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The COVID-19 pandemic had a disastrous impact on a substantial number of Filipino seafarers. The government agencies played a crucial role in helping the seafarers. This paper aims to explore the challenges that the Filipino seafarers faced amid the pandemic and initially evaluate the Philippine government’s countermeasures.

This paper reviewed academic literature and secondary data to identify and analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on seafarers. To identify the full range of policies and measures that have been adopted by the Philippines’ government amid the pandemic to mitigate the impact on seafarers, an extensive survey of various sources was conducted. Furthermore, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) survey was conducted from seafarers' perspective to analyze the priority of these government initiatives.

This study identifies four key challenges for seafarers during the pandemic: crew change crisis, healthcare shortages, certification and the derived problems including financial and mental health issues. Notably, mental health problems are prevalent but receive limited government attention. Despite the government’s efforts to assist seafarers, the AHP survey identifies crew change assistance as the most crucial issue, possibly impacting all others.

This paper recognizes the significant information regarding aid in recovery management and provides much-needed assistance to seafarers during the pandemic and similar crisis situations. It bridges the research gaps and contributes knowledge to the government, stakeholders and various entities such as shipping companies, ship management firms and seafarers' manning agencies.

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being and mental health of the seafarers who had to overstay on ships after their contracts expired, identifies topics that affect their mental distress and recommends measures to overcome these.

Four research questions about the impacts on the seafarers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic were raised. A literature review and a questionnaire survey were conducted to find answers. Ship officers were asked to assess and fill in the questionnaires for the stranded seafarers onboard in order to collect sufficient samples rapidly for this study.

Despite the guidelines provided by the shipping companies being adequate to protect the seafarers from COVID-19, their mental distress levels have been worsened under the pandemic. The crew change crisis causes anxiety and negatively impacts on their working performance; however, the repatriation expectation of the stranded seafarers is of the highest concern. Three topics were identified as having impacts on the mental health of the stranded seafarers: crew change crisis, low vaccination rate and the lack of key worker recognition. While international stakeholders are advocating for support in these issues, the shipping companies and the seafarers need to do their parts to exacerbate the mental distress, and to survive and thrive beyond the pandemic.

The findings of this study will help the shipping companies to navigate the challenges and the seafarers to overcome issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this study is to examine the need for training and re-certification of crew for the pandemic-related new normal and for a more sustainable cruise tourism industry.

A qualitative method was adopted for this study using a case study research design. The target group was technical and hospitality workers. The semi-structured interview guide was administered through Google Forms, and eight respondents were selected using a purposive sampling technique.

The study revealed that job losses have occurred among Caribbean nationals, and this is influencing lifestyle practices and family spending power. Further, many workers experienced confinement onboard because of the pandemic, which gave rise to mental health issues. Given this, re-certification and training of technical and hospitality staff in mental wellness is viewed as important in the context of the pandemic-related new normal.

This study points to relevant training to deal with the pandemic now and in the future. The article has some implications for maritime training institutions that may need to reassess their curriculum to meet future challenges.

Stakeholders of crew shipping companies, agencies and businesses can gain a greater appreciation of the safety measures needed to protect passengers as well as crew.

The study provides a review of the experiences of cruise tourism staff during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Women transport workers are a proud part of the workforce, central to the global economy linking supply chains and keeping the world moving. But the transport industry is highly gendered. Women transport workers are overrepresented in precarious informal work and non-standard forms of employment without social protections, they are underrepresented in leadership and decision-making, and are facing endemic gender-based violence, and sanitation indignity. Women’s jobs in transport are more likely to be vulnerable to the impacts of automation and digitalisation. Responses to the challenges arising from the COVID-19 crisis have the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities.

This chapter argues that it is imperative that the transport industry – including employers, governments, investors, and unions – put into action a gender-responsive approach to ensure that inequalities are not reproduced, perpetuated or intensified, and that there is a ‘gender equal new normal’. Strengthening women’s employment in transport needs to address more than just recruitment, and failure to also address the reality of gender-based violence and other aspects related to decent work risks undermining any interventions to increase women in transport. The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) continues to prioritise work to improve the status and working lives of women in transport. Through policy and innovative action programmes – including union organising, campaigning, collective bargaining, developing women’s activism and leadership, and building strategic alliances – the chapter shows how the ITF is supporting women transport workers, through their trade unions, to address their most significant industrial and workplace issues, to shape, and lead the struggle for equality.

This case study was built from secondary data such as news articles and videos. Several drafts of the case study with teaching note were tested in classroom settings and shared at a case writing conference. The case was revised based on feedback from students and roundtable discussions from the conference.

