The Freeport of Riga, Latvia

During the years the Freeport of Riga has experienced major shifts in its operations. With changing political and economic situations in Latvia itself and its trading partners, the port has adjusted its infrastructure, superstructure including its management. Therefore considering the existing uncertainty in the market, the existing literature on supply chain management and port performance has mainly highlighted the need for agile and flexible decision making of the port authority. This motivated to further research how the Authority of the Freeport of Riga accounts for flexibility in its decision making. The analysis is based on the “The Project of Krievu Sala” and is split into three sub-questions. In order to examine the first sub-question about the role of flexibility in supply chain and port performance management findings in the recent literature, different theories are presented about the notions of flexibility and agility in current market trends. It can be concluded that currently the port is the key element of a well-integrated supply chain; therefore it has to account for flexibility in designing their projects as well as in their management. The second sub-question aims to describe the nature of the Freeport of Riga by explaining different factors that directly affect its sustainable development. Different legal aspects as well as political developments are extremely influential in the eyes of the society when examining the decisions of the Authority of the Freeport. This is mainly based on different interviews, discourse analysis and desk research. The third and final sub-question of the paper deals with the actual examination of flexibility in “The Project of Krievu Sala” based on two dimensions, namely range and adaptability. Both the choice of the model and dimensions are based on the relevant theoretical literature. The results of the examination differs between both of the dimensions, indicating that the possibilities for the improvement of the range options accounts more for inclusion of flexibility in its developments. Whereas the evaluation of adaptability proves more unclear and lacking a thorough flexibility planning. Thus the examination of the execution of “The Project of Krievu Sala” reveals that the Board of officials are the ones who decide upon the planning and actual execution of the project. Thus it can be concluded that the extent of the integration of flexibility notions for the long term development of the port are purely defined, based on the decisions of the Board of the Freeport of Riga.