Diversity and Social Trust

Abstract

The labor milieu of merchant seamen is an environment which may be treated as a laboratory to analyze the processes ongoing in contemporary organizations. In this article authors concentrate on two main problems concerning interpersonal relations in a ship in the context of trust: the intercultural communication and the issue of diversity based on other qualities. Today's management practices aimed at economization of work at sea result in the fact that many of deep-sea vessels' crews are multinational teams. Long-term isolation of vessels' crews means good conditions for research on the influence of multiculturalism on interpersonal relations as well as for the level and sort of trust between seamen. The authors make attempt to prove that there is no simple and positive relation between the lack of cultural differences (understanding of others) and the level of trust. On the basis of their qualitative and quantitative research on people working at sea the authors also try to specify the tolerance of seamen toward the others. The diversity dimensions such as age, gender, religion/ denomination and sexual orientations are used to describe multiculturalism in categories of acceptance and rejection. In the research presented in the article the authors have used the auditorium questionnaire (n = 224) and 20 in-depth individual interviews with seamen.