“What’s next: Ever Given after the Suez Canal incident (Evergreen Marine Corporation in, 2022)” explores the situation of the firm Evergreen Marine Corporation, a world-leading cargo shipping company headquartered in Taiwan, and its efforts to deal with challenges stemming from a pandemic and the global supply chain transition. The case provides background on the latest changes in global business environments, the Suez Canal Incident stemming from the grounding of Ever Given and firm-specific information, which would help students to understand the context affecting Evergreen Marine Corporation’s (EMC) strategic decisions. The case enables students to evaluate EMC’s overall position and to analyze the actions that they can take to deal with these challenges in a dynamic global environment.

This case would be appropriate for a course in strategy or international business, especially with the topic of international supply chain management.

This study aims to study the resilience of the maritime industry by analyzing the impacts of COVID-19 on the maritime industry, in particular, on the shipping management aspect and offshore sector, investigate the effectiveness of current solutions and recommend future solutions for the industry to reduce or mitigate the negative impacts.

In order to better appreciate resilience in the maritime industry, the study conducted secondary research and semi-structured online interviews to (1) identify the impacts of COVID-19 on the shipping management and offshore sector, (2) analyze the effectiveness of current solutions and (3) provide some strategies to enhance the effectiveness of the current measures.

he results are congruent with existing literature which indicate that the pandemic has negatively affected the global economy, changed the global trade network and contributed to the sharp decline in demand for oil. In response to the pandemic, governments have implemented safety and health-related measures such as lockdown, safe-distancing and travel restrictions. Often, measures differ from countries to countries and these non-standardized and changing regulations further increase the challenges faced by the industry. From the shipping management perspective, the industry experienced issues such as crew changing, trade contraction and the expiration of shipping certificates, which supported and validated current research. Meanwhile, the offshore industry is challenged by the increasing market volatility and uncertainty, increasing need to source for alternative fuels and the declining oil exploration activities. Current strategies adopted by shipping management companies include crew change management, capacity management and the extension of ship certificates, whereas offshore industry chose to collaborate with oil majors.

By identifying the impacts and challenges and studying the effectiveness of solutions adopted by the maritime industry, this paper allows maritime industry stakeholders and policymakers to develop strategies to mitigate the effects of the global health crisis and strengthen the resilience of the industry. However, as the pandemic continues to develop and evolve, strategies need to be reviewed continuously in response to the changing situations.

This research analyses the impacts and solutions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributes to the development and formulation of strategies to strengthen the resilience of maritime transport.

This case study allows students to appreciate the value of standard operating procedures in customer management. This case study emphasises the role of employees in delivering superior customer experience. This case study explores many facets of customer experience, reputation, social class membership and standard operating procedures (SOPs). Students will be able to apply theories of customer experience, behavioural psychology and service dimensions relevant to the airline industry. After completing this case study, students will be able to do the following:1. Evaluate the value of SOPs in Customer ManagementThis case study refers to the need for adhering to SOPs to deal with complex situations. Students will be able to evaluate whether compliance to SOPs could have helped Air India avoid the crisis or was it possible that a culture of absolute commitment to customer wellbeing could have prevented the crisis.2. Apply the theory of defensive attribution in customer grievance handling. Discuss if reducing customer effort in getting their problem solved can result in superior customer service.The victim had attributed the blame for not insisting on filing a complaint to the crew. Air India crew had defended their actions or lack of it by stating that they had followed the rule book. Students will be able to appreciate the need for a swift redressal mechanism to protect the self-image and self-esteem of the person/group involved. They will also understand that customer service interactions designed to solve customer problems swiftly and easily can be a very simple dictum to guide all employees in their decision-making while handling a customer complaint.

3. Evaluate the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer experience and examine the value of net promoter score (NPS) to study customer satisfaction.

Air India Airlines was catering to varied customer groups such as the Indian diaspora, large student population pursuing education abroad, first-time flyers and the rising middle class with travel aspirations. Customer expectations vary across segments and change over their lifetime. Airline staff must trace customer corridors and deliver on customer expectation across the touch points that matter to them to ensure meaningful and relevant service delivery. Students will have an opportunity to evaluate the NPS in measuring customer satisfaction and debate whether it is a sufficient metric to guide the organisation on delivering and monitoring customer experience.

4. Examine why reputation risk management and not crisis management should be the focus of Air India in delivering superior customer service because nearly 70%–80% of market value for a company comes from its intangible assets such as brand equity and reputation.

Students will discuss crisis management i.e. handling the threat to reputation after it has occurred and reputation risk management i.e. proactively managing potential threats to its reputation by taking timely actions to avoid or mitigate it. There are three factors (reputation reality gap, changing beliefs and expectation and weak internal coordination) that determine reputational risks. Students can evaluate this model to determine if Air India should address these three factors to manage its reputation proactively.

