Ship Leadership, Situation Awareness, and Crew Safety Behaviour—Preregistered Replications in Two Survey Datasets

Sætrevik, Bjørn; Hystad, Sigurd · 2021 · Crossref

DOI: 10.16993/sjwop.96

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Summary

This study addresses the need for robust evidence linking leadership, situation awareness, and safety behaviors in the maritime industry. While previous research suggested that authentic leadership enhances crew situation awareness, which in turn reduces unsafe actions and lowers subjective risk assessments, these findings required validation to distinguish reliable patterns from methodological artifacts. The authors conducted preregistered direct replications of a 2017 structural equation model using two new survey datasets collected in 2015 and 2017 from crewmembers on offshore supply vessels operating on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The goal was to confirm whether higher situation awareness correlates with fewer unsafe actions and lower perceived risk, and whether authentic leadership facilitates this relationship. The researchers distributed anonymous surveys to crewmembers across multiple vessels. The 2015 dataset included 371 participants, while the 2017 dataset included 473 participants. Measures included authentic leadership (assessed via the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire in 2015 only), situation awareness (measured using a context-general scale based on Endsley’s three-level model), unsafe actions (self-reported deviations from safety procedures), and subjective risk assessment (estimated likelihood of accidents). Structural equation modeling was employed to test four preregistered hypotheses: that situation awareness negatively associates with unsafe actions and subjective risk, and that authentic leadership positively associates with situation awareness and negatively with unsafe actions. The results successfully replicated the associations found in the prior study. In both the 2015 and 2017 datasets, higher situation awareness was significantly associated with fewer unsafe actions and lower subjective risk assessments. In the 2015 dataset, which included leadership measures, authentic leadership was positively associated with situation awareness and negatively associated with unsafe actions, though the direct link between leadership and unsafe actions was weaker than the indirect path through situation awareness. The structural models explained large amounts of variance in situation awareness and unsafe actions, and medium to large amounts in subjective risk assessment. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the distinctiveness of the latent constructs. These findings strengthen the evidence that crewmembers’ cognitive states regarding safety signals are critical determinants of safety outcomes. The study confirms that authentic leadership qualities, such as transparency and ethical consistency, can foster the situation awareness necessary for safe operations. By providing preregistered replications, the authors increase the reliability of these relationships, suggesting that safety management interventions should prioritize developing leaders’ authentic qualities and enhancing crew situation awareness to mitigate risks in high-hazard maritime environments.

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• situation awareness theory