تجزیه و تحلیل سبد سرمایه گذاری سبز پویا برای بنادر داخلی: تجزیه و تحلیل تجربی در غرب اروپا

This paper offers a dynamic green portfolio analysis of a range of European inland ports, based on an adapted model of the BCG-matrix and traffic volumes generated in the period 1999–2010. Based on the analysis, we draw conclusions on how the inland port strategies reflected in changing competitive positions have changed over time, as well as the drivers of economic and environmental performance. We differentiate between metropolitan supporting and industry supporting ports, because the relevant sample of ports to include in the analysis is crucial for a green port portfolio analysis for inland ports. The results show that there is no relationship between the economic and environmental performance on the individual inland port level. However, metropolitan supporting ports mostly show poorer economic and environmental performance in comparison to industry supporting ports, mainly due to their specific position within logistical chains and the absence of specific factor conditions. The paper provides recommendations for managers of both types of inland ports, and opens up an interesting research agenda to improve the use of the green port portfolio analysis tool as a basis to support port strategy.

Port activities have a considerable environmental impact not only at the local level but also on an entire region. Research on port regionalisation (Notteboom & Rodrigue, 2005) and various studies on the economic and social impacts of ports (Bryan et al., 2006, Chang et al., 2012, Ferrari et al., 2012 and Gripaios and Gripaios, 1995) indicate that the geographical distribution of the various impacts of port activities has become highly important for port management and policy and, particularly, for attracting public investment funds. The concept and implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) at the international business level has evolved in a relatively short period of time, together with an increasing need for organisations, especially ports, to comply with more and increasingly complex regulation, increasing pressure from stakeholders and decreasing government funding while safeguarding economic conditions and financial performance (Devinney, 2009, McWilliams and Siegel, 2001, Porter and Kramer, 2006 and Werther and Chandler, 2011). In addition, ports, as part of a network or supply chain, are considered responsible for a wider set of impacts and seek to reconcile short- and long-term views, private and public interests and commercial and social objectives. A large variety of stakeholders have entered the port business arena together with their several and sometimes diverging strategies to influence corporate behaviour; meanwhile, ports are constrained in their CSR policies by the ever-increasing need for economic performance, efficiency and supply chain integration. Overall, the nature of the port business is being challenged, thus encouraging the development of new value-creating objectives for ports and port operators. To remain highly competitive, ports should, together with their economic prerogatives, account for their ecological effects and pursue green strategies. Several instruments for supporting port strategy that allow the simultaneous inclusion of economic, social and green dimensions have already been developed (see, for example, Haezendonck, 2001, Haezendonck et al., 2006 and Lam and Notteboom, 2012). In particular, Haezendonck (2001) introduced a green port portfolio technique (or eco-portfolio) as part of strategic positioning analysis (SPA) for ports to help seaports think in terms of minimising the external costs they generate and to seek strategic alternatives where environmental actions are not potentially in conflict with economic prerogatives. This green port portfolio analysis uses available data on external costs of hinterland transport to and from the seaport for its green dimension and offers, in combination with cargo data, direct information for strategy formulation. The extension of Haezendonck (2001) to the earlier developed portfolio analysis (Henderson, 1979 and Verbeke et al., 1995) focussed on implementation issues such as the meaning of the quadrants for seaport positioning, the strategic value of the positions and the inclusion of new important parameters for port strategy. This approach resulted in positioning SPA as a useful component of a more comprehensive appraisal of port competitiveness. While SPA cannot itself explain which resources or competences contribute to observed competitive advantage, a dynamic or comparatively static SPA may provide insight into changing competitive advantages leading to changes in the positing of ports. Therefore, in Haezendonck (2001, 2006), it was suggested that to gain insights into the sustainability of an observed competitive position, SPA could be combined with an investigation of underlying port specific advantages and with a dynamic or at least comparatively static analysis to observe how positions of ports have changed due to strategic investment decisions. In this paper, we focus on the latter specifically for the purpose of inland port competitive analysis. From an empirical perspective, the green port portfolio analysis was earlier applied to a range of inland ports in Europe (Dooms and Haezendonck, 2004 and Haezendonck et al., 2006), albeit based on a limited dataset (1997–2001). This preliminary application raised some methodological issues in terms of its interpretation and relevance. For example, it was suggested that in addition to the type and functionality of a port, its ecological performance also depends largely on its position in its network and, more particularly, on the environmental interdependency between seaports