Blue Denmark.dk does research broadly on economic organisation, change and development in the maritime industry, and more specifically the Danish maritime cluster (“Blue Denmark”).

At a very general level Blue Denmark.dk is concerned to: 1) the structural (economic, organisational) and institutional challenges and opportunities to the maritime industry that follow from increasing globalisation (outsourcing, global interdependency and competition) and from changes in national, international and supranational maritime law and economic policies, and 2) the various societal influences of the maritime industry, domestically and abroad.

Structural challenges and opportunities relate to the number and size of companies, specialisation patterns, the horizontal and vertical division of labour within the maritime cluster in Denmark and globally, inter-organisational linkages, competence, innovation and so on. Institutional challenges and opportunities relate to legal issues and regulation, knowledge infrastructure, framework conditions, cluster identity or “business recipes”, social habits and norms, local conventions of communication and interaction, various forms of lock-in into established practices and so on.

Within this broad topic area, Blue Denmark.dk carries out research - focusing on different dimensions (technical, organisational, economic and institutional) and conducted at different levels of analysis (company, sectoral, supply chain, cluster, national and international).

The questions addressed by the unit invite cross-disciplinary research. In this respect, research at Blue Denmark.dk bridges a number of theories and perspectives, including industrial and organisational economics; economics of innovation; evolutionary-institutional analysis; and economic geography. Industrial and organisational economics are crucial to the identification of cluster and supply chain boundaries and the assessment of internal cluster dynamics. Evolutionary-institutional approaches are important to the analysis of development traits, temporal interdependencies and network effects in the unfolding of maritime business, and inertia when it comes to change. The economics of innovation may help inform us about how innovations and the emergence of new technologies change the nature and sources of competition and cooperation and create threats and new opportunities for maritime companies. Economic geography is helpful in addressing spatial patterns and interdependencies within maritime industries.

For publication of results the unit targets general and sector-focused peer reviewed journals, such as Business History; Enterprise and Society; Industrial and Corporate Change; Industry and Innovation; Research Policy; Journal of Economic Geography; Transportation Journal, Maritime Policy and Management; International Journal of Maritime Economics; and International Journal of Maritime History.