European maritime industries are often fragmented, not only geographically, but also in terms of sectors and company size. This book states that, in order to face the increasing global competition, Europe should address these constraints and create a more integrated network and market of the European maritime sectors, industries and entrepreneurs.

Based on consultation of stakeholders, an integrated maritime policy for the European Union is outlined in this booklet.--Publisher's description.

Over the last decade the concept of clustering has become a central idea for analyzing the competitiveness of nations, industries and firms. This book shows how the cluster concept can be usefully applied to the study of maritime activities. Such activities, including shipping, shipbuilding and port and maritime services, are clearly geographically concentrated in a number of maritime clusters. However, as the author shows, these are having to compete with other uses of the coasts and oceans including capture fisheries, marine aquaculture, offshore energy and tourism. Sound governance and planning is therefore required to manage the competing claims for ocean space. The book shows how competing industries and other stakeholders can cooperate and benefit from an integrated approach to the development of maritime clusters. The contribution of approaches such as integrated coastal zone management and innovations such as ocean business councils, as well as coordinated networks of maritime clusters are reviewed. Case studies are included from around the world, including detailed examples of the development of the Nelson Mandela Bay Maritime Cluster in South Africa and from Poland in the Baltic Sea.

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2,3, Hamburg School of Business Administration gGmbH (Maritime School), language: English, abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the differences and similarities among shipping firms in the German and the Greek maritime clusters. In this context, market, financial, organizational, human resources and management related issues are identified and discussed. The two major European players in the global shipping market, namely the German and the Greek shipping firms, are currently facing several enormous challenges. The impact of global economic downturn, the crisis in the main shipping sectors and the changes in the pattern of world trade all profoundly affect the maritime transport industry (De Monie, Rodrigue und Notteboom 2011). However the Greek shipping companies seem to manage their businesses in the crisis more successfully than their German competitors. Therefore a report on the differences and similarities among shipping firms in the German and the Greek maritime clusters is of high interest. Even though both players focus on different segments in the maritime markets, that have different rules and conditions, the main parameters and aspects of their businesses will be compared. The focus of this report lies on market, financial, organizational, management and human resources related issues. Since these issues mainly touch strategic management decisions, this report will not go to deeply into the operational aspects of the businesses such as using Key Performance Indicators (KPI ́s) or other methods and applications that would serve these types of issues. The use of KPI ́s would also demand the same source of their collection to have an objective analysis, but since both players operate on different markets, only a small proportion of their KPI ́s would be comparable. Furthermore this paper will focus purely on companies that operate ships. Hence, ports, hinterland-logistics, education- or administration-facilities belonging to the maritime cluster will not be taken into account. After the German and Greek shipping firms have been compared, the report will highlight aspects that differentiate the particular maritime clusters and conclude with similar short prospects both players likely will face in the future.

This book belongs to the Port Economics and Global Supply Chain Management strand of the Palgrave Studies in Maritime Economics book series, commissioned by Hercules Haralambides. This book addresses the strategic alignment between port authorities and their supply chain partners, with a focus on governance challenges. Many port (authority) managers are engaged in efforts to improve their strategic alignment with business partners in their proximate geographic region, yet the economic objectives pursued can vary widely. These objectives can include improvements in port competitiveness and stability of traffic flows, as well as better access to scarce resources such as land and capital, or simply more control over the logistics chain. Using various Benelux seaports as case studies, the authors of this volume show that improving strategic alignment can involve a wide variety of different governance choices, ranging from top-down to bottom-up alliance formation, from project-driven to multi-activity collaboration, and from long-term contracting to full-fledged mergers. This book with state-of-the-art insight on modern port governance will be of interest to port managers around the globe, as well as to lecturers and students in maritime educational programs. Chapter 4 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.