1. Introduction
The international shipping industry contributes to the carriage around 90% of world trade. The seafarers responsible for transporting every kind of cargo between places all over the world are vital in the maritime labour market. However, the global maritime labour market has been subject to a deficit in the supply of officers for many years (Kartal et al., Reference Kartal, Uğurlu, Kaptan, Arslanoğlu, Wang and Loughney2019). In 2018, the International Chamber of Shipping predicted that crews onboard may shrink with an increase in the use of digital elements aboard ships, but that in the next decade or two few vessels will be entirely autonomous and the number of officers onboard will remain stable with an overall increase of the world fleet. However, researchers have noted that it is more difficult to employ officers than ratings (Pettit et al., Reference Pettit, Gardner, Marlow, Naim and Nair2005; Silos et al., Reference Silos, Piniella, Monedero and Walliser2012; Nguyen et al., Reference Nguyen, Ghaderi, Caesar and Cahoon2014). This situation might imply that retaining seafaring officers is becoming more critical.
Chinese seafaring officers make a significant contribution to the international fleet (Tang et al., Reference Tang, Llangco and Zhao2016; Tang and Zhang, Reference Tang, Llangco and Zhao2019). China has made substantial efforts towards the stability of the cohorts in this field (Zhang and Zhao, Reference Yuen, Loh, Zhou and Wong2015). Nevertheless, as one Chinese executive said, ‘Many graduates who major in navigation had left for land jobs after 1–2 years sea job experience’ (male, top manager); the problem of Chinese younger seafaring officers quitting sea jobs without a reasonable period of service is becoming increasingly prominent. Therefore, retaining the younger officers or increasing the period of service at sea becomes meaningful for hedging against the shortage problem as well as meeting the sustainable development goals of the maritime industry (Wang et al., Reference Wang2020).
Although a large body of the literature focuses on the underlying reasons (e.g., values, personality, employee satisfaction, trust disposition, psychological contract, employee participation, and occupational adaptability) contributing to employee commitment and turnover (e.g., Arora and Rangnekar, Reference Arora and Rangnekar2016; Chan and Mai, Reference Chan and Mai2015), research on differentiating attributions for generational employees’ behaviours has not received equal attention. The existing studies revealed that there are generational differences in values and attitudes in the workplace (e.g., Gursoy et al., Reference Gursoy, Chi and Karadag2013; Tsaur and Yen, Reference Teng, Shyu and Chang2018), but differentiating the other factors – for example, needs for achievement, work environment and financial support, which might influence employees’ behaviours related to career choice – presents a clear limitation. Hence, this study addresses the attributions of working at sea for Chinese new generation officers.
The Chinese new generation, born between 1980 and 2000 (Tang et al., Reference Tang and Zhang2017), grew up in the era of reform and opening up that greatly promoted the pluralisation of Chinese society (Wang, Reference Tsaur and Yen2005; Rosen, Reference Rosen2009). Especially, relating to the one-child policy that started in 1980 in China, the new generation is almost the only one-child generation as the one-child policy ended in 2015. Compared with previous generations, they had better educational opportunities (Hu and Qian, Reference Hu and Qian2016) and received more attention from parents (Ong and Cros, Reference Ong and Cros2012). They are characterised by Chinese media as possessing a materialistic and self-centred ‘me-culture’ (Wang, Reference Tsaur and Yen2005; Rosen, Reference Rosen2009; Sima and Pugsley, Reference Sima and Pugsley2010). However, little is empirically known about their characteristics.
The foundation of stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen in 1990, as well as the construction of the Shanghai Pudong Economic Development Zone, are considered to have remarkably stimulated China's economy (Karmel, Reference Karmel1994; Tang et al., Reference Tang and Zhang2017). Chinese people born in the 1990s have lived in a time of rapid economic growth, increased individual material wealth, and a more open culture (Tang et al., Reference Tang and Zhang2017). They have experienced quite a different growth environment from those of previous generational cohorts. Regarding the historical events causing a birth cohort to undergo collective memories being used to divide generational cohorts (e.g., Dencker et al., Reference Dencker, Joshi and Martocchio2008; Joshi et al., Reference Joshi, Dencker, Franz and Martocchio2010), this study used the year 1990 as the boundary to divide the new generation into two cohorts: post-80s (born in the 1980s) and post-90s (born in the 1990s). Due to the understanding that workplace values can change across generational cohorts (e.g., Egri and Ralston, Reference Egri and Ralston2004; Eyoun et al., Reference Eyoun, Chen, Ayoun and Khliefat2020), the two cohorts were assumed to have distinct emphases on career choice and commitment.
