Effects of job demands and social interactions on fatigue in short sea cargo shipping

ABSTRACT

Although fatigue is considered an important problem in shipping, little is known about potential mitigating factors or resources for coping. Adopting a Job Demands–Resources framework, this article examines the effects of both job demands (stressors) and resources on fatigue, focusing on social interactions on board as a potential source of social support. Using an incomplete repeated-measures design, the study combined information from documents with surveys on seven cargo ships. Findings indicated that fatigue levels were highest for those working on deck and for individuals at higher hierarchical levels. Higher numbers of port calls (and to some extent lower numbers of days at sea) also increased fatigue levels. By contrast, night watches and the number of days in port had no effect on fatigue. Supportive social interactions reduced fatigue (main effect), but their effect was weaker when the number of port calls increased (interaction effect). All main effects were mediated by individuals’ perceptions of work pressure. Taken together, findings highlight the importance of considering social interactions on board to advance our understanding of stressors and strain in seafaring.

KEYWORDS:

• Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model
• longer- term fatigue
• ship’s schedule
• short sea shipping
• social support
• watch keeping

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jannika Lassus and Mervi Vuolama-Ristola for their help with the Swedish and Finnish translations of the survey and Mira Karjalainen for advice on nautical terminology in Finnish. Special thanks to the masters and crews of the ships who participated in this study for their hospitality and to the masters and office personnel for their help with practical matters. Most of all, many thanks to all who participated in the surveys.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. To maintain confidentiality, all ship names used in this article are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

Data collection was supported by grants from the Hanken Foundation and the Dr. h. c. Marcus Wallenberg Foundation for Promoting Research in Business Administration.