Performance Evaluation of Global Container Shipping Companies: Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches

Abstract

The shipping market has to deal with rapid and dynamic competition to achieve optimum benefit performance. Developing effective resource investment and then converting this to high performance is a fundamental strategic decision-making problem. Often, studies use quantitative methods alone, which are undoubtedly useful but may suffer from issues resulting from the removal of the results from their context of use, and are potentially open to issues such as those resulting from a MacNamara effect, whereby the figures may arguably show successful strategies, but mask fundamental problems. Here, to address this, the quantitative results are contextualized with qualitative methods to reveal any complexities. Quantitatively, the performance of seven shipping companies was measured using DEA. The gross tonnage, the million TEU, and EBIT were variables. Findings showed that ZIM and COSCO were efficient and others were inefficient. Qualitatively, interviews were used to reveal subtleties and complexities in the research findings.