This case study is set around an incident that happened on 26 November 2022, on Air India flight bound for Delhi from New York when an inebriated 34-year-old man had peed on a 72-year-old woman. The perpetrator of the crime had walked free, and the victim was left dissatisfied with how the cabin crew had handled her ordeal. Air India Airlines was launched in 1932 by industrialist JRD Tata and nationalised in 1953. In 2021, Tata Group acquired the 90-year-old Air India from the Government of India for $2.4bn (INR 18,000 crore) and appointed Campbell Wilson as chief executive officer and managing director. The incident brought to the fore the customer management issues that Wilson had to address. First on the list of Air India’s turnaround plan was delivering “exceptional customer experience”. How was it going to achieve it because the Indian aviation ecosystem lacked infrastructure such as airports, airspace, competition and customer preference-based services? There was also shortage of pilots, engineers, technicians, air-traffic controllers and technocrats to occupy positions within security agencies and regulatory bodies. With Air India’s acquisition, the Tata Group had to find innovative solutions to deal with decades of internal neglect, non-performance and labour union problems. This case study is relevant to address real issues of customer experience, consumer psychology, reputation risk management and standard operating procedures in service management.

This case is suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate level students of business management. It can also be used for training service personnel of aviation industry.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing

In this chapter, we view team cohesion from a more generalized perspective of team dynamics, and focus on four leadership models for understanding these dynamics in teams in the context of the Mars Mission. Given the long duration of the mission with periods of no or intermittent communication and support, isolation and confinement, and the risk of great physical and psychological harm, having tailored leadership models for this unique team dynamics context is critical. And yet, many of these same dangerous conditions occur in other contexts such as for first responders, crisis management teams, Special Forces operations, and scientific exploration teams in extreme environments. As such, building from a model of leadership and team dynamics for dangerous contexts, for a long-duration space mission involving both Mission Control and the Astronaut Crew, these models of leadership and team dynamics include a collective-level approach for scientists and engineers, a primarily crew-based socioemotional approach, a leader-level crisis/emergency approach, and a dyadic or sortie-level approach. Implications of these models for effective leadership in building and maintaining team dynamics and cohesion for the Mars Mission and across a variety of other dangerous and extreme contexts are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore responsible leadership and crisis management. Many sectors and economies have faced the stark effect of coronavirus; however, the damage done was felt more in some areas than others. Cruise tourism is one such sector dramatically affected, as it ground to a screeching halt in March 2020. This has led to crisis management, as passengers, cruise-line crew, large cruise companies and governments were now faced with a new reality as countries around the world closed their borders. This article aims at discussing in detail how responsible leadership, in the small island of Barbados, championed a response to support the cruise tourism sector and assist in managing the crisis.

The author conducted a literature review on the current knowledge relating leadership and crisis management. Thus building a better understanding in the field and identifying gaps for making new arguments for best practices of leadership development in crisis management established in the cruise tourism sector. The author gave viewpoints based on the leadership style of the Prime Minister of Barbados.

Responsible leadership is a style that has been best observed as one that emphasizes a commitment to the common good and provides a constructive societal impact. With this approach, the leaders navigated the uncertainty surrounding the crisis and provided fresh hope to future plans. Thus, the coronavirus was perceived in a positive way, producing opportunities for progress and change.

By developing an understanding of traditional leadership theories, it provides a framework for the adaptation of responsible leadership approach in crisis management. Moreover, the practice of responsible leadership in this COVID-19 era is shown to be crucial to crisis management and enhancing performance. Limitations on viewpoint are based on the author's philosophies.

This paper provides a better understanding of the principles surrounding leadership and fashions a framework for discussing responsible leadership from a crisis management standpoint. The viewpoint provides an optimistic difference in managing a crisis.

The paper provides a better understanding of responsible leadership as an integrated approach to governance, ethics and social responsibility. The paper provides a basis to assess the intersection of the literature on leadership and crisis management.

This article contributes to the literature on responsible leadership within the context of crisis management.

This chapter explores the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on airline employment from the onset of the pandemic until 2023. Using data from the International Civil Aviation Organization, this chapter evaluates the employment effects of the pandemic across hundreds of airlines around the globe and provides an examination of the job loss and rebound following the onset of the pandemic. A comparative analysis of the global employment changes in varying job types – including flight operations, maintenance, and ticketing – is presented. From the sample of global airlines, results indicate that airline employment was reduced by over 180,000 employees in 2020 with maintenance personnel experiencing the greatest reduction in employment. These results are discussed in the context of government intervention and industry-targeted stimulus programs. A case study of the US airline labor market provides a more detailed examination of the employment changes across various airlines and employees. These results suggest that employees at low-cost carriers have fared better than full-service national carriers; however, airline employees were not equally affected with women’s employment more greatly impacted, and slower to recover, than men’s employment. The transformations in labor relations and industrial action are also explored as air travel demand has rebounded and an anticipated shortage of skilled airline workers threatens the industry. Finally, these changes in employment and labor actions are compared with the effects from the Great Recession and September 11, 2001, and the implications for the future of the industry are discussed.