THE INTERNATIONALIZATION PROCESS IN THE CONTAINER PORT INDUSTRY. A panel-data analysis.

Over the last decades, the container port industry has experienced unprecedented transformations, which have profoundly re-designed its structure and competitive boundaries. Port reform and liberalization process in many countries have opened unprecedented business opportunities for private port operators. Moreover, the globalization process has favored the expansion of international trades with a relentless two-digits growth rate of container ports’ volumes for several years. These drivers have triggered the emergence of internationalization strategies pursued by terminal operators and the raise of the industry-specific Multinational Enterprises (MNEs), namely the Global/ International Terminal Operators (GTOs/ITOs). Against a world containerized throughput of about 802 million TEUs (2019), the twenty-one companies classified by Drewry Shipping Consultants (2020) as ITOs handled about 66% (about 530 million TEUs). Such proportion demonstrates ITOs’ relevance in the industry thus suggesting that their strategic behavior affect industry trends worldwide. The PhD thesis inserts in International Business (IB) research field aiming to respond, through Research Objective 1, to the prominent call made by Vahlne and Johanson (2020) for the collection of longitudinal data so as to conduct quantitative time-series analyses and apply main IB theoretical constructs of firms’ internationalization process to specific sectorial cases, like the global container port industry. In the last twenty years, ITOs have performed both horizontal and vertical integration strategies to keep pace with global and regional demand expansion as well as to diversify corporate risk across various geographic regions. In this perspective, the PhD thesis inserts in the Strategic Management research field aiming to investigate, through Research Objective 2, key-drivers of the implementation strategy of ITOs’ internationalization process, like the location (i.e., regional expansion versus “semi-globalization” versus global presence strategy) and entry mode options (e.g., M&As activity / concessions or leases; the wholly-owned subsidiary / joint venture dilemma, etc.) choices, focusing on the significance of firm an country-specific factors (e.g., the shareholding and governance structure of ITOs: the nature and the entrepreneurial orientation of their “ultimate” ownership). Furthermore, the PhD thesis intends to investigate, through Research Objective 3, the strategic behavior of ITOs (i.e., competition versus co-operation and the concept of “co-petition”) in the global playfield, with a particular emphasis to the formation, the widening and the strengthening of equity joint-ventures among ITOs at the highest level of the corporate hierarchy, the “ultimate” ownership one. Under this perspective, it is detected the increasing role in and financial commitment to the container port industry of State-owned enterprises (SOEs), of State-holding companies and of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs).