Investigating the Influences of Smart Port Practices and Technology Employment on Port Sustainable Performance: The Egypt Case

Alaa Othman (), Sara El Gazzar and Matjaz Knez
Additional contact information
Alaa Othman: College of International Transport and Logistics, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Alexandria 1029, Egypt
Sara El Gazzar: College of International Transport and Logistics, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Alexandria 1029, Egypt
Matjaz Knez: Faculty of Logistics, University of Maribor, 3000 Celje, Slovenia

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 21, 1-25

Abstract: In this digital age, sustainable development and competitive advantage of port businesses rely on their capacity to adapt to changing business requirements. Although many previous studies develop a relation between smart port, technology, and sustainable performance, there is an urgent need to address such issues practically among ports, especially in developing countries. Therefore, this research aims at investigating to what extent the Egyptian ports could apply the smart practices and employ technology to achieve and improve sustainable port performance. The Egyptian ports have been selected to serve as an empirical study in this research, assessing their current performance and evaluating their level of readiness and adaptability to smart practices and technology employment. Interviews have been conducted with a group of 10 different stakeholders from government, private sectors, and experts in the field of port management. The interview results showed the main challenges and obstacles that might face the adaptation of technology and sustainable practices in Egyptian ports. This was followed by a focus group with experts in the field to discuss and conclude some procedures that can be adapted to facilitate the implementation of smart practices and technology employment in the Egyptian ports in order to improve their sustainable performance from different perspectives (economic, social, and environmental), deal with the obstacles facing adaptation, and suggest solutions The research adopted ‘content analysis’ for both phases. The research showed the great potential of technology employment to achieve sustainable performance in Egyptian ports while highlighting the main obstacles and challenges that might face the adaptation with suggestions and recommendations to those obstacles in order to adopt the digital transformation towards a sustainable smart port performance. Nevertheless, there are some limitations that could be an open issue to future researchers and practitioners who can benefit from those suggestions to employ technology and adapt sustainable procedures in ports, foster new practical research initiatives to adapt the smart port practices in different countries, and test their impact on port sustainable performance.

Keywords: smart port practices; sustainable performance; technology; Egyptian ports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14014/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14014/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:21:p:14014-:d:955447

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().