and inland ports. The ecological performance of a seaport may indeed rely heavily on the presence of an inland waterway network, a dense railway network and/or dry ports in the immediate hinterland of the seaport. In addition, when considering the green port portfolio of seaports in relation to eco-portfolios of the inland ports to which they are connected through important flows, it could be argued that a trade-off could occur between the environmental friendliness of a seaport and its connected inland ports. In fact, if a seaport for example succeeds in extending the inland navigation link into its hinterland for specific traffic flows and as a result becomes ‘greener’ according to the green port portfolio analysis, it is likely that the inland port, in such cases often close to the final destination or market of the goods, relies heavily on post road haulage. The inland port then might become ‘dirtier’ according to a green port portfolio analysis. Given these issues, it was argued that it is more appropriate to benchmark separate networks of seaports and inland ports to draw conclusions on the real environmental competitive position of ports and to best exploit their possibilities of an environmentally friendly hinterland transport. This network or corridor approach is also suggested by the SuperGreen project, an on-going research project under the European Union’s 7th Framework Research Programme (http://www.supergreenproject.eu/). However, the analysis of environmental competitive positions at the network or cluster level of organisations is highly complex due to factors such as data asymmetries, potential trade-offs, a lack of information on cluster or network synergies. Therefore, although suggestions at the level of analysis (terminal, port, port network or cluster) for green port portfolio analysis have not been further developed, we choose to return to the application of the technique to ports or traffic units or specific categories within ports and substantially enlarge our dataset obtained from the initial range of inland ports in the previously mentioned analysis. Instead of a relatively static dataset covering only 5 years of traffic (1997–2001), we have enlarged the dataset encompassing 12 years of data (1999–2010), allowing the execution of a dynamic green portfolio analysis for inland ports over three periods of 4 years. As Haezendonck (2001) suggested, a “dynamic” or in fact comparatively static analysis adds substantially to green competitive positioning analysis or, collectively, green portfolio analysis because such an approach allows port managers, and by extension external stakeholders, to observe how ports succeed in migrating to other quadrants or potentially more favourable positions. This ability may be linked to strategic decisions or investments in different periods preceding the new positions and thus significantly increases the strategic support value of the analysis. In fact, in the context of the port industry, and given its infrastructure-related nature and the complex funding and stakeholder involvement, it may require more than 5 or sometimes even 10 years for strategic decisions or investments, such as new terminals, locks or even port energy or waste management programmes, to have their full effect in terms of an improved economically or environmentally competitive position. As a result, it may cost more time than in other industries or markets to alter or build port competitive advantages reflected in other positions in the port portfolio analysis. A 12-year period may well cover most impacts of strategic decisions, whereas shorter periods are less likely to do so. Although the value added in this paper is mainly of an applied nature, the paper also provides three more methodological or theoretical contributions. First, through the empirical applications, we demonstrate that inland port portfolio analysis reveals insightful information for strategic decision making in inland port management and that economic positions may change independently from ecological performance. Second, by enlarging the dataset, we are able to observe changing positions over a period where important strategic port investments were possible and port projects could be implemented or have their effect. More specifically, the performance of a hypothetical range of inland ports is put in the context of last decade's evolution, highlighted by the emergence of subharborisation (characterised by the increased delegation/relocation of logistics activities from seaport areas to inland locations; see Notteboom & Rodrigue, 2005) and the interest of both researchers and practitioners in the dry port concept (Cullinane et al., 2012, Padilha and Ng, 2012 and Veenstra et al., 2012). As a result, we find support that competitive advantages may have changed due to strategic decisions, leading to altered competitive positions, at least for some inland ports studied. Third, we suggest, based on our extended analysis, some methodological advances, such as the port network perspective and the inclusion of more ecological parameters in the green dimension, which would benefit future competitive analyses of ports. The paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we provide a literature review, discussing the main scientific insights on the functioning of sea- and inland port networks and the challenges they face from both an economic and environmental perspective. Section 3 discusses the methodology applied for the dynamic green portfolio analysis and the inland port environment within which the analysis was conducted. Section 4 presents the results and discussion of the analysis. 5 and 6 conclude the paper and provide managerial and practitioner-oriented conclusions, as well as directions for future research.

