Effects of national culture on human failures in container shipping: the moderating role of Confucian dynamism

Masculine Gender Norms and Adverse Workplace Safety Outcomes: The Role of Sexual Orientation and Risky Safety Behaviors

The current study tested the proposition that higher conformity to masculine gender norms (CMGN) is associated with increased safety risk-taking behaviors, which in turn are related to more accidents, injuries, and higher levels of accident underreporting. Additionally, we proposed that sexual minority status would exacerbate the relationship between conformity to masculine gender norms and safety risk-taking behaviors. Using two-wave lagged survey data obtained from N = 403 working adults, findings supported the proposed moderated-mediation model. High conformity to masculine gender norms was associated with increased safety risk-taking behaviors, accidents, injuries, and accident underreporting. Moreover, the relationship between CMGN and safety-risk-taking behaviors was stronger among homosexual men compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Additionally, safety risk-taking behaviors mediated the relationship between CMGN and safety outcomes. Finally, this indirect effect was stronger among homosexual men. Combined, these findings suggest that CMGN adversely impacts employee safety outcomes via safety-related risk-taking. We discuss these implications as well as the need for interventions designed to decrease risk taking behaviors in light of CMGN, particularly among sexual minorities.

Potentially traumatic experiences of seafarers

Background

The aim of the present study is to assess the extent to which seafarers had been affected by severe mental stress situations and what possible psychological effects they may have.

Methods

During the voyages of 22 German ships, a psychologically trained investigator interviewed 323 seafarers about severe mental stress or potentially traumatic events on board (participation rate 88.5%). Furthermore, a psychologist conducted semi-standardized interviews in 12 shipping companies and in 8 stations of the German Seafarers’ Mission on seafarers’ traumatic experiences.

Results

Of the seafarers surveyed on board, 116 (35.9%) experienced ship wrecks/severe accidents and 55 (17.0%) piracy on board. Experiences with stowaways were indicated by 126 seafarers (39.0%). Repeatedly having to unintentionally think about these events, being reminded of them by certain noises, smells, etc., or often dreaming of them were after-effects in 97 (83.6%) of the affected seafarers after ship wrecks/serious personal accidents on board and in 42 crew members (76.4%) after threats of piracy. Experiences of threat from stowaways had particularly affected non-European seafarers or ratings.

According to the interviews with the shipping companies, a total of 14 deaths occurred in the last 3 years in the 12 interviewed shipping companies (due to heart attacks (3), severe cancer (3), very serious accidents (3), suicides (2) and 3 with unknown causes of death). In relation to the container ships of the investigated shipping companies, these frequencies correspond to a mortality rate of 78.4 per 100,000 seafarer years.

According to the interviews in 8 Seafarers’ Missions, these organizations are in charge of emergency counselling in the form of crisis intervention when a seafarer has experienced serious psychological stress.

Discussion

A serious injury or even the death of a member is a serious psychological stress experience for the other crew members in the closed social system on board. These events are particularly distressing for Filipino seafarers with their strong sociocentric bonds and religious values. Priestly support is often required in order to stabilize the Filipino crew members.

Conclusion

As a preventive measure, psychoeducation for seafarers should be established for coping with extreme mental stress situations.

Maritime welfare facilities - utilization and relevance for the compensation of shipboard stress

Background

Maritime welfare institutions enable crew members of ships to use different recreation facilities ashore during their work assignments aboard. This study analyses the shipcrew members’ need and their usage behavior of maritime welfare facilities that can be visited free of charge while their ship is in port.

Methods

A medically trained scientist interviewed 316 seafarers during 22 ship voyages. In addition, interviews were performed in 8 stations of the German Seamen’s Missions.

Results

Port stay of the vessels accounted for 43.6% of the entire voyage duration. 279 seafarers (88.3%) stated having had opportunities for shore leave in order to visit maritime welfare facilities. Officers less often stated possibilities for shore leave than ratings (OR 0.40; 95%CI 0.24–0.67). The main reasons for shore leave were to contact family and friends and distraction from the everyday work on board. Short stays in port, a high workload and limited opportunities for reaching the welfare facilities were main obstacles to shore leave. Furthermore, several seafarers complained about poor information on board about the facilities. Among the various welfare institutions, a “very high importance” was attributed to Seamen’s Missions and religious facilities (40% of the non-European seafarers - especially from Asia - and approx. 10% of the Europeans).

Conclusion

This study reveals sufficient time periods for seafarers to leave the vessel in port, mainly depending on the number of terminals to be called at. During the vessels’ port stay, a reduced workload for the shipping crew can be achieved by transferring several routine tasks to shoreside personnel. Furthermore, more attention should be paid to the accessibility of the welfare facilities and to better information about their offers. Measures should be taken to facilitate visits to maritime welfare facilities as an important refuge for seafarers.

The effect of demographic factors on occupational injuries

OBJECTIVES

In Finland about 120,000 occupational injuries occur annually, the cost of which is over EUR 2 billion per year. This is why it is reasonable to analyze the effect of demographic factors like gender, age, tenure and mother tongue on occupational injuries.

METHODS

The participants consisted of 1681 employees from four Finnish companies, who reported their injuries from the last 3 years.

RESULTS

Gender or mother tongue did not associate with injury involvement. Employees younger than 25 years of age were more often involved in injuries than employees aged over 55 (odds ratio [OR] = 2.69, 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.70, 4.23]). Employees with 2-10 years of experience in the company had a higher injury frequency than both novice and very experienced employees (OR = 2.01, 95% CI [1.60, 2.52]).

