This document outlines a research study on reducing shipping accidents by analyzing the effects of regulatory compliance, safety culture, and profit motives. The study aims to assess organizations' safety regulation adherence and safety management system implementation. Survey data on compliance, profit, and safety culture will be used in a structural equation model. The researcher hypothesizes that high regulatory compliance, a well-implemented safety system, and an understanding of safety culture dimensions can help reduce annual accident reports by improving safety standards. A mixed methods approach is proposed using questionnaires, accident data analysis, and structural equation modeling path analysis to compare results between company groups.

1. The Challenge of achieving Safety at Sea
through convoluted effects of Regulatory
compliance, Safety culture, and Profit - An
etiological analysis .
(An Insider Practitioner Research in Merchant Shipping)
Deb Narayan Goswami.
Supervisors :
Prof. Dr. Stephanie Jones.
Prof. Dr. Jose Tongzon.

2. Adoption of agreed regulation and standard and their
implementation.
• The world relies on a safe, secureThe world relies on a safe, secure
and efficient international shippingand efficient international shipping
industry and it can only operateindustry and it can only operate
effectively if the regulations andeffectively if the regulations and
standards are themselves agreed,standards are themselves agreed,
adopted and implemented on anadopted and implemented on an
international basis.international basis.
…………..International Maritime Organization (IMO)..International Maritime Organization (IMO)
((Picture source : www.google.com)Picture source : www.google.com)

3. Shipping Casualty Statistics : Total Losses 2006-2015: When and where
(Source: http://www.agcs.allianz.com/insights/white-papers-and-case-studies/safety-and-shipping-review-2016/ accessed 30 Nov 2016 )
Year : 2006-2015 / Total 866 ships were lost at sea / Ave 87 per year, / 1.74 Billion
USD ,
(if average cost is considered 20 Million per ship).

4. YEAR 2018 , ACCIDENT NUMBER COMPARISON BETWEEN FEB AND JUN
Source: http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/statistics_mar.html accessed 28 JULY 18

5. Contents :
• 1/ Problem Statement
• 2/ Research Aims & Objectives
• 3/ Major & Minor Research Questions
• 4/ Hypothesis
• 5/ Conceptual Model
• 6/ Methodology
• 7/ Reflexivity
• 8/ Q&A / Discussions

6. Problem Statement
• Shipping accidents are a disaster to shipping industry and to world
trade. Accidents cause an economic burden to ship-owners and also to
other stakeholders across the globe.
• In today´ s world, with all the new technologies such as ECDIS, AIS,
ARPA, Anti-collisions systems (ACS), and weather routing technologies
– it might be expected that accidents, such as those that happened in
the last century, might be eliminated, or at least there would be fewer
now. But accidents are still happening, despite technological change as
well as regulatory evolution.
• As reported in the European Maritime Safety Agency´ s (EMSA, 2015)
maritime casualty report (2015, p 23), the maritime industry faced in
2011, 1497 accidents, in 2012 – 2432, in 2013 – 3111, and in 2014
3,399 marine accidents……. numbers are rising.

7. Shipping Stakeholders
Shipping Stakeholders, and this research refers to the Ship
owner.

8. Research Aims and Objectives
• This study aims to analyse ´ safety cultures and profit orientation. This will
help to assess various organizations´ attempts to comply with safety
regulations and the implementation standard of their safety management
system to reduce the annually reported number of accidents in shipping.
• The objective of this research is to contribute its findings to the shipping
companies that will allow them to solve their safety managerial problems to
reduce accidents.
• The indicative values as derived from survey questionnaires of Safety
Regulation Compliance, Profit, and Safety culture will be used in a
Structural equation model (SEM). The positive relations among the
variables in the model will be the reference for improvement to reduce
accidents.

9. Major Question:
Which factors might reduce the
number of annually reported accidents
in merchant shipping and how can
they be implemented?

10. Minor Questions
1/ How can the level of safety regulation compliance create
a safety culture despite the need to be profitable ?
2/ How can the sincere regulatory compliance reduce
accidents ?
3/ How can robust safety culture (say - do / do - say) reduce
accidents ?
4/ Are there examples of reduced accidents if the
stakeholders of a shipping company make a specific point of
insisting that profit should not come in way to compromise
safety ?

11. Hypotheses.
• H - 1: “A high level of MLC code, and ISM code for safety regulation
compliance (>90%, assigned value by auditors) would be expected to co-
exist with a consistently-implemented safety management system (avoiding
creative compliance, practical drift), that can help to improve safety culture
on a ship.
• H - 2: “A consistently-implemented safety management system that has well
defined safety policy and adequate necessary safe working procedures
indicate existence of good safety culture that can reduce the annual number
of reported marine accidents/casualties worldwide”.
• H - 3: ¨ A clear understanding of safety culture and accurate measurement
of its twenty-three dimensions can help to find out the scope for
improvement of safety standard, which can reduce the continuing high
number of annually reported merchant shipping accidents and casualties¨ .

12. Conceptual Model

13. Methodology
• This will be a mixed method action research which means a combination of
quantitative and qualitative research. Mixed method research helps to
verify the if the quantitative data are matching or not with qualitative data
thereby creating a sound research outcome.
• This research is explorative, which means the researcher is looking for,
what past studies have been made so far to address the safety cultures.
He is gathering the background information of influence of regulation
compliance and profit orientation over safety culture by focussing on past
accidents, over a longitudinal period of, 20 years before and 20 years after
1998 , for 20 numbers of accidents. The questionnaires are being prepared
accordingly based on these 3 issues (slide -17).
• The research design has four stages. The first stage refers to the
¨ Formation of Research Group¨ , the second stage refers to
¨ Operationalization of Conceptual model¨ , the third stage refers to
¨ Wider Data Collection area¨ , and the fourth stage refers to ¨ Data
Analysis and then Path Analysis by SEM¨ for two different sets of
companies to compare between them.

14. Methodology – SEM Path Analysis

15. Reflexivity
• PERIOD: This study will be conducted over a period
of next two years (commencing from May 2018).
• DYNAMIC INDUSTRY: Maritime Shipping being a
dynamic industry and it changes with time, and during
this period the regulation compliance, safety culture,
and accident statistics may also change.
• CONTRAINTS: My sailing on ship may cause
interruptions.
• LIMITATION: The limitation of this study is, the
sample area is only small portion maritime industry
and carrier ( ship-owner) perspective and it does not
include the charterers, the shippers and consignees
who also have a stake in maritime safety.

16. Thank You.
Q&A