... of shipping firms, banks, shipyards, producers of ship equipment, ship design firms, and ship brokers. Practitioners need to be aware that the rationale for inter‐firm collaboration change over time, and motives are linked to the phase of the maritime cycle. Inter‐firm collaboration provides competitive...

... ship design firms is important in relation to business cyclicality in the industry. The workload in ship design firms drops during the troughs of the shipbuilding cycle and increases dramatically during the peaks of the cycle. Design/methodology/approach The proposed method of partnership selection...