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This paper aims to investigate the location of regional and international hub ports in liner shipping by proposing a hierarchical hub location problem.

This paper develops a mixed-integer linear programming model for the authors’ proposed problem. Numerical experiments based on a realistic Asia-Europe-Oceania liner shipping network are carried out to account for the effectiveness of this model.

The results show that one international hub port (i.e. Rotterdam) and one regional hub port (i.e. Zeebrugge) are opened in Europe. Two international hub ports (i.e. Sokhna and Salalah) are located in Western Asia, where no regional hub port is established. One international hub port (i.e. Colombo) and one regional hub port (i.e. Cochin) are opened in Southern Asia. One international hub port (i.e. Singapore) and one regional hub port (i.e. Jakarta) are opened in Southeastern Asia and Australia. Three international hub ports (i.e. Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama) and two regional hub ports (i.e. Qingdao and Kwangyang) are opened in Eastern Asia.

This paper proposes a hierarchical hub location problem, in which the authors distinguish between regional and international hub ports in liner shipping. Moreover, scale economies in ship size are considered. Furthermore, the proposed problem introduces the main ports.

This study explores the best strategies for regional economic development to attract highly skilled populations, regardless of whether the region is a multisector or unisector economic hub. It also determines the development variables affecting the success of integrated regional economic hubs to achieve spatial equality, enhance economic productivity and attain environmental sustainability.

In addition to a qualitative analysis, this study employed quantitative techniques using SPSS software. This allowed amplification of the most significant explanatory variables affecting the weaknesses and strengths of economic hubs.

The results highlight approaches that can be used to achieve socio-economic sustainability in regional hubs. These include multisectors or main centralised hubs (smart economic regional capital), which provide new services to regions and act as a unidevelopment sector or as a regional, economic capital.

The study analyses the effect of economic strategies and integration of natural resources and the required core services in regional economic development.

Case studies of successful economic hubs are discussed. The most important services proposed in such hubs promote human development and increase the standard of living.

Integration between the hubs in a region is fundamental to attracting direct investments that can benefit the local population.

The results could help governments, economists and planners implement multisector developmental hubs to achieve sustainable development.

The Korean Government wishes to transform the nation into a Northeast Asian business hub. Following economic crisis, there are attempts to move the economy towards a new market‐oriented paradigm of economic growth based on foreign direct investment (FDI) and market friendly transparent corporate governance, replacing the old model of the developmental state, involving intimate and opaque business‐government relations, which has dominated Korean policy for at least three decades. This paper presents findings from 37 interviews conducted with senior executives of foreign companies and various chambers of commerce in Korea. The paper offers new insights into the critical and often invisible issues which need to be confronted and successfully resolved for the transformation of Korea. In providing a critical analysis, the paper examines alternative interpretations of the hub concept, key advantages offered by Korea, the main barriers to becoming a hub, competition from other locations and draws lessons for government policy makers.

The Incheon Region has numerous assets that fall within a Pentaport model.' These include the Incheon International Airport, the Port of Incheon, a coastal industrial park, free economic zones, a leisure port, and Songdo new town designed to be the future Silicon Valley of Korea. This paper looks at how Northeast Asia trade flows between China and Korea might be enhanced by application of the Pentaport model in making the Incheon region a North East Asian Hub. It looks also at their trade and logistics systems as well as their water borne commerce. It proposes an integrated transportation system for the Yellow Sea Region being beneficial to the economies of the Northeast Asia. It also stresses that innovative technologies for ships, terminals and cargo handling systems should be introduced to develop a competitive short sea shipping system in the region and cooperation among the regional countries will be essential to achieve the final goal. The potential of methods of container shipping is discussed as it might apply to short sea shipping in the Yellow Sea Region that could greatly facilitate Incheon's situation with respect to the broader region in application of the Pentaport model.

Air cargo was traditionally considered as a by-product of passenger air transport. However, in the last decade a defined strategy for air cargo has gained a key position in the strategies of most combination airlines, contributing largely to the cash and profit levels of these airlines. The global air cargo industry is nowadays a mature industry with over 60 billion USD in direct revenues. The strategic context is, therefore, far beyond the basic entrepreneurial framework in which an emerging and young industry tends to operate. This chapter aims to gain an enhanced insight into the strategies of airlines that transport cargo, either in the bellies of passenger aircraft or in full-freighter aircraft. A Cluster Analysis generates a typology of seven representative clusters of air cargo operators’ strategy models. The typology proposes a spectrum of strategies for air cargo, ranging from the cluster group “Carpet Sellers” up to the “Cargo Stars” cluster. While the former tend to be the small airlines or all-cargo carriers which barely manage to cover their costs with their revenues, the latter are profitable, very large globally operating airlines that focus on both passengers and cargo with passenger and freighter aircraft. Within this spectrum there are five other main strategy groups: the “Basic Cargo Operators,” the “Strong Regionals,” the “Low Cost Low Yielder,” the “Large Passenger Wide-body Operators,” and the “Premium Cargo Operators.” Our findings suggest the existence of superior strategy models that could be defined as “winning strategies” that differ according to airline size.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on peripheral ports, hub ports and concentration – deconcentration factors. This is an issue, as investments in port development in more peripheral locations are challenging due to the difficult financial situation currently faced by the maritime industry.

This paper presents a narrative literature review focusing on peripherality in the context of seaports and transport. Moreover, it gathers the reasons why ports concentrate–deconcentrate, and how these factors evolve over time.

This paper develops a future research agenda for peripheral ports.

The paper provides insights for ports in developing countries in their efforts to upgrade their port facilities and infrastructure.

This paper contributes to the research on ports in peripheral locations which have been under studied compared to larger hub ports.

This chapter provides case illustrations at the sub-regional creative hubs from East to West, and North to South Africa. Starting off with a broad overview of creative hubs – notably African Tech Hubs, and how they have been at the forefront of culture and innovation on the continent, the chapter moves on to discuss a few examples from the Co-Creation Hub in Lagos Nigeria to the South African Cultural Observatory, Starplace Hub and Playable City Lagos. A Sectoral Journey in other Places & Spaces is also undertaken from the African Literature sub-sector to the Music and Fashion sub-sectors. Finally, a selection of Art Galleries and Cultural Centres such as The Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation and the Nike Center for Art and Culture and the Dak’Art Biennial, Dakar, Senegal are highlighted alongside the Kó Art Space, Lagos, Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to advance understanding of the context and essence of foreign investments in an intermediate‐level economy and to revitalize the discussion on the differentiated strategic roles of subsidiaries within the multinational enterprise (MNE) network.

A unique questionnaire‐based survey – including 112 usable responses – was carried out. The role of subsidiaries is categorized according to their market and value‐added scope. Pair‐wise analysis has identified six roles for foreign operations (local servers, advanced replicas, regional operators, regional hubs, global specialists, and world product mandates). Average responses, frequency distribution and statistical analysis have been used in order to identify the prevalence of each subsidiary type in Greece.

Findings indicate that foreign operations in the focal country have a rather market‐seeking rationale. However, a considerable percentage of MNEs aims at widening the functional scope of their subsidiaries through knowledge‐seeking investments. Subsidiaries in Greece seem to escape from an introverted focus on the local market through an intense export orientation towards EU countries and the Balkan region.

The core of the paper is to identify subsidiary roles in a country of EU “periphery.” One should be very cautious in generalizing the results for more advanced economies. Moreover, limited attention is ascribed to firm‐specific determinants (e.g. size, years of operation, country of headquarters (HQs) origin) of subsidiary roles, and other environmental (e.g. situational constraints) characteristics.

Governments in small countries should provide the incentives for creating an attractive environment for more qualitative investments. International managers should not ignore the potentials for advanced knowledge‐related competitiveness of small countries. Foreign operations should reorient their investment interests in countries within regional blocs, since they can benefit from agglomeration economies.

A new classification for subsidiary roles is proposed. There is currently limited evidence on the differentiated subsidiary roles in a small economy. The paper is believed to be the first to present a detailed analysis, for Greece, of the strategic bases for MNEs' expansion.

There is a strong academic and professional interest in the changing business model of LCCs in Europe. Recently, even Ryanair which is often considered a European LCC role model has departed from the point-to-point paradigm by offering transfers within its own network. We first provide a general overview of recent changes in the business model of airlines that used to be categorized as LCCs. We then add to existing studies on LCC network strategies toward building connections. While we distinguish different approaches to accommodate transfer passengers, our analysis focuses on mesh networks as an airline network topology other than hub-and-spoke networks to provide online connections. A schedule analysis of Ryanair’s direct and indirect services at its base at Porto airport exemplifies that a mesh network might allow LCCs to go beyond stand-alone operations to become network carriers without requiring a complete transition of the generic LCC business strategy.

The competitiveness of mining regions largely depends on the performance of the regional supply chains that provide services to mining companies. These local supply chains are often highly intertwined and represent a regional supply network for the industry. Individual companies often use supply chain strategies that are sub-optimal to overall supply network performance. To effectively respond to an uncertain business environment, policy-makers and supply chain participants would benefit by a governance framework that would allow to incentivise the formation of supply networks structures enabling effective operations. The purpose of this paper is to offer an empirically grounded conceptual framework based on Complex Adaptive Systems (CASs) governance principles, which links network governance mechanisms with supply network structure and operational performance to incentivise the formation of adaptive and resilient supply networks in the mining industry.

A mixed method research design and a case study of the South Australian mining sector were used to collect empirical data. Qualitative interviews and network analysis of the SA mining industry regional supply network structure were conducted. The relationships between network parameters were interpreted using CAS theory.

An empirically grounded conceptual framework based on CAS governance principles is developed. The case study revealed that supply chain strategies and governance mechanisms in the SA mining industry have led to the formation of a hierarchical, scale-free structure with insufficient horizontal connectivity which limits the adaptability, responsiveness and resilience of the regional supply network.

The findings are drawn from a single case study. This limits generalisability of the findings and the proposed framework.

The proposed framework draws the attention of the policy-makers and supply chain participants towards the need for utilising CAS governance principles to facilitate the formation of adaptive, responsive and resilient regional supply networks in the mining industry.

The proposed conceptual framework is an attempt to parameterise the governance of the regional supply networks in the mining industry.