Long-Term Orientation of International Road Transport Firms in Their Relationship with Shipping Companies: The Case of Short Sea Shipping.

European Union countries; Europe

The use of short sea shipping by international road transport firms and their transformation into multimodal logistical operators involves substantial adjustments to the operational model these firms have traditionally used. For this reason, their long-term involvement with this mode of transport will be conditioned by their expectations concerning the future opportunistic behaviors of their new suppliers, the shipping companies. According to transaction cost analysis, this article argues that a road transport firm's level of uncertainty about the future behavior of a shipping company can be reduced by two main factors: the shipping company's reputation and the road transport firm's trust (in this study we distinguish the two dimensions or motives of trust: honesty and benevolence). Using the partial least squares (PLS) approach, and data from a sample of 106 "road transport firm-shipping company" relationships, we estimated a model to analyze the joint effect of trust and reputation dimensions on the long-term orientation of international road transport firms in their relationships with shipping companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transportation Journal (Pennsylvania State University Press) is the property of Pennsylvania State University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)