This study aims to answer two main questions. First, what drives the two cohorts of Chinese new generation to work at sea? Second, do the two cohorts place similar or different emphasis on the commitment to working at sea? The study provides two advances over the existing research by answering these questions. The first contribution is to help maritime companies to estimate the possibility of Chinese new generation officers quitting sea jobs. Secondly, this study can be of value to both managers and authorities as they seek to comprehend the generational dynamic features to better cope with the problem of shortage of young qualified officers.
The remainder of this study is structured as follows. Section 2 summarises previous research on the Chinese new generation, generational cohorts, and professional commitment. Section 3 exhibits the methodology employed in this study. Section 4 shows the results of the hierarchical regression analysis. Section 5 discusses the results and implications. Conclusions are presented in Section 6.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Chinese new generation
As reviewed by Tang et al. (Reference Tang and Zhang2017), ‘Chinese new generation’ is used to refer to those who were born in China between 1980 and 2000. This generation has been characterised by major historical events that occurred in China which might have shaped quite special attitudes and values in them. The year 1980 marks a generational turning point in China which is well known as the beginning of the country's one-child policy. The members of the new generation were often the only child in the family when they were growing up, except that some rural families whose first child was female were allowed to have a second one. They have received much more attention from their parents than previous generations due to the stringent limitation on the number of children (Ong and Cros, Reference Ong and Cros2012), and they had a relatively high likelihood of receiving college education due to the beginning of higher education expansion in 1999 (Hu and Qian, Reference Hu and Qian2016).
The new generation grew up in a time of reform and open policies. In 1978, China started reform and opening up, which fostered the diversified development of Chinese society (Wang, Reference Tsaur and Yen2005; Rosen, Reference Rosen2009). Chinese people's perceptions have been undergoing continuous changes as a result. In the late 1980s, Chinese contemporary youth began largely to adopt western outlooks, and internationalism appeared to be much stronger than nationalism (Rosen, Reference Rosen2009). In this context, their key features have been described by Chinese media as dependence, pragmatism, materialism and self-centredness (Rosen, Reference Rosen2009; Sima and Pugsley, Reference Sima and Pugsley2010), although Ong and Cros (Reference Ong and Cros2012) argued that the new generation also values peer affirmation built on maintaining and developing friendships and communities. However, in the literature there is a distinct shortage of empirical evidence related to this generation. Galdames and Guihen (Reference Galdames and Guihen2020) also emphasised that empirical research on millennials (born approximately between 1979 and 1999) and their characteristics in the workplace is in short supply.
2.2. Generational cohorts of Chinese seafarers
This study categorised members of the Chinese new generation into two generational cohorts, named ‘post-80s’ (born in the 1980s) and ‘post-90s’ (born in the 1990s), to analyse their professional commitment. The reasons are as follows. Firstly, the literature indicates that generational cohorts can be classified based on the historical events which made a birth cohort experience collective memories that distinguish one generation from another (e.g., Dencker et al., Reference Dencker, Joshi and Martocchio2008; Joshi et al., Reference Joshi, Dencker, Franz and Martocchio2010). In 1990, the stock markets were founded in Shanghai and Shenzhen, which has been considered as a key point of China's financial market opening to the world (Karmel, Reference Karmel1994). In the same year, the construction of the Shanghai Pudong Economic Development Zone attracted a large amount of foreign capital (Tang et al., Reference Tang and Zhang2017). These movements dramatically accelerated China's economic development. In the 1990s, the economy became more international, and the spread of information technology in China exploded, which enabled Chinese people to easily connect with people all over the world. The post-90s grew up in a China marked by rapid economic growth, remarkable improvement in living standards, exposure to western culture, and easy access to new technologies (Tang et al., Reference Tang and Zhang2017). The environment in which the post-90s grew up is assumed to be quite different from that of the post-80s. Secondly, it has been demonstrated that the values of generational cohorts in the workplace are distinct (Egri and Ralston, Reference Egri and Ralston2004; Eyoun et al., Reference Eyoun, Chen, Ayoun and Khliefat2020; Gursoy et al., Reference Gursoy, Chi and Karadag2013; Tang et al., Reference Tang and Zhang2017; Tsaur and Yen, Reference Teng, Shyu and Chang2018). Furthermore, generational cohorts also have differences in the value-behaviour relationship (Tang et al., Reference Tang and Zhang2017). Correspondingly, this study assumed that the two cohorts place respective emphasis on career choices, and that it is justified to analyse the professional commitment of the new generation in cohorts.
