Jehangir Khan

• Monday 19 March 2025 - time tbc
• Supervisors: Roel Gevaers & Alessio Ishizaka
• The defence will take place at the NEOMA Business School.
  

Risk assessment of supply chain management with multi-criteria decision analysis methods; the COVID19 Pandemic case

Daniel Schubert

• Tuesday 17 June 2025 at 4:30 pm
• Supervisors: Christa Sys & Rosario Macario
• The defence will take place at the Promotion Room, Cloister of the Grauwzusters,University of Antwerp, Stadscampus,Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp
• Please contact Daniel Schubert (daniel.schubert@student.uantwerpen.be) to inform him whether you wish to attend the PhD defence before Thursday 12 June 2025

Predictive models for customized airline offer management

Babette Jansen

• Friday 14 February 2025 at 4:00 pm
• Supervisors: Sunčica Vujić & Roland Winkler

Macroeconomic Policy, Household Heterogeneity, and the Labor Market

This dissertation contributes to the understanding of fiscal and monetary policy aimed at stimulating economic activity during recessions and maintaining price stability.  With the resurgence of fiscal policy as a crucial stabilization tool post-Great Recession and the recent shift to higher interest rates following an extended period of historically low rates, a deep understanding of fiscal and monetary policy is vital. Empirical research of labor markets and the development of theoretical macroeconomic models that analyze fiscal and monetary policy contribute to this understanding. The results reveal significant changes in labor market conditions, with increased employer market power and heterogeneous labor supply elasticities, and underscore the need to consider these factors in policy decisions. Additionally, a novel fiscal policy transmission channel can be observed through countercyclical monopsony power. Finally, the analysis of New Keynesian models discovers new insights into the Taylor principle and determinacy issues depending on household heterogeneity and households’ labor supply preferences. Overall, this thesis underscores the necessity of current empirical analysis of the labor market and updated models for macroeconomic policy analysis.

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Mehran Farzadmehr

• Monday 10 February 2025 at 4:30 pm
• Supervisors: Thierry Vanelslander & Valentin Carlan
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AI-powered solutions assessment in port and maritime sector

The digitalization of port and maritime, particularly through the adoption of AI-powered solutions, is a major trend these days. However, this research identifies gaps in the literature, including the lack of a consistent approach to distinguishing AI initiatives and quantifying their costs and benefits. To address these gaps, this PhD thesis employs a mixed-method approach, combining both desk and empirical research. This study develops two assessment models: an AI typology to differentiate AI solutions and a cost-benefit framework to conduct economic analyses of AI solutions. Furthermore, the research identifies a typology of 30 AI initiatives and ranks them based on deployment complexity, considering their application domains. Secondly, three detailed economic analyses are conducted at two implementation levels: micro and macro. The first analysis explores the use of AI to predict truck ETAs for a trucking company. The findings indicate that the truck ETA prediction project offers comparable profitability under two conditions: trucking companies with legacy systems but with potential for revenue growth through AI adoption or trucking companies without the chance for revenue growth but can avoid technical integration costs. However, the project becomes highly cost-effective when revenue increases, and technical integration is not required. The second analysis assesses the benefits of AI-assisted data entry for logistics companies when processing transport orders. The economic analysis reveals that modifying IT system architecture to incorporate AI-assisted data entry is not cost-effective for companies with low transaction volumes. However, horizontal collaboration can reduce organizational integration costs, typically 1% to 7% of total solution implementation costs. The third analysis evaluates an AI-powered solution to optimize the scheduling of tugboats and dock pilots within the lock. It highlights the trade-offs between incorporating fairness in task allocation and achieving cost savings through AI-driven optimization. Including fairness as a goal reduces cost savings, reflecting the social integration costs, which account for 31% and 23% of cost savings for tugboat and pilotage companies, respectively. Additionally, a gain-sharing scenario minimizes benefit losses among port stakeholders, reducing overall losses by 3.5% to promote vertical collaboration. Overall, this dissertation offers valuable insights into AI assessment in the port and maritime sectors, contributing to scholars and industry.

Katrien Storms

• Friday 7 February 2025 at 4:30 pm
• Supervisors: Thierry Vanelslander & Edwin Van Hassel
  
  

Unravelling D&D within the maritime ecosystem and its influence on IWT in port-hinterland supply chains

The use of intermodal inland waterway transport (IWT) is a key European strategy to move towards climate-neutral transport. However, challenges such as COVID-19, extreme Rhine water levels, and geopolitical disruptions complicate the shift from road to IWT. These disruptions often result in additional costs, known as demurrage and detention (D&D).