The application of dynamic green port portfolio analysis to inland ports has identified the potential for this strategic management tool to link the evolution of economic and environmental performance to the strategic plans and actions of the port authorities in the longer term as well as the contextual elements to be considered to appropriately and meaningfully benchmark the individual ports using the portfolio analysis technique. At the research level, we have identified a promising agenda with regard to the appropriate unit of analysis (individual ports versus networks), the measurement of environmental impacts, and the introduction of weighted performance parameters in the portfolio analysis. The main contribution of this paper is that this application is the first dynamic green port portfolio analysis performed for inland ports. Whereas dynamic port portfolio analysis has been applied to seaports (based on a 20-year traffic dataset from 1980 to 1999; see Haezendonck, 2001), the tool has not yet been applied to inland ports for longer time periods. These longer periods of over 10 years are important, as they may reflect how decision making and investments in ports, characterised by long implementation processes, actually lead to better economic or ecological competitive positions. The empirical analysis in the paper shows that industrial supporting ports and metropolitan supporting ports are interestingly studied in distinct portfolios, based on their different traffic structure, land use and diverging balance between inbound and outbound inland waterway traffic. We observe the long-term robustness of the traffic structure parameter in our analysis, supporting the inland port classification types. Our analysis also shows that the land use of metropolitan ports is relatively smaller in size than the urban region, potentially underlying more tensions for metropolitan supporting ports to obtain or preserve land for port activities. Concerning the traffic imbalances, we observe stability over the considered periods but with a slight tendency towards more traffic imbalance in the future. More specifically, we may expect more import logistics via waterways towards inland ports with the consequence of higher outbound road transport. The dynamic portfolio application in this paper demonstrates that strategic decisions are reflected in portfolio positions of the observed metropolitan supporting ports, such as “port 2000 +” on Frankfurt's position or at least that these projects or decisions may explain its improved position. Our eco-portfolio results of, for example, Basel and Brussels also show that eco-positions may be changed independently from market positions. In addition, both ports enjoy high spatial productivity, but this characteristic does not necessarily trigger more cargo flows and better environmental performance. Dynamic portfolio analysis of the port of Paris indicates that a best practice in city-port integration is not combined with the port's improving ecological performance. Industrial supporting ports exhibit a more positive relationship between their economic and environmental performance. However, these ports face increasing challenges to advance their greening if their strategy turns more towards logistics than towards industry. While the managerial implications of this research may be deducted directly from the results of the green port portfolio analysis, the implications for further academic research are linked to the main limitations of the tool and data used in this paper. First, the graphical representation of economic performance (the bubbles in the chart) shows the size of the port in question but does not consider parameters of efficiency (such as spatial productivity). Although the division of the inland ports into 2 types contributes to group ports with similar characteristics, we observe that within the group of, e.g., metropolitan ports, spatial productivity (measured as throughput per unit of land) is highly heterogeneous. Therefore, researchers as well as managers and policy makers might make errant conclusions from the graphical representation of the analysis (e.g., the port of Brussels is moving towards the minor performer quadrant but shows the best spatial productivity in the range). Furthermore, in terms of economic performance, total traffic is not weighted for added value, as there exists no rule for inland ports compared to seaports, whereas several rules showing the relation between the type of traffic and the added value generated exist (see Haezendonck, 2001 for an overview). These limitations call for further research into the parameters of efficiency and weighted traffic analysis for inland ports. Second, we only consider environmental impacts on the level of the modal split of the port traffic. Based on current seaport-related performance measurement projects and the related monitoring systems of environmental performance (e.g., the ECOPORTS project), we believe that effort is required to also develop a more comprehensive framework to identify and measure the environmental impact of inland ports, including in particular a wider array of pollution units characterising a port and an inland port. Furthermore, whereas data on origin/destination of inland waterway traffic are available, at the level of the modal split, most inland ports lack data on the average distances of road and rail traffic to/from the inland port in question. Consequently, we are unable to perform detailed calculations on these environmental impacts, as ton-kilometres would provide a more refined analysis. More research, e.g., on individual traffic categories, is needed to improve the quality of datasets for green port portfolio analysis for inland ports. In addition, we assume that, within limits or at least comparable volumes of the ports considered, economic and environmental performance are independent. Haezendonck's (2001) research in fact argued that green port portfolio analyses suggests that there is no obvious linkage between economic (in terms of growth or market share) and ecological performance. Both types are instead complements, as they do not appear to be mutually exclusive by definition (Haezendonck, 2001). However, we do recognise that this dependence may come into play if considerable volumes of one port, due to growth, for example, trigger ecological investments or make them more feasible. It may, for example, be the case that critical volumes that must be shipped to or from the hinterland are reached, enabling more environmentally friendly modes to become cost-effective. This case may be considered a limitation of the presented tool or at least an assumption that should be examined further when discussing the results of each portfolio exercise. Third, we suggest further research to integrate the network dimension into green port portfolio analysis. The inclusion of seaports, inland ports as well as other hinterland-located logistics gateways (e.g., large dry-ports offering only rail-road intermodal services) results in a set of potential methodological and conceptual issues related to the green port network portfolio analysis. As seaports and inland ports are building blocks of the network, issues related to these units, such as different functionalities of ports, data collection and comparison (lack of availability and reliability) and different modal split interpretation for inland versus seaports, unfortunately also hold for networks. In addition, inland ports, logistic points in the hinterland or even seaports may be included in different port networks (for example, the port of Duisburg makes part of both the network of the port of Rotterdam and the port of Antwerp). The main research questions to answer here concern not different methodological issues but whether the move towards a network approach is feasible from the point of view of academic research and whether this move would provide additional information, for both researchers and practitioners, with regard to traditional green port portfolio analysis. Finally, the lack of data concerning the average distance of the hinterland traffic of inland ports warrants attention in future research efforts; e.g., performing the analysis for Central and Eastern European ports (e.g., located in the Danube basin), which are located farther away from large seaports, could provide meaningful insights regarding this parameter.