Towards understanding the stepwise dissemination of shipping technologies

Abstract

In the years to come, the maritime industry will have to improve its energy efficiency and soften its environmental footprint to meet higher energy prices and more stringent regulations. Shipowners, managers, and operators are often reluctant in installing new technologies even though they may already have successfully been applied in other industries. By analyzing historical data for the adoption of steel hull and diesel engine technology in the worldwide fleet, we find an indication that dissemination of new technologies happens in a step-like manner. That is, the underlying dynamics does not change continuously but rather abruptly. We argue that this phenomenon could be explained by the fact that any new technology has to function within given structures in a given context; if not, structures will act as barriers. We provide a new explanatory model where the concept of structures is central, i.e., tangible or intangible constructs, usually human made, in the form of infrastructure, regulations, competence, norms, behavior, etc. Constructs can limit (barriers) or support (enablers) a new technology. Once the structures and/or the (new) technology (which itself is a structure) are adapted to each other, they have an enabling effect and thereby change the underlying dynamics in a stepwise way. We support our view by comparing the proposed concept with other published approaches on technology adoption.