Complexity and Ambivalence in Ship Safety Inspection

The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the safety culture on board vessels trading in the Baltic Sea. The common denominator for vessels trading in the Baltic Sea is frequent port visits, coastal voyages, voyages in dense trafficked areas and small crews. Earlier research shows that there may be a system fault in the shipping industry. Charles Perrow describes the maritime industry as an error inducing system. He means that the cause for that is the way shipping is carried out. In a safety culture values, attitudes, competence and behavioural patterns are four important factors that define the safety culture. The maritime safety management system, International Safety Management Code (ISM) aims towards a proactive and evolutionally safety culture in the shipping industry. The results show that shipping today lacks a foresight, failure of foresight, where the proactive way of work leads to incidents and accidents being anticipated. This study has an ethnographic perspective, which aims to create a thick and substantial description of the culture that is being studied. Totally a number of eleven vessels participated in the study. The visits on board reach from a couple of hours up to a few days. Collected data has been analysed through a selfdeveloped model in an ambition to try to explain the safety culture. The model focuses on how information, feedback, responsibility, co-operation, follow-up and development are being handled. The study reveals that there is a need to discuss and change the safety culture in the shipping industry, in large as on the single vessel. As well as a need for further studies of how the safety culture can Appendix 3 Fredrik Hjorth 112 be improved and a need for education aimed towards system thinking, organizational theory and safety culture.