Chinese generational cohorts have drawn the attention of researchers. For example, Hu and Qian (Reference Hu and Qian2016) addressed the likelihood of changes in educational homogamy in cohorts of the post-80s generation. Tang et al. (Reference Tang and Zhang2017) revealed that the values and behaviours of Chinese generational cohorts in the workplace have both similarities and differences. However, little is known about generational changes in career choice and commitment.
With respect to seafarers, many existing studies have addressed some issues related to their recruitment and retention, for instance: the antecedents associated with migration of officers from ships to land (Caesar et al., Reference Caesar, Cahoon, Fei and Sallah2020), major factors affecting seafaring students’ career selection (Ruggunan and Kanengoni, Reference Ruggunan and Kanengoni2017), and determinants or predictors of seafarer retention (Silva et al., Reference Silva, Stanton and Stanton2011; Bhattacharya, Reference Bhattacharya2015; Yuen et al., Reference Yu, Jiang and Land2018; Gu et al., Reference Gu, Liu, Zheng, Yang, Dong and Tee2020). The differences between generational cohorts have been neglected, however. This study seeks to examine the changes of professional commitment predictors across generational cohorts in a sample of Chinese new generation officers.
2.3. Professional commitment
Professional commitment is defined as a congruency between a person's personal beliefs and the goals of a profession, with greater congruency leading to greater individual efforts on behalf of the profession (Teng et al., Reference Tang, Wang and Zhang2007). This concept is composed of several aspects in the literature. Meyer et al. (Reference Meyer, Allen and Smith1993) argued that professional commitment consists of three aspects: affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. Lu et al. (Reference Lu, Chang and Wu2007) posited four facets of professional commitment: willingness to make an effort, maintaining membership, belief in goals and values, and appraisal in continuing one's career. Both typologies are used in the literature, and both typologies express similar ideas (Chang et al., Reference Chang, Shyu, Wong, Friesner, Chu and Teng2015). Moreover, research has demonstrated the important role played by occupational/professional commitment in occupational/professional turnover intention (e.g., Yousaf et al., Reference Wong, Wan and Gao2015, Reference Yousaf, Sanders and Abbas2018; Singh et al., Reference Singh, Zhang, Wan and Fouad2018; Weng et al., Reference Wang, Yuen, Wong and Li2018).
As researchers have noted, professional commitment, career commitment and occupational commitment have been used interchangeably (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Carswell and Allen2000; Chang et al., Reference Chang, Shyu, Wong, Friesner, Chu and Teng2015). Moreover, commitment is regarded as having the same meaning as loyalty (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Carswell and Allen2000). Chang and Gibson (Reference Chang and Gibson2015) attempted to distinguish the two concepts, and pointed out that from the psychological processes loyalty is a process in which favourability encourages behaviour, whereas commitment is a process in which behaviour itself encourages attitudes.
Considering the three terms as interchangeable, and the overlap of commitment and loyalty, the concept of professional commitment seems more relevant to a professional's experiences. This is because it relates to an individual's motivation to work in a particular career field, reflects employees’ identification with their organisations, the industry recognition, and the favoured level, and also shows their desire to continue to engage in the profession. Therefore, professional commitment is employed as the dependent variable.
2.4. Predictors of professional commitment
London (Reference London1983) indicates that career motivation is driven by both individual and situational factors and is reflected in career decisions and behaviours. The existing research shows that the Protestant work ethic has a positive relationship with work commitment (Morrow and McElroy, Reference Morrow and McElroy1986), higher achievement motivation results in higher organisational commitment (Salami, Reference Salami2008), and career adaptability is related to turnover intention (Ito and Brotheridge, Reference Ito and Brotheridge2005; Chan and Mai, Reference Chan and Mai2015). Nevertheless, Goulet and Singh (Reference Goulet and Singh2002) argued that the need for achievement and work ethics have no statistically significant effects on career commitment. Moreover, job security was found to affect the career choices of generation Y (Wong et al., Reference Weng, Wu, McElroy and Chen2017) and was demonstrated to be one of the drivers of Indian seafaring officers (Bhattacharya, Reference Bhattacharya2015). Accordingly, ‘achievement motivation’ (the impulse or desire to compete with the high or excellent standards that a person holds when they do things), ‘job adaptability’ (the degree of matching knowledge, skills and abilities with the tasks, duties and responsibilities of the job, as well as cooperation with colleagues), ‘work ethics’ (including attitudes and values as well as the behaviours that reflect these attitudes and values), and ‘perceived security’ (including recognition of the company's emphasis on safety and security, the implementation of safety and security policies, and sense of security) may have effects on professional commitment and hence are assumed to be individual-related predictors.
