Unpacking Resilience In the Maritime Industry: Shipping Companies and their Business Environment

Sammanfattning

The interest in resilience has increased both in academic publication but also in real-lifebusiness settings amongst transportation companies. Such interest can partly be explained bythe considerable increase of disruptive events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, certain tradepatterns, and geopolitical decisions, amongst others, all ultimately affecting transportationflows. Yet, there seems to be a lack of research on how resilience in the Swedish maritimecontainer network is being developed.This thesis aims to investigate how resilience is fostered amongst actors in the Swedishmaritime container freight sector, with a focus on how it is done through interconnectednessamongst the actors: shipper, freight forwarder, ocean carrier, and port. A qualitative approachhas been used, with semi-structured interviews with the four actors through a case study. Areview of literature was also conducted to form an analytical framework, with a focus on twomain pillars: the industrial network approach and resilience. The empirical results arepresented in the three categories of how each actor has dealt with past disruptions,preparations for future disruptions, and resilience work performed with other actors.The resilience measures undertaken by the actors are dependent on their position within thenetwork, with ocean carriers being the actors with the most prominent ability to increaseresilience, closely followed by the port, which is a point that all actors depend upon. Much ofthe ocean carrier's resilience measures lies in scanning the surrounding environment (both fornatural and manmade disruptions), but also engaging in collaboration and resource sharingwith other ocean carriers. The port focuses on creating response teams with experts fromdifferent areas to mitigate the effects of disruptions. The freight forwarders’ ability to affectan ongoing sea transportation is limited. Rather, their focus is on proactivity, informationsharing, and having several transportation options to present to the shipper in case ofdisruptions. The shipper may be the actor with the least ability to perform resilience measureswhen disruptions occur. Rather, the shipper may sign contracts with providers who offer ahigh service level, although the costs may be higher. Generally, the actors have little insightinto other actors’ resilience measures. Finally, the thesis presents some implications formanagers on how to increase resilience and implications for academia.