The Role of Greek Shipowners in the Revival of Northern European Shipyards in the 1950s
Gelina Harlaftis Christos Tsakas crete.academia.edu
in Niels P. Petersson, Stig Tenold, and Nicholas White (eds.), Shipping and Globalization in the Post-War Era. Contexts, Companies, Connections, Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2019, pp. 185-212
This article argues that the global liberal outlook of the major European maritime powers and the international framework of international organizations and regimes already in place made any strictly regional Common Shipping Policy, under the auspices of the European Community, superfluous. Alliances among Shipowners and associations ran across the member- and non-member divide, and were informed by global economic considerations such as the oil shock, competition from South East Asia and structural changes in the sector, rather than integrationist efforts. Instead, the Commission came to act as an interlocutor alongside a liberal alliance, with particular European aims within a global context. This alliance was an unlikely one, seeing Greek–Norwegian hopes in Britain as a possible guarantor of a liberal shipping regime within the enlarged Community in the early 1970s. In the end, the European response to the crisis and structural changes of the 1970s proved unsatisfactory, and only those who fully embraced the ‘new’ rules of the game (like Greece) reaped the benefits of the structural changes.

Just before the millennium, prospects for Greek-owned shipping looked grim for the first time after many years of almost uninterrupted – and always impressive – expansion. The age of Greek-owned ships coupled with its heavy specialisation in ship types that found themselves in a sea of regulatory changes seemed as a combination of challenges that Greek shipping would not be able to handle this time. Yet, the legendary flexibility and market “feel” of the Greek-shipping community led to the Greek-owned fleet not only transiting successfully into the 21st century at the leading position in world shipping hierarchy, but also building solidly on its existing strengths while venturing into new areas. This chapter reviews this course focusing on changes in the specialisation and age of the Greek-owned fleet.

In this chapter we examine the historical profile of Sestri Ponente shipyard in relation to three themes: employment and labour composition; production trends and changes in the organization of work; and workplace struggles that took place during the Republican period to affirm the role of the workers in the company, and to avoid the closure of a highly productive shipyard. The importance of the local context in which the shipyard stands seems to go beyond the issue of employment, embracing the physiognomy of a territory in its broadest sense, embedded in cultural and communal identity processes during a long period. This identity has flourished in the past two centuries and has been forged around the knowledge and special skills learned and passed down through generations by the Sestri Ponente shipyard workers. Although many of its constituent elements remained intact, Sestri Ponente eventually declined as a result of economic, productive and social changes.

Analysis of global seafarers’ demand reveals that seafarers from low cost countries gradually increase their share by substituting their colleagues from traditional maritime countries. This process is provoked by the shipping companies’ manning strategies and decisions on crew selection that are based on the need for cost cutting. Many shipping companies that strive to reduce their cost and to realise the short run result turn to the employment of low cost seafarers. The factor that mainly defines this process is the payment of wages for each category of seafarers. Factors, such as the productivity of the seafarers, their tacit knowledge, their commitment and the role they have on the formation of the total cost of seafarers and the performance of the shipping companies in the long run, are gradually ignored. However, the efficiency of this approach seeing from a long run perspective is questioned, as it ignores the strategic role of the human factor and its contribution to the value that shipping companies create. This paper aims at examining the competitiveness of seafarers not only in terms of the cost that the payment of wages creates to the companies, but also in terms of the qualifications of the seafarers and the value they create for the company that employs them. For this, the Resource Based View of the firm is applied, which realises the firm as a bundle of resources and capabilities that are combined to develop competencies; the last are the basis for the formation of competitive advantage. Thus, seafarers are examined as a strategic resource that creates value for the shipping companies and contributes to their competitiveness. The analysis focuses on Greek-owned shipping. The paper discusses the results of a research project on the competitiveness of Greek seafarers assigned by the Panhellenic Seaman Federation to the University of the Aegean. Based on the results stemming from a survey conducted in a sample of Greek-owned shipping companies, the analysis focuses on the crewing management practices of the companies, the examination of factors that contribute to the value that companies draw from their seafarers, and the identification of the alternative approaches that are applied by the companies on the subject.

In an era that national flags are dying off (Sletmo 2001) there is no dispute about the success of Greek flagged shipping. How can a small nation like Greece retain the highest percentage of all national fleets? Literature identifies that this success is due to several reasons. However, what are the elements that contribute to the success of Greek-flagged shipping? This study establishes that ‘the success of Greek ocean-going flagged shipping is a blend of a tendency for governments to experiment with various policies intended to promote national competitiveness, individual entrepreneurship, the cluster as well as culture, knowledge and skill’. Litrature from different disciplines and sources are summarised, compared, contrasted, and synthesised in order to develop a coherent outcome and gain a new perspective in the respective field. Since “policy is like beauty in the eye of the beholder...” (Roe 2007c) a multilevel, holistic, exploratory, inductive, deductive, abductive, and over...