In the literature, ‘company management and policies’ (including company policies, training and development, working conditions, compensation and benefits, and interpersonal relationships) have been considered as predictors of employees’ retention in the workplace (Silva et al., Reference Silva, Stanton and Stanton2011; Li et al., Reference Li, Yin, Luo and Wang2014; Bhattacharya, Reference Bhattacharya2015; Lannoo and Verhofstadt, Reference Lannoo and Verhofstadt2016; Ruggunan and Kanengoni, Reference Ruggunan and Kanengoni2017; Yuen et al., Reference Yu, Jiang and Land2018). Moreover, work itself (e.g., job interests, recognition, responsibility and personal growth) is demonstrated to be one of the main factors affecting seafaring students’ career selection and seafarer retention (Bhattacharya, Reference Bhattacharya2015; Ruggunan and Kanengoni, Reference Ruggunan and Kanengoni2017; Yuen et al., Reference Yu, Jiang and Land2018). Therefore, both ‘management and policies’ and ‘work itself’ are supposed to be predictors in the workplace in this study.
Additionally, regarding some potential sociological factors having impacts on seafarers’ perceptions about fair treatment (Manuel, Reference Manuel2011), ‘social support’ (including attention and recognition from society, and national policies and regulations) were also taken into account. Thus, the predictors related to the individual, company and society are defined as the independent variables in this study.
As McGinnis and Morrow (Reference McGinnis and Morrow1990) reported in a review of the literature, studies on employment status have generated different results, and they demonstrated that employment status is unrelated to work commitment. Nevertheless, more recent research proposed that employment status is one of the factors related to work drivers (e.g., Lannoo and Verhofstadt, Reference Lannoo and Verhofstadt2016). Moreover, family financial support has been reported to influence career decision making (Fouad et al., Reference Fouad, Kim, Ghosh, Chang and Figueiredo2015). Additionally, the one-child policy has been considered to affect generational values (Cameron et al., Reference Cameron, Erkal, Gangadharan and Meng2013; Tang et al., Reference Tang and Zhang2017). Hence, these three factors might influence the behaviours of the seafaring officers and they are taken as control variables.
The foregoing review of related literature served as a basis in the formulation of the independent variables of this research. These variables are composed of four constructs, as shown in Figure 1. Personal background-related variables are the first set of constructs, composed of One-Child, Family Income, and Employment Status. Individual-related variables of Perceived Security, Achievement Motivation, Job Adaptability and Work Ethics form the second set of constructs. Company-related variables, which consist of Work Itself and Management & Policies, are the third set of constructs. The fourth set of constructs is environment-related variables, labelled as Social Support.
Figure 1. Constructs of independent variables
3. Methodology
The items to measure the dependent and independent variables were determined by an extensive literature review. Based on the determined items, a questionnaire survey of the two cohorts was performed to collect data. Simultaneously, interviews with company managers, captains and chief engineers were conducted to further recognise the seafarers’ demands and obtain retention problems and suggestions from practitioners’ perspectives. Hierarchical regression analysis was employed to reveal the causal relationships between the variables.
3.1. Variable measurement
In this study, three demographic variables: One-Child, Family Income and Employment Status can be observed. One-Child was measured through a dummy question (1 = One-child; 0 = Non-one-child). Family Income indicates the average monthly income (AMI) of the family assessed by a five-point rating scale ranging from 1 (very low) to 5 (very high). The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 represent ‘AMI ≤ 3,000RMB’ ‘3,000 < AMI ≤ 5,000 RMB’, ‘5,000 < AMI ≤ 10,000RMB’, ‘10,000 < AMI ≤ 15,000 RMB’, and ‘AMI ≥ 15,000 RMB’, respectively. Employment Status was labelled by the numbers 1, 2 and 3 referring to ‘contractual’, ‘agency’ and ‘self-employed’, respectively. Based on the previous research, the other variables are measured by several items on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
The dependent variable of Professional Commitment was assessed by eight items, of which two items concern willingness to make efforts, two items concern maintaining membership, three items deal with belief in goals and values, and one is related to appraisal in continuing one's career.