CONCLUSIONS

This study showed that age was a more important factor in injury involvement than gender, tenure or mother tongue. However, age was closely related to experience in the company. Prevention measures in the companies should thus focus on novice employees.

The relationship between national culture and safety culture: Implications for international safety culture assessments

In this article, we examine the relationship between safety culture and national culture, and the implications of this relationship for international safety culture assessments. Focussing on Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance (UA) index, a survey study of 13,616 Air Traffic Management employees in 21 European countries found a negative association between safety culture and national norm data for UA. This is theorized to reflect the influence of national tendencies for UA upon attitudes and practices for managing safety (e.g., anxiety on risk; reliance on protocols; concerns over reporting incidents; openness to different perspectives). The relationship between UA and safety culture is likely to have implications for international safety culture assessments. Specifically, benchmarking exercises will consistently indicate safety management within organizations in high UA countries to be poorer than low UA countries due to the influence of national culture upon safety practices, which may limit opportunities for identifying and sharing best practice. We propose the use of safety culture against international group norms (SIGN) scores to statistically adjust for the influence of UA upon safety culture data, and to support the identification of safety practices effective and particular to low or high UA cultures.

Practitioner points

National cultural tendencies for uncertainty avoidance (UA) are negatively associated with safety culture.

This indicates that employee safety‐related attitudes and practices may be influenced by national culture, and thus factors outside the direct control of organizational management.

International safety culture assessments should attempt to determine the influence of national culture upon safety culture in order that benchmarking exercises compare aspects of safety management and not national culture.

Safety culture against international group norms (SIGN) scores provide a potential way to do this, and can facilitate the identification of best practice within countries operating in a low or high UA cultural cluster.

Do you see what I see? Effects of national culture on employees' safety-related perceptions and behavior

Growing international trade and globalization are increasing the cultural diversity of the modern workforce, which often results in migrants working under the management of foreign leadership. This change in work arrangements has important implications for occupational health and safety, as migrant workers have been found to be at an increased risk of injuries compared to their domestic counterparts. While some explanations for this discrepancy have been proposed (e.g., job differences, safety knowledge, and communication difficulties), differences in injury involvement have been found to persist even when these contextual factors are controlled for. We argue that employees' national culture may explain further variance in their safety-related perceptions and safety compliance, and investigate this through comparing the survey responses of 562 Anglo and Southern Asian workers at a multinational oil and gas company. Using structural equation modeling, we firstly established partial measurement invariance of our measures across cultural groups. Estimation of the combined sample structural model revealed that supervisor production pressure was negatively related to willingness to report errors and supervisor support, but did not predict safety compliance behavior. Supervisor safety support was positively related to both willingness to report errors and safety compliance. Next, we uncovered evidence of cultural differences in the relationships between supervisor production pressure, supervisor safety support, and willingness to report errors; of note, among Southern Asian employees the negative relationship between supervisor production pressure and willingness to report errors was stronger, and for supervisor safety support, weaker as compared to the model estimated with Anglo employees. Implications of these findings for safety management in multicultural teams within the oil and gas industry are discussed.

Safety sans Frontières: An International Safety Culture Model

The management of safety culture in international and culturally diverse organizations is a concern for many high-risk industries. Yet, research has primarily developed models of safety culture within Western countries, and there is a need to extend investigations of safety culture to global environments. We examined (i) whether safety culture can be reliably measured within a single industry operating across different cultural environments, and (ii) if there is an association between safety culture and national culture. The psychometric properties of a safety culture model developed for the air traffic management (ATM) industry were examined in 17 European countries from four culturally distinct regions of Europe (North, East, South, West). Participants were ATM operational staff (n = 5,176) and management staff (n = 1,230). Through employing multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, good psychometric properties of the model were established. This demonstrates, for the first time, that when safety culture models are tailored to a specific industry, they can operate consistently across national boundaries and occupational groups. Additionally, safety culture scores at both regional and national levels were associated with country-level data on Hofstede's five national culture dimensions (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and long-term orientation). MANOVAs indicated safety culture to be most positive in Northern Europe, less so in Western and Eastern Europe, and least positive in Southern Europe. This indicates that national cultural traits may influence the development of organizational safety culture, with significant implications for safety culture theory and practice.

Occupational accidents in the Danish merchant fleet and the nationality of seafarers

Background

The aim of the study was to examine occupational accidents reported from non-passenger merchant ships registered in the Danish International Ship Register in 2010-2012, with a focus on analysing nationality differences in the risk of getting injured in an accident.

Methods

Data about notified occupational accidents were collected from notifications sent to the Danish Maritime Authority and from records of contact with Danish Radio Medical. Events were matched by personal identification and accident data to create a unified database. Stratified cumulative time spent on board by seafarers was used to calculate accident rates. Incidence rates of different nationalities were compared by Poisson regression.

Results

Western European seafarers had an overall accident rate of 17.5 per 100000 person-days, which proved to be significantly higher than that of Eastern European, South East Asian and Indian seaman (adjusted incidence rate ratio 0.53, 0.51 and 0.74, respectively), although differences decreased over the investigated period. Smaller but in most cases still significant discrepancies were observed for serious injuries. The back injury rate of Western European employees was found especially high, while eye injuries seem to be more frequent among South East Asian workers.

Conclusions

The study identified substantial differences between nationalities in the rate of various accidents reported from merchant ships sailing under the Danish flag. The differences may be attributed to various factors such as safety behaviour. Investigation of special injury types and characterisation of effective elements of safety culture can contribute to the improvement of workplace safety in the maritime sector.