Collaborative Port Call Optimization: An Empirical Study and Conceptual Model of Conditions for Adoption

Ports are central to global supply chains. However, they are confronted with numerous challenges related to vessel sizes and numbers, uncertain weather conditions, and congestion. This leads to significant waiting times, with associated costs and emissions for vessels calling at ports, highlighting the importance of optimizing port calls in collaboration with all involved parties. In this work, we combine a literature review with semi-structured expert interviews across 20 ports worldwide to establish a conceptual foundation for understanding the adoption of collaborative port call optimization (PCO) measures. We identify and categorize preconditions for collaborative PCO adoption across technological, organizational, external-environmental, and inter-organizational dimensions. By triangulating the literature and interview findings, we show that several relevant adoption conditions arise between autonomous organizations and cannot be represented adequately within the classic Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) adoption framework. We therefore extend TOE with an Inter-organizational Arrangements dimension. The extended framework allows inter-organizational innovations to be addressed explicitly and can be used to support PCO processes in strategic port management practice.