Competition and Co-operation in Maritime Logistics Operations

This chapter aims to examine environmental challenges that maritime logistics operators have recently faced with, and to investigate strategic ways that maritime logistics operators can effectively manage competition and co-operation with their rivals for better responding to those challenges and thus achieving their strategic goals, i.e. maximisation of maritime logistics value. In order to address the aforementioned issues, this chapter adopts social network embeddedness and knowledge management perspectives. Based on the literature, a theoretical framework is established to show the positive relationship between co-opetitive networks, knowledge acquisition and maritime logistics value. A comprehensive survey to existing literature reveals that a high level of co-operation in a co-opetitive network (i.e., high numbers of and strong relationships between maritime logistics operators) facilitates knowledge acquisition, and competition promotes the positive impact of co-operation on knowledge acquisition. The acquired knowledge helps to improve maritime logistics value. This outcome will certainly provide maritime operators with a strategic insight into the identification of determinants and/or sources for competitive advantage and greater organisational performance from inter-organisational coordination and knowledge-based perspectives.