Corporate responsibility and value creation in the port sector

Abstract

The paper reviews existing literature on corporate responsibility (CR) in the port sector and proposes a conceptual framework that brings together the CR drivers in port environmental strategies. The conceptual framework is derived from the existing literature and is based on institutional theory. The literature review is supported by a discussion on CR strategies in 10 major ports around the world. The paper argues that ports tend to replicate environmental strategies across regions and learn from each other, and that a competitive focus on logistics tends to strengthen the importance of CR and in particular of environmental performance in ports. For some ports CR has become an integral part of their value creation proposition mostly as a result of competitive pressure. Furthermore, the paper advances also a correspondence between the degree of port agility and the CR profile of the port. Managerial and policy implications are also discussed.

Keywords:

• port management
• institutional theory
• corporate responsibility
• green ports
• environmental management

Acknowledgements

Some of the ideas presented in this paper appeared in Acciaro (2013). The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Michele Acciaro http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0144-3033

Notes

1. I have opted in this paper to use Corporate Responsibility instead of Corporate Social responsibility, or Corporate Sustainability given the intrinsic importance of CR practices for port authorities as organisations with wider public impacts that not necessarily materialise in a socially driven or a particularly proactive attitude. For further details, see, for example, Van Marrewijk (2003) or Swanson and Zhang (2012).

2. This attitude is observed also in the container shipping industry (see Acciaro 2011) where, while on the one side CR practices are well established, on the other side they are perceived as adding costs and thus making offers less attractive to those shippers more sensitive to price differentials.