TRANSPORT-Transport 2025

Despite the implementation of the ISM Code in 1998-2002, navigational accidents have continued to increase. As a result, there is a growing recognition that the ISM Code in itself is insufficient to sustain safe transportation. With this background, the o verall aim of this project is to identify individual, interpersonal, and organizational factors that influence safety culture and sustain desirable safety performance in the maritime transport sector. Safety culture can be understood as a multilayered co ncept comprising the organizational members' basic assumptions and values, beliefs, and patterns of behavioural norms. Safety culture is difficult to assess without interactive probing, which lays ground for qualitative methods. Part A of the proposed pro ject, therefore, will employ qualitative methods to assess safety culture in the maritime transport sector and explore why formal regulations like the ISM Code seemingly has had limited effect on safety outcomes. Safety climate can be conceived of as a m anifestation of selected aspects of the organizational culture, and is relatively less complex than safety culture and more accessible through quantitative methods. Part B of the proposed project will therefore use a variety of quantitative methods to exp lore how safety climate and inter-personal and individual mechanism individually or in combination affect safety outcomes. The proposed project will generate new knowledge about organizational, interpersonal and individual factors that has implications fo r both a theoretical and an applied understanding of safety management and its relationships to safety culture in the shipping sector. The project will result in a survey measure of safety climate and will identity key individual and inter-personal/social factors that influence safety culture and safety behaviours. The proposed theoretical frameworks and implications are not limited to maritime sectors, but will also transcend to other transportation sectors.