From efficiency to resilience: Strategic shifts in maritime organizations through digitalization, ESG, and human capital (2018 - 2025)

Abstract

Most existing maritime research examines digitalization, ESG pressures, and human capital separately. This paper fills the gap in explaining how the three factors dynamically reshape strategic orientations in the highly unstable post-2020 period. It explains how maritime organizations reconfigured their strategies between 2018 and 2025. The research is based on sixteen semi-structured interviews with top professionals from different segments of the maritime ecosystem across Europe and Asia, analyzed according to Gioia methodology. The main finding is a structural transformation from an efficiency strategy before 2020 toward a resilience strategy after 2020. It finds that this shift emanates from an interaction between digitalization (a ‘sensing’ capability) and human capital (a ‘reconfiguring’ capability). Seven strategic patterns are identified, which include new forms such as glocal ESG adaptation-blending global rules with local innovation-and hybrid leadership--blending technical, digital, and human skills-in addition to more traditional forms like asset diversification or trade pattern flexibility through chartering tonnage. This study is original as it is the first integrated empirical analysis of the interaction, with a rare pre/post-2020 temporal comparison conceptualizing new patterns as specific dynamic capabilities for the maritime sector.