Distributed Leadership and Emergency Response: A Study on Seafarers

Abstract

Merchant shipping is an occupation with a high rate of fatal injuries caused by accidents and maritime disasters. The importance of safety leadership has been emphasized in many studies carried out within the maritime industry. However, there is a tendency for most research to focus on holders of formal positions. A lot of previous work on leadership has been carried out on the assumption that leadership rests with a single leader. The current study adopts a practice-based perspective to explore distributed leadership among seafarers. A mixed design is applied to explore the seafarer’s implicit understanding of distributed leadership through semi-structured interviews. A simulation is then developed and used to analyse the relationship between distributed leadership and the emergency response of the bridge team members.