Does size matter for port coopetition strategy? Concept, motivation and implication

Abstract

Coopetition is one of the emerging strategies for ports to react towards the rapidly changing market environment. Having this strategy in action, ports will simultaneously compete and cooperate to achieve commonly interesting goals among players involved. Several ports in the Hamburg–Le Havre range have already decided to use such coopetitive strategies. The literature, however, shows that there exist a number of case-specific motivations for having employed this strategy. The aim of this paper is to investigate the motivations for the ports of Flanders (Antwerp, Zeebrugge, Ghent and Ostend) to choose coopetition. These four Flemish ports recently agreed to collaborate after several years of negotiations. It was known that the large port of Antwerp was more reluctant to collaborate with the smaller ports: Zeebrugge, Ghent and Ostend. This fact does naturally lead us to consider whether the size of port is a factor having an impact on the coopetitive strategy. The current paper attempts to examine the possible impact of size difference on the motivations for ports to opt for coopetition, within a framework of coopetition motivations based on a literature review. From a qualitative analysis on the matter, the paper concludes that size is not an important factor for the motivations to establish coopetition since ports are mainly aimed at achieving a win–win situation. Other factors, such as similarities in the services offered and competition level, look more influential. Nevertheless, the size difference among the ports seems to have an impact on the choice of the type of coopetition and on the willingness of the ports to adopt this strategy. Finally, the paper indicates that it is beneficial for all the ports to investigate the use of coopetition as a way of expanding the network of logistics services.

Keywords:

• coopetition strategy
• motivation
• port size
• logistics
• Flanders

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the five officials from the four ports, despite being anonymous in this paper, for their valuable efforts and time towards our endless enquires and questions in the year 2013. It is our hope that their insights are fully embedded into the discussion made in the paper for the better world. The second author wishes to acknowledge that this work was supported by the Hongik University new faculty research support fund.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The 30 action points are listed in the FPA Agreement in 2013. Those 30 actions are enumerated under six headings – that is, ‘economic and commercial cooperation’, ‘collaboration concerning logistics’, ‘collaboration concerning policy themes’, ‘joint development of operational tools’, ‘joint approach of human capitals’ and ‘joint effort towards movement of awareness of port businesses’. Detailed list can be provided upon request.