What is your intention? Tacit knowledge and community-based learning for collision avoidance in the global maritime industry

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the practice of collision avoidance in Merchant ships to highlight the role of tacit knowledge and collective learning in the formation of professional practice. Analysis of 1,431 recorded VHF radio conversations drawn from real-time ship-to-ship interactions provides a unique window onto professional competence in navigation, and the application of professional judgement underpinned by tacit knowledge learned through practice. Moreover, we argue that such tacit knowledge is gained within a ‘community of practice’. More specifically, our data reveal how: (i) the practice of collision avoidance is more collaborative than reference to the extant regulations (the COLREGs) alone would suggest, and (ii) the practice of discussing collision avoidance over the radio can be seen as a form of collective production and learning of tacit knowledge through practice. Consequently, our analysis provides insight into the social nature of collision avoidance practice. In so doing, the paper makes a significant contribution by (i) adding a new example to the corpus of research in this area, (ii) introducing the community perspective of learning to the maritime sector, (iii) extending the concept of community-based learning by presenting data that illustrates both individual and collective learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Workplace learning
• communities of practice
• tacit knowledge
• collision avoidance
• maritime training

Acknowledgements

The primary data included in this article was collected as part of a funded programme of research undertaken at the Seafarers International Research Centre (under the Directorship of Prof. Helen Sampson) and funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation to whom we would like to express our gratitude.

Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers and colleagues who have provided feedback on this paper, including Sara Delamont, Alan Felstead, David James, and Rob Evans. And we particularly wish to express our gratitude to David Beckett and Paul Hager who have been unerringly generous in their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. We note the gendered nature of this term, here we repeat the language used in the regulations; seafaring is a highly gendered profession with women constituting just 1.28% of the 1.89 million workforce.

2. All ships listen out and make initial contact on channel 16, but to avoid blocking this channel they then select one of the established alternative channels to conduct their discussion.

3. For full detail see (Bailey et al., 2008).

4. The rules allow for communicating uncertainty by sounding ‘five short blasts’ on the ship’s whistle.

5. It has helpfully been pointed out, by one of the anonymous reviewers, that the argument could reasonably be developed as illustrating expertise as a ‘capacity for action’ – as outlined in Guile and Unwin (2022). We view this as an interesting direction to pursue but one that is beyond the scope of this paper.

6. These interactions are taking place in open water not narrow channels, where different rules apply.

7. We would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for bringing this article to our attention. In the development of the concept of CoP, one turn taken has been to move the emphasis from the community onto the practice and so refer instead to Practices of a Community (Gherardi 2009) we are sympathetic to this suggestion but feel it is beyond the scope of this paper to address it here.

8. Lloyd’s Register Foundation is an independent global charity engineering a safer world. It supports research, innovation, and public outreach to reduce risk and enhance the safety of the critical infrastructure that modern society relies upon.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation.