The Core Competitiveness Of Enterprises, Research And Applications In The Container Liner Shipping Companies

The wide application of information technology not only promotes the globalization of world economy, but also exacerbates the competition among companies. Today's changing environment has led-to further inter company rationalization. It is transforming the traditional mode of competition. In this trend, management of company's core competence becomes the hot issue.This paper is to make research in the core competence of shipping companies. Emphasis will be laid on their oversea container business. Advanced theory of core competence is adopted to analyze the behavior and strategies of container shipping companies. The new sight of this paper is that it observes and solves problems from the point of economics, not simply confining to the field of strategic management. It gives suggestions on how to find and establish core competence in a modern container shipping company. Concrete suggestions are put forward for Chinese shipping companies, such as COSCO Container Line.The first chapter of this paper gives the definition, character and importance of core competence. Advanced theory in abroad and domestic is introduced. It puts forward the views that the nature of core competence is surplus value. The key of establishing competitive advantages is to optimize inter management, find and establish core competence. It tries to quantitate the abstract concept of core competence. Based on the characteristics of container shipping companies, it set up a guideline of core competence.The second chapter tries to find a way on how to find and establish core competence in a container shipping company. Economics methods are adopted here, such as the theory of industrial organization, market structure, demand curve, experience curve and surplus value. Cases are introduced to explain the practice of core competence theory, such as MediterraneanShipping, Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk Shipping Company.The third chapter is on strategies of core competence. Since each company has its own advantages and disadvantages in aspects of resources, techniques and organization, real competition is based on cooperation and making use of one's own unique advantages. This chapter is to prove that the best strategy in competition is the one that most suits a company. Those wide accepted strategies in container shipping business such as strategic alliance, building large container vessel and multi-polarization in business field still need considering carefully according to the different situation of each company.The last chapter takes COSCO Container Lines as a case, which is China's largest container shipping company. Through analysis of its assets, information development and service products, the chapter concludes that COSCO Container Line has not possessed the core competence by now. On the basis of prior discussion, it gives approaches on how to find and establish core competence in COSCO Container Line. For example, four steps of training, ways of optimizing organization structure and evaluating real effect of strategies are suggested .