Essay About Economics Of The University Of Antwerp And Regional Economics

A Strategy Serving Global Production Networks
ABSTRACT
Container shipping lines are well aware of the growing importance of global
production networks. While continuing to focus on improving the fundamentals, many shipping
lines have developed a keen interest in other segments of the logistics and transportation market to
offer integrated and worldwide services to global production networks. This paper aims to assess
the overall level of freight integration in thirty-four shipping lines, and provides an insight into the
extent to which freight integration serves as a business model in liner shipping. The results point
to a great variety and range of freight integration in the shipping business. Each carrier leverages
its service portfolio to develop specific capabilities. There is clearly no single best strategy for the
whole liner shipping industry to serve global production networks.
Introduction
Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are the key drivers of globalisation as they rely on
global sourcing and manage extensive network activities while developing longterm
relationships with a limited number of logistics suppliers. Global sourcing enables
MNEs to benefit from differences in the cost and quality of the production factors between
regions in the world. Global outsourcing has become a major driver of world trade and
contributed to the emergence of global production networks. The latter development would
not have been possible without the reduction of legal obstacles to trade. Economic integration
goes on a par with the level of political integration with initiatives such as North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European Union Single Market at the
regional level and, at the global level, is supported by the continuing evolution of World
Trade Organization (WTO).
Theo Notteboom is an associate professor in the Institute of Transport and Maritime Management
Antwerp (ITMMA) and the Department of Transport and Regional Economics, Faculty of Applied
Economics of the University of Antwerp in Belgium. His email address is [email protected].
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