Dealing with multicultural human resources in a socially responsible manner: a focus on the maritime industry

Abstract

Shipping companies' crucial need for cost cutting is their main motive for recruiting seafarers of various nationalities and formulating multicultural teams on board ships. This paper seeks to examine ways of dealing with cultural issues by being a socially responsible company. The main point of the research is to examine how managing multicultural crews is related to the shipping companies' and the industry's social responsibility. An extensive literature review on the cultural issues of maritime manpower, with a focus on the working and living conditions and the management of shipping crews, reveals important aspects of the subject. This analysis is enriched with qualitative data from an on-board case study, and from a survey among crew managers and manning agents. Results show that managing multicultural human resources in a socially responsible manner requires socially acceptable behaviour towards seagoing labour from all the industrial actors.

Using the flipped classroom to improve student engagement and to prepare graduates to meet maritime industry requirements: a focus on maritime education

“…The MI is a complex, multicultural global industry (Progoulaki and Roe 2011). As Pallis and Ng (2011) highlight, the changing global environment has led to an increasing emphasis on professional, dedicated knowledge within maritime education.…”

“…The practical nature of the MI presents maritime educators (MEs) with an opportunity to expect meaningful student learning that drives teaching practice. Focus should be on how students are learning, what they experience and how they engage in the learning context and subsequently meet graduate attributes which are considered vital by the MI (Wiggins and McTighe 2005;Progoulaki and Roe 2011). The flipped classroom promotes active student engagement and learning, in turn producing more industryready graduates (Strayer 2012; Hannafin et al 1997;Bates and Galloway 2012;Mazur 2009).…”

Marine Accidents Researched Through Human Factor Prisma

“…The ship's master must learn how to manage multiculturalism. This guarantees a long-term stability in relationships among crew members [12]. On the other hand, physical factors also cause human errors, and the most representative example is the period just before the dawn when surveys showed that many collisions occurred in that period of time.…”

“…There have been a lot of papers such as from [4] to [12] to consider and describe some human and organizational factors that were presented in marine accidents and which can be found in many of them over the years. A neural network applied in [4] has demonstrat-ed its usefulness and accuracy in predicting the type of ship accidents that would occur under different combinations of navigating conditions on the lower Mississippi River.…”

“…The human element as a general factor of accident initiation and most importantly its constituent component in the form of specific onboard duties (functions) and/ or off-board (mainly ashore) entities has been presented and analyzed. An overview of the cultural issue impact on shipping crew thoughts that raises questions stemming is presented in [12]. The main point of the study was to examine how managing multicultural crews is related to the social responsibility of shipping companies and the industry.…”