Purpose Container shipping companies face various risks with different consequences that are required to be mitigated. Limited empirical research has been done on identifying and evaluating risk management strategies in shipping operations with different risk consequences. This paper aims to identify the appropriate risk mitigation strategies and evaluate the relative importance of these strategies. Design/methodology/approach Literature review and interviews were used to identify and validate the appropriate risk mitigation strategies in container shipping operations. A questionnaire with a Likert five-point scale was then conducted to rank the identified risk mitigation strategies in terms of their overall effectiveness. Top six important strategies were selected to evaluate their relative importance under three risk consequences (i.e. financial, reputation and safety and security incident related loss) through using another questionnaire with paired-comparison. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was then conducted to analyse the paired-comparison questionnaire. Findings After conducting a systematic literature review and interviews, 18 mitigation strategies were identified. The results from the first questionnaire show that among the 18 strategies, the top three are “form alliances with other shipping companies”, “use more advanced infrastructures (hardware and software)” and “choose partners very carefully”. After conducting fuzzy AHP, the results show that shipping companies emphasize more on reducing the risk consequence of financial loss; and “form alliance with other shipping companies” is the most important risk mitigation strategy. Originality/value This paper evaluates the risk mitigation strategies against three risk consequences. Managers can benefit from the systematic identification of mitigation strategies, which shipping companies can consider for adoption to reduce the operational risk impact.

中文翻译：

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在集装箱运输业务中选择有效的风险缓解策略

目的集装箱运输公司面临各种风险，需要减轻不同的后果。在识别和评估具有不同风险后果的航运业务中的风险管理策略方面，已经进行了有限的实证研究。本文旨在确定适当的风险缓解策略并评估这些策略的相对重要性。设计/方法/方法文献综述和访谈被用来识别和验证集装箱运输业务中的适当风险缓解策略。然后用李克特五点量表进行问卷调查，以根据整体效果对已确定的风险缓解策略进行排名。选择了前六项重要策略来评估其在三种风险后果（即财务，声誉和安全与安全事件相关的损失），方法是使用另一项具有配对比较的问卷。然后进行模糊层次分析法（AHP）来分析配对比较问卷。调查结果在进行了系统的文献综述和访谈之后，确定了18种缓解策略。第一份调查问卷的结果表明，在这18种策略中，排名前三的是“与其他船运公司结成联盟”，“使用更高级的基础架构（硬件和软件）”和“非常谨慎地选择合作伙伴”。进行模糊层次分析后，结果表明航运公司更加注重降低财务损失的风险后果。“与其他船运公司结成联盟”是最重要的风险缓解策略。创意/价值本文针对三种风险后果评估了风险缓解策略。管理者可以从缓解策略的系统识别中受益，船运公司可以考虑采用缓解策略以减少操作风险的影响。