The Performance of Seaport Clusters - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

7 ANALYZING THE PERFORMANCE OF SEAPORT
CLUSTERS
In the empirical part the framework developed in the theoretical part and summarized in
Table 7 and Table 10, is applied to ports. Figure 12 shows the contents of the empirical part.
Figure 12: Contents of the empirical part
Theoretical
part Empirical part Conclusions
Theoretical
framework
Research goals
Case
selection
Research
methods
Chapter 7
Clustering in
seaports
Research
issues
Chapter 8 Chapter 9
Structure and
performance;
conclusions
Chapter 10
Governance and
performance;
conclusions
Chapter 11
Strengths and
weaknesses
of the cases
Chapter 12
Conclusions
In this chapter, research goals of the empirical part are presented, the selection of cases
and research methods are discussed. Furthermore, some basic information of the three
cases, Rotterdam, Durban and the ‘Lower Mississippi Port Cluster’ (LMPC) is provided. In
chapter 8 clustering in seaports is analyzed in general and the three port clusters are
described. Chapter 9 discusses the research issues with regard to port clusters, based on
the theoretical framework and a review of existing literature on ports and port clusters. The
results of the case studies with regard to the relation between cluster structure and cluster
performance are presented in chapter 10 and the results with regard to the relation between
cluster governance and cluster performance are given in chapter 11. In Chapter 12,