Resilience and agility of the port logistics supply chain : the case of the port of Agadir

Abstract

Port complexity continues to grow, posing increasing challenges in terms of security and risk management. Today, when complex systems fail and incidents occur, there is an initial tendency to attribute failure to humans. Yet, research has shown that most often are organizational factors that create adverse conditions and increase the likelihood of system failure.

Resilience is a proactive approach that looks for ways to improve the capacity of organizations, explicitly monitor risks, and make appropriate trade-offs between required levels of security and global economic pressures. Failures do not involve a breakdown or malfunction of a normal system but rather the inability of the system to adequately adapt to disruptions and changes given resources and capacity.

Ensuring resilience is a challenge when the magnitude of a potential disruption cannot be predicted.  Is it possible to make a system resilient to a disruption of an unknown magnitude?

The objective of this work is to study the resilience factors most cited in the literature review, then the treaties with the main stakeholders at the port of Agadir to finally arrive at the contextualized according to their importance and according to the main stakeholders at the port crossing. As a result, we studied our research case in three different situations: shutdown, inbound, and outbound. The conclusions drawn from this qualitative research highlight that the alignment of the capacities of anticipation, learning, and adaptation with the resources available to the port of Agadir are essential to build a resilient port system.

JEL Classification : D20, D82, L20 

Paper type: Empirical research