Logistics cooperation in the far-east : prioritizing supply chain requirements to strengthen intra regional integration of maritime transport networks

Abstract

Logistics cooperation among countries is an important policy tool with potential for strengthening the international competitiveness and economic growth of regions. In the Far-East region, joint efforts to increase the coordination of maritime logistics activities have undergone since 2006 between the governments of China, South Korea and Japan. This paper aims at finding a potential gap in past and current logistics cooperation requirements for the Far-east region to provide suitable logistics policies to be implemented in the region. In the first step of the study, past joint statements of China, Republic of Korea and Japan’s ministerial conference on transport and logistics were examined. Thereafter, a text mining methodology was applied to highlight key areas of logistics and derive related network patterns by analyzing the degree centrality and the community betweenness of the most frequent terms. Secondly, a q-methodology was utilized to analyse whether new priorities areas should be discussed among governments to increase logistics cooperation in the region. A gap analysis between logistics trends derived from text mining and current trends derived from the Q-method led to suggest that there is a gap between past and current logistics requirements and particularly in the areas of environment, technology, standardization and adoption of best practices.