외국인 선원 혼승선박의 문화.조직적 특성이 자기효능감과 조직커미트먼트에 미치는 영향

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study is to examine empirically the effect of foreign crew’s cultural and organizational characteristics on their self-efficacy and organizational commitment. Currently, the restrictions on the employment of the foreign crews are being eased in the Korean shipping industry and many problems are occurring consequently. However, specific and empirical studies on the relevancy of cultural and organizational characteristics to the crew’s self-efficacy and organizational commitment on board the vessels with combined crews have not yet been carried out. To solve these problems, we need to examine how the cultural characteristics such as acculturation and accommodation of different culture related to the improvement of cultural homogeneity of vessels with combined crews, and the peculiar characteristics of crew organization such as particularity and difficulty of onboard service influence on the self-efficacy, job satisfaction and organizational commitment of the foreign crews.

Since one of strategies to change self-efficacy is to inform the attributes and complexity of task, and to provide with information about environment and how to control it, cultural and organizational characteristics should be taken into consideration in the studies on self-efficacy of organization of the vessel with combined crew as environmental factors. According to Early(1994), effect of a social factor on self-efficacy varies depending on cultural environment. In case of collectivism, for instance, self-efficacy can be better explained by social cognitive theory than in individualism. In addition, it is known that self-efficacy varies depending on organizational characteristics, and therefore we need to take into consideration isolation from society and family, limited work space and invasion of privacy as well as smooth communication and leadership trust, in the crew organization.

In order to achieve the above purpose, literature survey on the cultural and organizational characteristics self-efficacy and organizational commitment is conducted. The research model on the structural relationship among variables - organizational characteristics, self-efficacy and organizational commitment is established as follows.

Foreign Crew’s Cultural and Organizational Characteristics

Self-Efficacy

Organizational Commitment

Other Culture Acceptance

Acculturation

Communication

Leadership Trust

Psychological Tolerance

Physiological Tolerance

Job Satisfaction

Commitment to the Organization

Figure 1. The Research Model

The following hypotheses are developed for the research objectives.

Hypothesis １: The foreign crew's cultural and organizational characteristics will have effect on the self-efficacy.

Hypothesis ２: The foreign crew's self-efficacy will have effect on the organization commitment.

Data were collected from 6 shipping companies in Korea such as Chang Myung Shipping, Panstar Shipping, SK Shipping, STX Pan Ocean, Hanjin Shipping, Hyundai Merchant Marine and 7 overseas crew manning agents in the Philippines, China, Myanmar, Vietnam and Indonesia with questionnaires made by the Likert scales. These collected data were analyzed by reliability analysis, confirmative factor analysis, and structural equation modeling analysis, etc.

According to the results, hypothesis 1 and 2 were all supported with statistical significance. To conclude, this study suggests that foreign crew's self-efficacy should be firstly enhanced in order to improve organizational commitment on the vessel with combined crews.

In conclusion, studies on self-efficacy of crew organization is urgently needed to enhance the effectiveness of an organization in a vessel with combined crews that has special environment - working environment with depression and uneasiness due to the exposure to the different culture and excessive stress from the social and psychological adaptation. Therefore, an attempt of this study is considered to be timely since there has not been a study on this subject so far and result of this study will contribute a lot to the organization management of a vessel with combined crews.

For example, educational institutions training seamen in Korea also need to introduce new training programs with regards to leadership on the foreign crews with different cultures with accepting and adapting to the different cultures of foreign crews to meet globalization of labor market of crews and increasing trend of vessels with combined crews. And the results of this study also suggest that we need to strengthen foreign languages training with making allowance for the importance of communication.

However, this study may have limitation since it analyzed only foreign crews in examining cultural and organizational characteristics and self-efficacy of vessels with combined crews. As cultural and organizational characteristics of foreign crews are visible when interacting with Korean crews who are on board of the same vessel, further studies on self-efficacy depending on cultural and organizational characteristics with targeting both Korean and foreign crews will be necessary.

Although factors of onboard service tolerance that were set in this study are considered to be very important in the researches on crew organization, structural correlation between onboard service tolerance and other variables was proved to be not significant in this study. This was resulted from little difference in respondents' recognition on onboard service tolerance, and problems of crew organization arisen from onboard service tolerance were not diagnosed and analyzed accurately. Therefore, further studies examining relevance between onboard service tolerance and other organizational factors to be carried out by developing the tools to measure onboard service tolerance more accurately.