New Book by Majbritt Greve, Michael W. Hansen and Henrik Schaumburg-Müller

Container Shipping and Development – A case study of A.P. Moller - Maersk in South East Asia

by Majbritt Greve, Project Manager at ECCO Shoes, Michael W. Hansen, Associate Professor, Center for Business and Development Studies, CBS and Henrik Schaumburg-Müller, Professor and Director, Center for Business and Development Studies, CBS.

Published by CBS Press, June 2007.

The academic literature is surprisingly weak when it comes to conceptualising and analysing the role of transport in economic development. To fill this gap, a team of Danish researchers from Copenhagen Business School’s Centre for Business and Development Studies decided to undertake an explorative case study of the world’s largest container shipping firm, A.P. Moller - Maersk, and its role in integrating developing countries and their firms into the global economy.

The study focuses on A.P. Moller - Maersk’s container business in South East Asian developing countries, in particular Vietnam. Building on an extensive empirical analysis, the book suggests that A.P. Moller - Maersk’s container business may play an important role in the integration of global production processes, not only by moving goods from A to B and coordinating multiple modes of transport, but also by coordinating and integrating increasingly atomized production processes at a global scale.

The book contributes to our understanding of the role of container shipping services in economic development processes.