Managerial issues in the seaport supply chain. An exploratory literature review.

Abstract

Port competitiveness is a topic of great interest for both scholars and practitioners, due to its growing speculative and economic relevance. In theory, scholars are looking for a uniform conceptual framework to deal with port competitiveness which to date has not yet been clearly shaped.  The purpose of the paper in an attempt to fill such a gap is to conduct a systematic literature review on port competitiveness from a supply chain management perspective. More in detail, four categories in particular are investigated: stream of research; actors and services, flows and operations, strategy and value creation. Drawing on the findings from the research, a feasible proposal for the construction of a conceptual framework on port competitiveness is suggested.