Abstract
Complacency has been recognised as a cause of maritime accidents, and there is a need to develop and execute relevant preventive measures. The effectiveness of preventive actions depends on the contribution of the seafarers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify causes and elicit proposals for preventing complacency by officers in charge of the engineering watch. A total of 63 Croatian engineering officers participated in four deliberative workshops, facilitated by an expert in the teaching of leadership and management. As causes of complacency, intensive workload, poor knowledge/understanding of the equipment, steep authority gradient, lack of collaboration, poor communication, efficiency-thoroughness trade-off, crewing strategies, and lack of organisational justice were identified. Efficient training on workload management, adequate familiarisation, reporting issues with technology, producing one’s own manuals, more effective leadership courses, more emphasis on non-technical skills as criteria for a promotion, joint workshops on teamwork for land-based managers and seafarers, open and objective performance evaluation, and direct communication between land-based managers and seafarers were proposed as feasible preventive measures. Human-centred design and standardisation of the equipment were evaluated as unlikely to be feasible. Some practical implications from the findings were discussed.
Highlights
A major part of the aftermath of the accidents or incidents in safety-critical systems is a root cause analysis [1]
Analyses performed as a part of the FP7 SEAHORSE project considered complacency as an underlying accident sub-factor present in 6% of maritime accidents [3]
Group discussions done after the introduction by the facilitator revealed that participants had various opinions about the meaning of the term complacency and that most of them considered complacency as a sort of laziness, sloppiness, or incompetence
Summary
A major part of the aftermath of the accidents or incidents in safety-critical systems is a root cause analysis [1]. According to a study published in 2018, complacent behaviour contributed to 11% of accidents caused by problems related to technology [4]. The term complacency has been used in the analysis of accidents and incidents in the aviation community since approximately 1960–1970 [6] It was included as a coding item for incident reports by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Aviation Safety Reporting System in 1976 and is defined as “self-satisfaction that may result in no vigilance based on an unjustified assumption of satisfactory system state” [7]. Several studies used the automation-induced complacency potential rating scale developed by Singh et al [10], with items related to trust and perceived reliability of automated systems. A new scale of automation-induced complacency potential that focuses on attitudes such as using and monitoring has been developed [5]
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