A Review of the Maritime Container Shipping Industry as a Complex Adaptive System*

If we consider the worldwide maritime shipping industry as a system, we observe that a large number of independent rational agents such as port authorities, shipping service providers, shipping companies, and commodity producers play a role in achieving predominant positions and in increasing market share. The maritime shipping industry can, from this perspective, be defined as a Complex System composed of relatively independent parts that constantly search, learn and adapt to their environment, while their mutual interactions shape obscure but recognizable patterns. In this work we examine the maritime shipping industry through the Complex Adaptive System (CAS). Although CAS has been applied widely to the study of biological and social systems, its application in maritime shipping is scant. Therefore, our objective in the present paper is to provide a literature review that examines the international maritime industry through the lens of CAS. We also present some of the goals that may be achieved by applying the CAS approach to the container shipping industry in particular. The construction of a tenable ontological framework will give scholars a comprehensive view of the maritime industry and allow them to test the stability and efficiency of the framework to endogenous and exogenous shocks.