For the individual-related variables, Perceived Security was measured by seven items (three items covering recognition of the company's emphasis on safety and security, three items connected with the implementation of safety and security policies, and one about the sense of security); Achievement Motivation was measured by three items (one item regarding willingness to perform additional tasks, one item related to continuous efforts, and one focusing on achieving better performance); Job Adaptability was assessed by three items (two items covering person-job fitness, one item concerning cooperation with colleagues); and Work Ethics was evaluated by three items reflecting the attitudes, values and behaviours. For the company-related variables, Work Itself was measured by three items regarding job interest, the sense of achievement and advancement, and Management & Policies was measured by six items (one item concerning fair treatment, one item about training and development, one item dealing with working conditions, one item related to compensation and benefits, and two items examining interpersonal relationships). Finally, Social Support was measured by three items examining social attention and social recognition as well as law and regulations. Table 1 exhibits a summary of the variable measurement. Most items were drawn from the existing research, and some modifications were made to match this study.
Table 1. Summary of the variable measurements
3.2. Data collection
A questionnaire survey was used to collect data. Chinese seafaring officers of the post-80s and post-90s cohorts were recruited as respondents; they worked for different companies located in the port cities of Shanghai, Tianjin, Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo, Nanjing, Nantong, Weihai and Yantai.
The questionnaire was designed based on a very broad literature review. It consists of three sections: basic information on the respondents; 40 Agree/Disagree items to rate, and one open-ended question in which to offer suggestions to educational institutes, companies or government. A five-point Likert scale was adopted to rate the items with the following five response options: 5 = Strongly Agree, 4 = Agree, 3 = Neutral, 2 = Disagree, 1 = Strongly Disagree.
Concerning the effectiveness and efficiency of the questionnaire surveys, different methods were used to collect the data based on different situations: online and email, face-to-face and paper-and-pencil. The first two methods were used for those geographically dispersed seafarers who were working onboard or taking vacations, and 108 questionnaires were collected in these two ways. The latter two methods were conducted in the seafarer training programmes in Dalian and seafarer management companies in Shanghai, and 401 questionnaires were returned. Of the total of 509 questionnaires returned, 488 were valid.
To obtain a better understanding of the seafaring officers’ needs, the substantial problems that companies face when retaining the officers, and suggestions from the practitioners’ point of view, a total of 24 interviews were conducted with managers, captains and chief engineers from large maritime companies in China, such as COSCO Shanghai Manning Co., Ltd., COSCO Shipping Seafarer Management Co., Ltd., and Shanghai Huayang Maritime Tech Co., Ltd..
3.3. Data analysis
This study has two purposes. The first is to explore the predictors of the professional commitment of new generation seafaring officers, and the second is to compare the post-80s with the post-90s to reveal the generational differences or similarities. Regression analysis applied to statistically explore the impact of independent variables on the dependent variables can satisfy these purposes, and hence it is introduced in this study to examine the predictors of commitment to working at sea. Furthermore, with the three control variables of One-Child, Family Income and Employment Status, the effects of the individual, company and environment-related variables on the commitment to working at sea are examined through hierarchical regression. All the independent variables are input into the regressions step by step, and the independent variables with a significant impact on the dependent variable are selected.
Generally, many variables have causal relationships which may lead to multicollinearity, and excessive multicollinearity among indicators makes it difficult to separate the distinct influence of the individual independent variables on the dependent variable (Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer, Reference Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer2001). Hence, the value of variance inflation factor (VIF) has been deployed to diagnose the multicollinearity problem, and some researchers have proposed that VIF values larger than or equal to 10 would indicate the existence of excessive multicollinearity in the model (Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer, Reference Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer2001; Yu et al., Reference Yousaf, Sanders and Yustantio2015). Accordingly, the value of VIF is employed to examine the multicollinearity problem in this study.
