Crew resource management and culttural differences: An application on Turkish pilots

iiiABSTRACTCREW RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES:AN APPLICATION ON TURKISH PILOTSScientific researches indicate that most of the aviation accidents occurred due tohuman factors. It?s proved that majority of human caused accidents are result of failurein ?communication,? ?teamwork,? ?decision making,? ?situational awareness,? ?conflictmanagement,? ?workload and stress management? in cockpit. Hence, Crew ResourceManagement Programs (CRM) are developed to use of especially human resources andinformation, equipment efficiently to prevent errors behind the accidents. However,Airlines trying to prevent accidents with CRM programs imported from USA withouttrying to fit to their national and organizational cultures. Thus, most of the airlinesapplying CRM programs couldn?t succeed preventing human error effectively.Its is reported that cultural differences in other countries are the major reason forfailure of the CRM training programs. Due to applying of CRM programs importedfrom other national and organizational cultures, airlines became unsuccessful to reachintended results. After exploring cultural factors behind the failure of CRMapplications, lots of academic interests directed to specifying them. Thus, the mostpopular academic research made by Texas University on specifying cultural effects onpilots? attitudes which is derived from major cultural research made by Dutch scientistGeert Hofstede. Research intending to specify different cultural motives affecting onpilots? attitudes made by Texas University included 33 airlines from 22 differentcountries. In this research attitudes of pilots from different countries on?communication,? ?command,? stress and human limitation? and ?rules andprocedures? scales. Results produced by Texas University?s research compared withdata specified by Hofstede?s for 40 countries.Fast and unintended growing of civil aviation industry in Turkey gives alertabout human factors and emphasizes of effective management of human resource byairlines. This master research intends to identify cultural motives of Turkish pilotsaffecting CRM skills and putting data to generate national CRM programs.