Gemilerde Kültür Çeşitliliği: Personel Özelliklerine Yönelik Bir Çalışma

Abstract

Cultural diversity became a significant factor in seafarers’ operational performance onboard. Since ships are operated by multinational crew members, socializing, and understanding foreign cultures became crucial for seafarers working onboard multicultural ships. Diversity management is essential for achieving an effective workforce, as well as making these benefits visible and allowing the organization to leverage them as a competitive advantage. However, apart from its advantages, diversity brought some challenges such as communication errors and cultural misunderstandings. Considering the human element is the primary factor among the maritime accident causations, challenges caused by cultural diversity has the potential to cause a raise in maritime accidents. Crew management onboard multicultural ships should be rigorously carried out to limit unwanted impacts. Our study aims to have a better view on optimal seafarer profile suitable to work onboard ships having multicultural crew members. The prepared questionnaire was administered to interns and officers worked aboard multicultural ships for this purpose, and the findings were evaluated using independent t-test analysis.