4. Results
4.1. Preliminary analysis
The respondents are all male officers including seven captains, 48 first mates, 111 second mates, 113 third mates, eight chief engineers, 77 second engineers, 53 third engineers, 39 fourth engineers, and 32 electrical engineers. The other demographical characteristics of the respondents are shown in Table 2. The means, standard deviations, and Spearman correlation coefficients among the study variables as well as Cronbach's alpha of each measure were computed, and the results are presented in Table 3.
Table 2. Distribution of the respondents by their demographic characteristics
Table 3. Descriptive statistics and correlations among the variables
Note: N = 488. **P < 0⋅01. *P < 0⋅05.
Remarkably, there are two mean values of less than three. The smallest value (mean = 2⋅674) matches the variable of Social Support, and Professional Commitment holds the second smallest value (mean = 2⋅868). Briefly, the officers perceived that they have received less attention from society, and the degree of their professional commitment is lower, which corresponds to the growing phenomenon that Chinese younger officers leaving for land jobs. The results of correlation analysis present that Professional Commitment is positively associated with Work Itself (r = 0⋅631; P < 0⋅01), Management & Policies (r = 0⋅502; P < 0⋅01), Perceived Security (r = 0⋅146, P < 0⋅01) and Social Support (r = 0⋅566, P < 0⋅01). The values of the Cronbach's α ranged from 0⋅804 to 0⋅964, exceeding the 0⋅7 threshold and exhibiting satisfactory levels of reliability (Tsaur and Yen, Reference Teng, Shyu and Chang2018).
4.2. Predictors of professional commitment for the new generation officers
In this analysis, when examining which independent variables can predict the new generation's commitment to working at sea, the other variables like One-Child, Family Income and Employment Status (contractual, self-employed, agency) might be associated with Professional Commitment. Hence, these three variables were put into the model first to control for when testing the predictors. This ensures any observed effect of the predictors can then be thought to be ‘independent of’ the effects of these variables. The next is to input step by step the predictor variables followed by the individual, company and environment variables. Four steps of hierarchical regression analysis at a 1% level of probability and 99% reliability were employed to determine predictors of working at sea. The outputs are shown in Table 4. The values of VIF vary from 1⋅003 to 8⋅211 and hence did not seem to pose a multicollinearity issue.
Table 4. Hierarchical regression outputs for the post-80s and post-90s cohorts
Significance: **P < 0⋅01.
Comparatively, the predictors for the post-80s working at sea have both differences and similarities with those for the post-90s. The differences and similarities are drawn from Table 4 as follows.
In the first step, One-Child negatively relates to the commitment to working at sea for the post-80s officers, whereas it has no statistically significant effect on the professional commitment of the post-90s officers. This difference remains invariable from steps 1 to 4. Employment Status (p1 > 0⋅01) and Family Income (p1 > 0⋅01) do not significantly affect the professional commitment of either cohort.
In the second step, Achievement Motivation positively affects the professional commitment of the post-80s instead of the post-90s. Perceived Security positively contributes to the professional commitment of the post-80s as well as the post-90s. Job Adaptability negatively influences commitment to working at sea for both cohorts. Work Ethics (p2 > 0⋅01) does not matter for either of them. Furthermore, according to the changes of the R square, it was found that the individual-related factors have more effects on the post-90s (△R 2 = 0⋅321) than the post-80s (△R 2 = 0⋅160).
The third step exhibits that Work Itself and Management & Policies positively affect the professional commitment of the two cohorts. According to the R square change, the post-80s (△R 2 = 0⋅430) are much more sensitive to company-related factors than the post-90s (△R 2 = 0⋅280). Achievement Motivation is no longer a significant predictor of the professional commitment for the post-80s. Perceived Security has an insignificant impact on both cohorts. Nevertheless, Job Adaptability continues to negatively influence commitment to working at sea for both cohorts in this step.
