Developing models for decision making process to be adopted by shipowners in employing ship officers

A thorough safety on main causes of the marine accidents encountered clearly indicates that the human factor has played the most effective role. Likewise, a comprehensive analysis on the basic source of the human factor that has caused many of the marine accidents reveals that the mistakes companies often make in employee recruitment and as a result employing incompetent and unqualified seafarers on boards ships lie behind many disastrous marine accidents. These interrated two points strongly underline the utmost importance of employing the required number of competent seafarers on board ship. The purpose of this study is to develop a model through which recruitment (selection) criteria and the effects of these criteria on the employment decisions are determined and discussed, which would result in forming right employment decisions while selecting oceangoing watchkeeping officers. In forming the model, first 18 criteria have been determined through interviews with 12 relevant experts. Later, these criteria have been classified by means certain academic supports into four main categories. After that having made use of the views of 8 experts through Fuzzy AHP method, a hierarchic structure has been formed with the criteria, and to what extent they likely to be effective on the final employment decisions has been determined taking into account the ship types. Thus, the weight of each criteria on the employment decisions has been determined. Out of the findings revealed, certain proposal have been developed particularly regarding human resource management strategies in shipping evaluations of the employee selection/recruitment methods, and certain legislative regulations required in the best possible means of educating, training and certifying seafarers on the basis of national scales.