Eini Haaja
Postdoctoral
Researcher
Turku
Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS) / Pan-European Institute (PEI)
Turku
School of Economics, University of Turku
Finland
As this Special Issue shows, the sustainability transition entails various perspectives in the maritime industry. The challenge is highly complex and the objectives rather ambiguous, even though we may have various targets set at the firm, regional and international levels. The challenge emerges from getting every actor engaged in this transition in a feasible way, and from getting various actors to match their actions in order to generate a systemic change. But what are the varying expectations and needs in this respect?
For many business actors, the sustainability transition is a source of future competitiveness – it offers new opportunities to become better than others. For others it is a great challenge that forces them to make changes in their current operations, or they might not have the license to operate in the future. At the same time, the jungle of existing and expected regulatory frameworks for the sustainability transition is not easy to comply with. Therefore, businesses call for enhanced expertise in terms of following and interpreting the developments in the regulatory landscape, and also enhanced business-policy dialogue. Our research data collected among policymakers, businesses and various intermediaries shows that different actors have quite superficial perceptions of each other’s capabilities to pursue sustainability transition. In particular, policymakers tend to overestimate the skills and resources of businesses to meet the tightening regulations, whereas companies, even some large ones, are struggling with interpreting what to do in practice. Thus, navigating the global business environment with evolving and somewhat contradictory frameworks requires new kind of business-policy interactions and business intelligence.
Secondly, the sustainability transition calls for open-minded innovation skills, given that the green transition will not eventually allow us to continue business as usual but new concepts must be developed. For instance, the cruise industry is facing dramatic changes due to the restrictions set by the IMO and various destination ports, demanding for unforeseen flexibility from the cruise ships and the cruise tourism concepts in general. For the European shipbuilders, in turn, the situation is tricky as well as they must comply with the rules set by the EU, put considerable effort in decarbonizing their products and production processes, and figure out how to cover the costs of these development activities. Namely, even though shipowners are forced to explore environmentally friendly solutions, it remains unknown to what extent they can transfer the higher prices into their sales with the end customers. Hence, there is a need for innovative technological solutions as well as business models.
Thirdly, the systemic change for sustainability requires advanced marketing methods. In the cruise industry, for instance, the tourists are reported to become increasingly conscious with respect to the environmental harm caused by the industry, and might prefer alternative ways for spending their leisure time. Shipowners are well aware of this development, and are forced to offer their guests increasingly environmentally friendly vacation alternatives. However, tourists enjoying their unique leisure experiences are still not reportedly willing to pay much extra for more sustainable solutions, which presses the business models and sustainable innovation of cruise lines. Thus, new methods for visualising, proving and selling sustainability are required throughout the value chain, all the way from material manufacturers and shipyards to the cruise lines and travel agencies. Just like enacting regulatory changes and innovating new solutions to meet them, also the marketing phase requires initiative and new competences from all maritime industry actors – independently and in collaboration.
Advancing the skills of all maritime industry actors in these three areas is of key importance for us academics doing our best in supporting the sustainability transition. At the University of Turku, we advance the skills development and the generation of knowledge and practical solutions in these areas in close collaboration with maritime industry actors, ranging from the metaverse solutions created at the Faculty of Technology to the business model innovations and market shaping processes explored at Turku School of Economics. As an example of these faculties’ multidisciplinary research projects, the University of Turku coordinates Business Finland funded SusFlow project that explores and advances the information flows for enhanced sustainability in shipbuilding networks. Turku School of Economics also strongly pursues hands-on collaboration with industry actors via Maritime@TSE platform coordinated by the Centre for Collaborative Research (CCR), and supports companies in developing their own strategic foresight skills through methods developed at Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC), for example. Successful navigation through the global geoeconomic developments and regulatory frameworks, in turn, is supported by the insights generated at the Pan-European Institute (PEI) and Operations and Supply Chain Management unit, for both of which the maritime industry constitutes one of the key research contexts. All in all, understanding and employing a great variety of business perspectives – not only technological development – is crucial in making the maritime industry rapidly increasingly sustainable.
To speed up the sustainability transition in the maritime industry, we need the above discussed skills and further collaboration within and between the industry, policymakers and academics. This Special Issue is one attempt to compile and visualize the complexity of views and, consequently, also inspire new interactions between different actors. It has been published as a part of MUUTOS project funded by the Foundation for Economic Education (Liikesivistysrahasto) which seeks to uncover the current and future developments in the maritime industry in the face of megatrends, the sustainability transition constituting the key challenge. Tackling this challenge requires new ideas and expertise, and new ways of bringing various experts together.