Finally, when inputting the external environment factors, Job Adaptability and Management & Policies still significantly predict the post-80s’ commitment to working at sea. Interestingly, the effects of the two variables on Professional Commitment became insignificant for the post-90s. Consistently, Work Itself positively affects the two cohorts in the final step. Social Support positively relates to the professional commitment of both cohorts. Compared with the post-80s (p4 < 0⋅01; beta = 0⋅176), the post-90s (p4 < 0⋅01; beta = 0⋅416) are more susceptible to the environment-related factors. The final results are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Comparison of drivers of post-80s with those of post-90s
5. Discussion
The results of regression analysis present the predictors of commitment to working at sea for the two cohorts. For the post-80s, Work Itself, Management & Policies, and Social Support are positive forces, while One-Child and Job Adaptability are negative. Work Itself and Social Support positively drive the post-90s to work at sea. Comparatively, the two cohorts place both similar and different emphasis on Professional Commitment. Work Itself is the most important predictor for both of them. Employment Status, Achievement Motivation, Work Ethics, Family Income and Perceived Security have insignificant effects on both of them. Management & Policies, One-Child and Job Adaptability significantly influence the post-80s but not the post-90s. These results imply that practitioners should adopt corresponding strategies to keep the two cohorts working at sea, and also encourage the Chinese government to adjust or make policies related to seafarers based on the changes across generations when keeping the sustainability of seafaring.
The predictors for the post-80s are One-Child, Job Adaptability, Work Itself, Management & Policies, and Social Support. One-Child and Job Adaptability negatively relate to their commitment to working at sea. This implies that the only-child post-80s seafaring talents quit seafaring more easily than the non-one-child officers under the same conditions, and therefore close attention should be paid to this cohort in order to retain them. Moreover, Work Itself, Management & Policies and Social Support positively affect the professional commitment of the post-80s officers. This suggests that companies should take into account the company-related factors to increase the professional commitment of the post-80s. For instance, it is necessary to improve the interest of the officers in their jobs and their sense of responsibility and achievement, to comprehend and meet their needs, and provide career paths and training programmes to help them carry out their career goals. Moreover, these results should also inspire companies to make the voices of seafarers more heard in public to enable them to receive better support from the social environment.
Regarding the post-90s, the predictors are only Work Itself and Social Support. These two variables are positively related to Professional Commitment. Due to Work Itself appearing as the most important predictor of working at sea for both the post-80s and post-90s, improving the factors related to this variable should be very helpful for retaining the new generation officers. Similar to the post-80s, Social Support is one of the predictors of commitment to working at sea for the post-90s. They value this factor (Beta = 0⋅416) slightly less than Work Itself (Beta = 0⋅477), and more than that of the post-80s (beta = 0⋅176). This finding highlights not only the importance of social status for the post-90s but also the trend of the younger seafaring officers to place more emphasis on Social Support. Furthermore, many fewer post-90s seafaring officers participated in the questionnaire survey than post-80s seafaring officers. which might imply that the post-90s quitting sea jobs for onshore jobs have become more serious, although some of the post-90s students majoring in maritime still on campuses.
However, Exarchopoulos et al. (Reference Exarchopoulos, Zhang, Pryce-Roberts and Zhao2018) argued that the existing legislation is not adequate to provide solutions that satisfy the psychological needs of seafarers. Although China has made considerable efforts and made significant progress in implementing the Maritime Labour Convention 2006, the seafarers’ issues have not been addressed sufficiently in the legislative process (Zhang and Zhao, Reference Yuen, Loh, Zhou and Wong2015). The results of this study should also encourage the government to provide more support for seafarers to satisfy their physical and mental needs, such as enacting a separate law for seafarers at a higher level of the Chinese legislation hierarchy to substantially protect their benefits. The might involve formulating a policy of mitigating seafarers’ income tax; increasing coverage of seafaring by the mainstream media to improve people's understanding of the seafarers work; using Seafarers’ Day as well as other anniversaries or festivals to improve social recognition of seafarers; and creating a new social atmosphere to reduce professional discrimination. With the above support, the profession of seafaring might become more attractive to young people, and the retention of qualified seafarers might be improved. Therefore, more support from the government and society might be more meaningful for the sustainability of the seafaring industry than improving the company management, especially for the post-90s. This should also inspire companies to make more voices for seafarers in the public to let them receive better support from the social environment.
Surprisingly, Management & Policies, which significantly predicted the professional commitment of the post-80s, has an insignificant effect on the post-90s officers, as a second engineer of the post-90s claimed on the open-ended questionnaire:
Nothing can be a problem if this special professional group has a better social position and receives more respect.
