Since 1990s, the contradiction between supply and demand of shipping has become increasingly acute, and the shipping market has entered an unprecedented difficult period. Although all shipping companies strive to increase investment and cooperation in route configuration, freight rate policy and service level, practice shows that a shipping company can no longer operate on the track of "low transportation cost and high service quality". Therefore, in order to improve the schedule density, expand the service scope, make rational use of resources, reduce business risks and improve market competitiveness, all major shipping companies in the world have embarked on the road of strategic alliance. By the end of 2002, after continuous adjustment and development, the world's large shipping enterprises began to intensively enter the system of "four alliances and two companies":
1, Major League (GA): James Hope Roth, Malaysia International, Japan Post, and Tiehang Zhahua.
2. New World Alliance (TNWA): Merchant Marine Mitsui, President of the United States, modern merchant ship.
3.CKYH: COSCO Container Lines, Kawasaki Steamboat, Yangming Shipping and Hanjin Shipping.
4. United Alliance (UA): Hanjin Shipping, Shengli Shipping and United Arab Shipping.
5. Maersk Land and Sea: The European and American lines operate their own ships, and the African line cooperates with Mediterranean shipping companies.
6. Evergreen Group with strong willingness to ship independently.
Under the traditional economic conditions, the strategic alliance among shipping enterprises can be divided into four forms: liner conference, stability agreement, joint venture and mutual leasing of shipping space. They have achieved considerable success in a certain range, but there are still many problems in practice, such as: strategic alliance is a relatively loose group formed through agreement, which is not protected by law, its members are quite unstable, and alliance reorganization is everywhere; Alliance can only reduce the transportation capacity and terminal operation cost to a certain extent, but the hidden cost is very large; The alliance will make member companies have to lose a lot of operational independence and freedom. For example, member companies can't buy, sell or lease ship capacity at will, and can't open or adjust routes at will without the consent of other member companies. Due to the differences in social background, business culture, management system, management level and methods, and the equality within the alliance, the initial control and management of several consortia will become more complicated, which is not convenient for business work; Because employees come from different companies, their personal relationships are relatively indifferent, which has a certain negative impact on their work and so on.
The influence of network economy
In the network economy environment, information resources will play a decisive role. The development of communication technology makes the communication and cooperation between members of shipping strategic alliance more full, which greatly changes the management mode of its strategic alliance. The change of network technology itself has also changed the value of related resources of many shipping companies, thus changing their core advantages or capabilities, which will definitely affect the development of the alliance. Generally speaking, the development of network economy has led to the following development trends of shipping enterprise alliances:
1 is dynamic. The development of network makes it more convenient for shipping enterprises to form alliances. In order to meet a certain demand, leading shipping companies can quickly find partners through the network and effectively organize to meet this demand. After this goal is achieved, it will be dissolved immediately or the next round of new cooperation will be carried out.
2. stability. In the future, shipping companies may establish alliances based on information resources. Because information is a kind of non-consumable resource, it has the nature of public goods in some cases, which is conducive to fair and reasonable distribution and management among shipping enterprises, reduces conflicts between organizations due to resource sharing and benefit distribution, and helps to maintain long-term and stable relations between partners.
3 the reduction of transaction costs. Under the traditional economic form, shipping enterprises either spend a lot of time and energy to cultivate trust through various means; Either the two sides invest in specific assets to limit the opportunistic behavior of partners. Under the condition of network economy, through network information technology, shipping enterprises can not only have extensive and in-depth contact and communication through the network, thus increasing their understanding of each other, but also realize real-time monitoring of their strategic behavior through * * *, greatly reducing the transaction costs of both parties.
4. Marketization of credibility. In the network economy environment, the credit status and cooperation experience of shipping companies can be easily found through the Internet, which makes the reputation of shipping companies become open market-oriented information. Reputation will become a new intangible key asset for shipping enterprises. So as to form a strong constraint on the opportunistic behavior of shipping enterprises, which will be beneficial to the management and development of this strategic alliance.
