Knowledge construction about port performance evaluation: An international literature analysis

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims at identifying and analyzing the characteristics of international scientific research that address the literature fragment referring to the Port Performance Evaluation to identify the existence of theoretical alignment of Performance Evaluation notion, as an area of knowledge, with practical area stage, the Port Performance Evaluation.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The approach the problem, this paper makes use of qualitative research, since it analyzes the Bibliographical Portfolio characteristics related to the Performance Evaluation Port. The strategy adopted was action research where the authors through their analysis and interpretation made the selection of the  Bibliographical Portfolio.

Findings: From the analyzed literature fragment it was possible to identify some misalignment between what has been pointed out in the literature regarding the management practices in the port sector. This discrepancy refers to the management practices that are ignored by port managers, which implies the loss of opportunities and may even come to jeopardize the organization's performance.

Research limitations/implications: The literature search was restricted to articles written in the English language, published in indexed scientific journals in the selected databases (ii) the restriction by the time limit of articles published after the year 2000; (iii) the generation of knowledge based on the characteristics selected by the researchers and (iv) the analysis of BP articles regarding the  by the judgment and interpretation of this research authors. It is suggested for future work the expanding this research to other databases, other languages, other features, and continuity of this investigation with the development of "systemic analysis' and 'identifying research opportunities' stages through ProKnow-C.

Originality/value: Although two similar works have been developed in the same area of research in 2015, the results achieved have contributed to the advancement of research Port Performance Evaluation, once extended the time horizon, the databases used for research and variables.