Introduction

Significant economic and policy changes have occurred within the global arena. The scale of the downturn resulting from the global economic crisis in 2008 is substantial, with its destructive force arguably even stronger and more widespread than that of the Asian financial crisis towards the end of the last century It has not only affected the financial sector, but also international trade and the transport and logistics industries. Indeed, the maritime, transport and logistics sectors are closely knit with the well-being of the global economy — are indeed the artery of the global economy, carrying more than 80 percent of the world’s cargoes (Ng and Liu, 2010) — and it is an opportune moment to investigate the way forward for these sectors, and to thrash out appropriate strategies. As noted by Liu (2009), such a challenge has prompted the industries to increase calls for resilient and disruption-robust port, logistics and supply chains. Transportation and logistics were traditionally separate, and segregated, economic activities; nowadays, following the inevitable trends of globalization, they have evolved into an integrated service profession. Nevertheless, mainstream supply chain research has hitherto been based on the theory of the firm as a production function. For instance, a supplier is often modeled as a function that generates specific outputs using certain input possibilities as independent variables.