Improving port effectiveness through determinance/performance gap analysis

Abstract

Port managers, governments, and stakeholders bring different perspectives to the challenges of port management. One of the greatest of these challenges is identifying and prioritizing investments to take advantage of the opportunities for future growth and to meet the needs of customers and users seeking value in the supply chains served by the port. Importance–performance gap analysis, based on discrepancies between performance effectiveness and user expectations, has been illustrated to be one means of guiding these decisions while determinance scores offer another. However, user perceptions of satisfaction and effectiveness often lead to conflicting signals between these two methods when port managers seek to allocate resources for performance improvements. The authors develop a mapping process based on determinant/performance gap analysis to address conflicting signals between the methodologies for evaluating performance effectiveness and thereby assist port managers in making appropriate performance investment decisions that will address users’ requirements.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded with unencumbered, internal university research. Revisions to the initial paper were partially financed by the American Association of Port Authorities Port Customer Service Initiative through a research grant to Dalhousie University. The content is the responsibility of the authors alone.