| The international shipment of freight container by liner ocean carrier is fraught with uncertainty arising from a number of sources. The deregulation of the international ocean liner industry provided the impetus for carriers to offer Internet portal services to reduce some of this uncertainty. The Federal Maritime Commission expected these services to improve the ocean shipping process especially for smaller shippers. The trade press reports though, were inconsistent with expectations.;The objective of this study is to investigate the current nature of utilization and potential value of the Internet portal, Electronic Data Interchange, and, phone, fax and e-mail for conducting the international shipment of freight containers by ocean liners. The theoretical basis for the model used to answer the research questions utilizes a contingency approach, which assumes that only a certain level of a solution is appropriate for a specific level of a problem. The rationale of the model is that firms increase their information processing capabilities, by using EDI or Internet portals, in response to increasing information processing needs, arising from higher uncertainty. It was expected that firms who displayed such a fit would perform better than firms who did not.;The data analysis revealed the existence of four differently configured gestalts of shippers. As expected, the gestalts that configured their information processing capabilities according to their information processing requirements performed the best. It was observed that large shippers with a large number of containers shipped and a higher value of shipments along with stable demand and supply, and routine uncomplicated tasks benefited from the long lead times of ocean shipping. They could use low information processing capabilities to manage their shipping process. However, when the number of overseas suppliers increased higher information processing requirements were required to maintain high performance. On the other hand, shippers who face unstable demand and supply, and experience several operational disruptions, and exceptions need to increase their information processing capability to improve performance. The long lead times of international ocean shipping, appear to impair such shippers' ability to respond to changes in demand and supply or, exceptions. |