5 network. Because the development of the network has brought great convenience to information exchange and communication, the cooperation between shipping enterprises has become more realistic and feasible. Based on the network, all parties in the alliance share information through the alliance network according to their respective capabilities and network location, realize complementary capabilities, provide strategic support and promote common development.
6 Virtualization. In the past, entity alliances were mainly bound by legally binding contracts, such as equity and cooperation agreements. The development of network promotes the development of entity alliance to virtual alliance, and all parties form an interdependent alliance relationship without ownership and legal constraints. All parties can coordinate the alliance through "soft constraints" such as shaping industry regulations, controlling service standards, and mastering service result inspection standards.
Future trend of shipping strategic alliance
In view of the emergence of the network economy and the characteristics of the shipping strategic alliance itself, combined with the prediction of the world's top consulting companies, the author believes that the shipping strategic alliance will have the following development process:
The first stage has already happened. In order to improve competitiveness and maintain market share, shipping companies have formed strategic alliances. Like internal optimization and merger, the application of strategic alliance has become the main strategic choice of shipping enterprises.
The second stage is in the middle stage, which is the result of the natural evolution of shipping enterprise alliance. It shows that with the emergence of strategic alliance to enterprise value supply, alliance enterprises begin to pay attention to identifying the opportunities that may be provided by each other. It is worth emphasizing that at this stage, alliance partners have surpassed the alliance goals and started to enjoy the individual goals of each enterprise, and members are increasingly moving towards "integrated" companies.
In the third stage, in the longer term, the collectivization of shipping enterprises is like a well-organized company. By this time, the related enterprises have been quite large, but the overall market power is unmatched by any enterprise.
These three stages are not completely separated, but staggered and generally orderly.
From alliance to network to related enterprises, although it is only an idea, there is no doubt that the network economy will promote the development of shipping enterprises.
The possible risks brought by the network economy
The positive effect of network economy on shipping alliance is self-evident, but from the perspective of shipping alliance operation, network economy also has many risks.
Information distortion risk
Information is one of the main dependence of shipping enterprise alliance competition. However, information risks are everywhere, that is, there are false information, lagging and incomplete information and information monopoly. Stealing, tampering and forging information happen from time to time, which poses a severe test to the internal information security of shipping alliance enterprises. While protecting the confidentiality of information and ensuring the reliability, authenticity and integrity of information, the shipping alliance should establish a set of excellent systems and countermeasures, and at the same time strengthen the control of information dissemination to prevent the invasion of illegal information.
Managing the risk of failure
The openness and extensiveness of network economy have brought double influences to shipping enterprises. On the one hand, information transmission is convenient and management tends to be easy, but the increase of information also makes it very difficult for managers to identify information. At the same time, under the network economy, the organizational structure of enterprises has changed, and the original vertical one-way decision-making has been replaced by parallel multi-way decision-making, which greatly improves the management difficulty. This causes information delivery personnel to delay information delivery or reveal secrets. In management, if managers make decisions based on wrong information, it will cause management failure.
Technical risk and hacker attack risk
Network technology is the main part of the information system supporting shipping alliance, and its risks are also manifested in various aspects. In terms of hardware, there may be hidden risks in the design itself, network operation process and data transmission. In terms of software, some network software has been tampered with and destroyed, and individual information systems cannot operate normally after being attacked. Hacking attacks also occur frequently in the Internet age. All these make the shipping enterprise alliance face a severe test.
The risk of insufficient subjective understanding
If the manager underestimates the network risk and lags behind in understanding, decision-making and action, it will lead to the risk of insufficient subjective understanding. Therefore, on the one hand, the shipping alliance should raise the awareness of network economic risks, make efforts in network security, and try to reduce or avoid all kinds of risks brought by network economy; On the other hand, the government should also take measures to establish a network security system at all levels, formulate and improve the legal system to ensure the security of the network economy, and increase international security cooperation, thus creating a good environment for shipping enterprise alliances.