The high frequency of maritime accidents and incidents occurring at sea has been a major challenge for the maritime industry in the last decades. The majority of these accidents are attributed to seafarers’ poor performance. This, despite the fact that the international maritime domain continues to adopt and update conventions regulating maritime safety to mitigate these accidents from occurring. In this paper, utilizing a qualitative research approach, we show through a socio-cultural contextual perspective that time constraints as a major influencing factor in causing task deviations at sea which leads to dangerous situations. We analyse how some of the present barriers in place to prevent accidents at sea are in effect prompt seafarers who are working under time pressure to deviate from their task. Moreover, the paper discusses the social constituents such as job insecurity and the seafarers’ viewpoint towards the ship operators’ commitment to safe ship operations are crucial in motivating seafarers’ deviating from the task at hand when faced with time pressure.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	maritime transport, safety, task deviation, work as imagined, work as done, time constraints, seafaring
Research Division:	Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services
Research Group:	Transportation and Freight Services
Research Field:	Transportation and Freight Services not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Transport
Objective Group:	Water Transport
Objective Field:	Coastal Sea Freight Transport
UTAS Author:	Rajapakse, A (CAPT Asanka Rajapakse)
UTAS Author:	Emad, GR (Dr Reza Emad)
ID Code:	130704
Year Published:	2019
Deposited By:	Seafaring
Deposited On:	2019-02-08
Last Modified:	2019-04-16
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