This dissertation researches the impact of D&D practices on IWT within Europe’s port-hinterland supply chain. Using a SARIMAX modeling, it forecasts IWT container volumes on the Rhine and highlights the potential impact of disruptions on IWT recovery. Findings from surveys, discussions, and legal analyses reveal inefficiencies in D&D practices and propose solutions such as extended free time for IWT, digitalization, and improved negotiation strategies. Cost analyses show that D&D fees can exceed the shipping lines’ opportunity costs as time passes, suggesting their role as a revenue stream. Nevertheless, shippers can leverage D&D into their storage strategies to optimize costs. Furthermore, D&D and terminal dwell times significantly influence IWT's modal share. Consequently, addressing D&D is important in making a shift towards more sustainable and efficient hinterland transport.

Elke Godden

• Tuesday 21 January  2025 at 5.00 pm
• Supervisors: Nathalie Dens & Lukar Thornton 

How the Nutri-Score affects consumers and manufacturers: A focus on consumers’ choices and manufacturers’ reformulation efforts

Imagine you are standing in the supermarket. As you gaze at the rack of breakfast cereals, you might feel overwhelmed by the numerous alternatives presented to you. How do you choose what to buy? The Nutri-Score was developed to simplify this decision by aiding consumers to compare products’ healthiness. As previous research demonstrates its understandability, attention-grabbing properties, and mostly positive effects on purchase intention and choice, the European Union has considered adopting it as the official European label as part of their Farm-To-Fork strategy.
Nevertheless, not all countries are unequivocally in favour of this label; the same holds true for companies, and even experts and researchers, who cite mixed findings and several evidence gaps. This has complicated the decision of the European Commission and led to postponing their harmonized labelling efforts.
Against this backdrop, this dissertation focusses on strengthening the available evidence by addressing five key gaps. It explores the Nutri-Score’s effect outside of controlled environments, its impact on multi-attribute product choices, the heterogeneity in consumers’ preferences for the label, its implementation in online supermarkets, and the efforts undertaken by food manufacturers to engage in Nutri-Score-driven product reformulations.
Employing a range of methodologies - including a naturalistic field experiment, discrete choice modelling, a randomized controlled trial, and retrospective observational study – this work provides fresh insights into the Nutri-Score’s effectiveness. By extending our knowledge and insights on the multifaceted puzzle that surrounds the Nutri-Score, this thesis contributes to a robust evidence base that will eventually enable the European Commission to make well-informed and evidence-driven decisions on harmonized labelling efforts.

Hendrik Leder

• Monday 20 January 2025 at 9:30 am
• Supervisors: Sascha Albers & Markus Reihlen

Navigating Endgames: Conceptualization, Strategies and Successful Turnarounds 

The pace of technological change and digital transformation is accelerating, leading to the emergence of new industries as others decline. Responding to this phenomenon, this PhD thesis explores the challenges of industry decline, endgames and organizational turnarounds. I draw on a rich theoretical foundation and empirical evidence to identify the strategies firms can follow to navigate these challenges.

This PhD thesis is structured around three studies researching the social construction of endgames, how strategy is adapted within an endgame and how firms can achieve successful turnarounds. In the first study, I use a fictional institutionalist perspective to show how endgames are socially constructed, shedding light on the dynamic interplay of industry actors’ fictional expectations and the subsequent strategies they chose as an endgame diffuses through an industry. The second study investigates the patterns of strategic change in endgames and introduces a dialectical model that conceptualize the dynamics of organizational responses to industry decline. The last study focuses on organizational turnarounds as organizations initiate turnaround efforts to recover from prolonged decline in an endgame. This study uses a qualitative meta-analysis of turnaround cases to identify the underlying mechanisms and temporal sequences of successful recovery efforts. The four distinct process archetypes that this study identifies contributes both theoretical insights for researchers and practical insights for managers navigating turnaround scenarios. Together, these three studies provide a detailed understanding of endgames, from how endgames are conceptualized to which organizational strategies firms follow in endgames to the archetypes of organizational turnarounds that firms use to recover from prolonged decline during an endgame.

Overall, this thesis contributes theoretically and practically to the fields of strategic management and organizational studies. I provide a nuanced understanding of how organizations can navigate the tumultuous waters of decline, adapt to changing industry landscapes and orchestrate successful turnarounds in the face of adversity.