In the single-cargo market, the ordinary market share analysis method has been the representative tool for revealed competitiveness analysis. This paper develops and employs an applied market share index called the additive market share (AMS). Data are collected from 8 major ports for the 2001-2013 period. In comparison to the results of an ordinary market share analysis, there has been some fluctuation of the role of the Port of Singapore as the regional hub port though it still maintain its position. There are substitutable relationships between Singapore and the Malaysian ports in Malacca Strait. In Malacca Strait, Port Klang still leads the market in spite of the construction of PTP.

Port competition attracted much scholarly attention in Northwest Europe during the 1980s. Following the rise of powerful economies in East Asia, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s, port competition has become an important phenomenon with the top five container ports in the world being located in the region. This paper aims to overview major port competition issues and outlines and analyzes the main alternative methodologies that researchers have employed to address them, referring to 70 items, mostly papers but including a few books and reports

In the USA, the cruise industry has generated more than $42bn in total economic activities, involving over 356,000 jobs. The largest and most aggressive operator is acknowledged as Carnival Cruise Line (CCL), with a 48.3 per cent market share including all subsidiary companies in 2013. CCL has had a strong track record of reliability and high quality; however, within the past decade, there have been several deviations from standard daily procedure that have altered the way CCL does business. When trying to interpret changes in company performance, it is important to include other factors that may have contributed to changes at the time of any given deviation.

The authors use time series empirical mode decomposition to visualize whether there are short- or long-term shocks to company performance in the wake of deviating events. Besides, a thorough analysis is carried out with multivariable linear regression to identify the factors that really impact CCL’s performance.

This case study shows the seasonal patterns of weather issues with the largest number of hurricanes and tropical storms taking place during the third quarter of each year.

Empirical results will enhance understanding of the industry with regard to such events. It will provide shareholders information and opinions to enhance their decision-making processes.

In the shipping industry, both sales and purchases of second-hand ships and freight transport services are prevalently tailormade and traded with intense bilateral negotiations. Price bargaining is the key step of this negotiation process and plays a crucial role in determining mutually agreed prices. Despite its cruciality and applicability, the price bargaining has yet received due conceptual and/or theoretical attention in the shipping literature. This paper attempts to conceptually examine the role of bargaining in shipping transaction prices and subsequently puts forward directions for future research. In doing so, the paper focuses on two types of transactions taking place in shipping markets: asset market trading of second-hand vessels and service market trading shipping freights.

The paper begins with a systematic literature review of price bargaining in the field of economics and management disciplines from a game-theoretic perspective. This approach does logically lead to the establishment of a conceptual framework for price bargaining in shipping sub-markets as a step toward having taken into consideration a variety of heterogeneities commonly present in trading activities and market dynamics.

A set of research areas has been consequently identified where price bargaining and mechanisms for the shipping freight and asset markets could be further explored and analyzed in a way to make better pricing decisions under a more tangible framework.

One of the critical challenges when using bargaining mechanisms to make a decision on pricing shipping services and assets is how to operationalize the study for empirical investigation as some of the factors are internal information of the players and are not adequately revealed to externals: that is, an imperfect information sharing case. The current study aims, however, not to conduct an empirical analysis but to initiate a conversation among maritime economists by bringing their attention to this not-yet fully explored and potentially impactful field of research and by asking them to treat bargaining from a perspective for pricing shipping assets and services. It is claimed that, by doing so, one could better understand price differences between individual contracts.

This study would be considered the first of its kind to provide a detailed survey of the bargaining theory and models from a game theoretical perspective as a theoretical lens to understand its importance and relevance in pricing shipping assets and services. It also provides a simplified operational case on utilizing bargaining in practically pricing freight services.