HRD PRACTICES IN SHIPPING COMPANIES

HRD Practices in Multinational Shipping Corporations



Preface

The purpose of this study was to identify the practices of human resource development professionals in Multinational Shipping Companies. Globalization and technological advancement are compelling organizations to evolve new strategic directions. Employees are thus required to be ready for accepting new roles and must think of employability over job security. There are increasing research-based evidence to suggest that employees, particularly the knowledge workers, do not consider money as the only important reason to work for a company . On the contrary they now expect more enriching organizational environment and an alignment of their individual values with organizational values. When employees recognize disparity between the ideal and operational organizational values and if the gap is too wide it erodes their trust and commitment, particularly the affective commitment.

Values are defined as fundamental beliefs and assumptions that guide individual behavior and judgments across situations. Organizationally, values are indicative of the most defining characteristics of an institution. These are the beliefs and attitude that goes deep inside and constitute a collective understanding regarding norms and standards of behavior acceptable in the organization. In that sense values are considered as the essential component of organizational culture. According to Schein (1985) corporate values are collective beliefs about what the entire enterprise stands for, takes pride in and holds of intrinsic worth.

Human resource development (HRD) is significant within the scope of this study, and thus it assists in the intentional cultivation of enterprises and their employees, the organization of objective-driven personnel selection, personnel placement and work with employees involved in the organization's strategic and human resource development plans. Human resource development plays a very important role in human resource management. Certain differences exist in how this is approached. Human resource development is not only a theoretical issue. Today, it is also topical for developing organizations, which, at their current stage of growth, have felt that it is necessary to establish a permanent human resource development system. The globalization process is relevant for human resource management because it means remarkably increased competition. Hence, now, the control of globalization becomes the primary challenge - starting with the use of global labour resources and ending with recruiting, training and development and salary formation with a strong focus on other EU countries and “knowledgebased economy” employees in the organizations of those countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the HRD practices in multinational shipping companies through a questionnaire-based data from 10 companies belonging to the different sectors. The validated questionnaire deals with the HRD practices along different dimensions. The research also studies the differences in Human resource development practices among the shipping companies and concludes with a discussion on the implications for the companies on implementing appropriate HRD practices. A SWOT analysis was also used to identify Strengths and Weaknesses and examine Opportunities and Threats to Multinational shipping companies.

The results of the study were divided into six main parts: (1) Hypotheses Testing. (2) SWOT analysis (Support Systems for the Organization ...