This finding suggests that improving Social Support could be more worthwhile than company management and policies for retaining the post-90s. The reason might be twofold. On the one hand, Chinese shipping companies might have gradually put more and more effort into management interference to hedge against turnover of the younger seafaring officers, whereas the social status of seafarers and the protection of their rights and interests have not been improved in recent years. This situation makes it possible for them to pay much more attention to external support rather than the company's management and policies. On the other hand, the post-90s having grown up in a rapidly changing environment might make them more sensitive to the social circumstances than previous generational cohorts. Notably, the result of the company's management and policies insignificantly affecting professional commitment of the post-90s is different from the conclusions of not only this study on the post-80s but also the previous research on employees regardless of generational difference (e.g., Lannoo and Verhofstadt, Reference Lannoo and Verhofstadt2016; Ruggunan and Kanengoni, Reference Ruggunan and Kanengoni2017; Yuen et al., Reference Yu, Jiang and Land2018).
Moreover, the distinct effects of One-Child on the two cohorts implies that after a long time with the one-child policy, parents might realise that excessive attention to only-child children is harmful to their independence and growth, and that parents had been greatly correcting their own behaviours when their only-child children grew up. Moreover, this finding implies that the only-child post-80s seafaring talents might quit sea-going jobs more readily than the post-90s ones under the same conditions.
Notably, the findings revealed that Employment Status is unrelated to the professional commitment for China's new generation officers, which provides further support to the earlier literature (McGinnis and Morrow, Reference McGinnis and Morrow1990), although recent researchers showed that Employment Status is one of the predictors (e.g., Lannoo and Verhofstadt, Reference Lannoo and Verhofstadt2016). Similarly, Achievement Motivation and Work Ethics have no significant effects on China's new generation officers’ commitment to working at sea, and this finding is similar to that found in previous research (Goulet and Singh, Reference Goulet and Singh2002). Moreover, in contrast with previous studies that have proposed family financial support has influences on the professional commitment of seafaring officers (Fouad et al., Reference Fouad, Kim, Ghosh, Chang and Figueiredo2015), as well as job security (Wong et al., Reference Weng, Wu, McElroy and Chen2016), this study found that these indicators have no significant effects on the two cohorts. The findings implicate that nowadays seafarers do not work at sea to make more money to support their families. Moreover, as one of the interviewees said, ‘Seafaring is much safer than before because of high technology used in ships, such as automatic tracking systems, warning devices, and anti-piracy weapons for ships’ (male, captain). This is also supported by Nittari et al. (Reference Nittari, Pirillo, Amenta and Ricci2019), who reported that tele-medicine techniques can improve medical assistance to seafarers onboard.
Job adaptability negatively affects the post-80s’ commitment to working at sea, and this result is in accordance with the findings of the existing research (Ito and Brotheridge, Reference Ito and Brotheridge2005), although it was demonstrated that job adaptability might be positively related to career commitment (Chan and Mai, Reference Chan and Mai2015). However, the outcome of the insignificant effect of Job Adaptability on the post-90s presents a difference in the existing research.
6. Conclusions
Based on the previous research, this study obtained some new findings by offering insights into how the identified factors affect the two cohorts. The results will help both the managers and authorities in crew management to understand and predict China's new generation officers’ behaviours, and target retention interventions to generational identities. In particular, reforming industrial policies, laws and social environments at the government level is encouraged to cope with the problem of shortage of qualified officers. For instance, these might include establishing an onboard service tenure system (e.g., 10 years) and onshore career paths for the officers, in which officers can freely choose to continue working at sea or transfer to work on land after the expiration of the period; formulating preferential policies (e.g., personal income tax relief); creating separate legislation for seafarers to better protect their rights and benefits; and increasing awareness of them in popular media. The conclusions and findings of this study can be summarised as follows. (i) The two cohorts have both similar and different predictors of commitment to working at sea; (ii) One-Child and Job Adaptability are negatively related to the professional commitment of the post-80s, but they have no significant effects on the post-90s; (iii) The main difference is that Management & Policies is one of the predictors of commitment to working at sea for the post-80s, but does not significantly affect the post-90s; (iv) The main similarity is that Work Itself is the most important predictors for both cohorts. Social Support positively drives both cohorts to work at sea, but this variable is more important to the post-90s than the post-80s; (v) Employment Status, Family Income, Achievement Motivation, Perceived Security, and Work Ethics have insignificant impacts on both cohorts.
Besides the achievements, there still are some limitations to this study. The reasonable period of working at sea is excluded in this study, although Ruggunan and Kanengoni (Reference Ruggunan and Kanengoni2017) have noted that South African cadets would not stay in seafaring for longer than 20 years. Moreover, comparing the new generation with the older generation officers to highlight the differences between them might be examined in future research.
