Kung-Don Ye

An Influence Model in Seafaring Choice for Taiwan Navigation Students

The severe shrinkage of available national ship officers in Taiwan over the last several years forces the Taiwan shipping industry to confront a threat to its future development. This study develops and tests the influence models of seafaring choice using structural equation modelling in order to investigate the factors influencing seafaring choices and their corresponding influence paths for Taiwan navigation students. Results reveal that navigation students consider pay, specific natures of seafaring, advice from families and friends, and personal interests when making career choices. Moreover, the influence path model proposed by this study shows that navigation students’ intentions to enter seafaring are both directly and indirectly affected by several subjective and objective factors. Further, some suggestions based on the findings of this study are submitted to facilitate their intentions to work aboard ships after graduation.

Impact of special shipping across the Taiwan Straits on the employment of Taiwanese ship officers

Nowhere else in the world are there marine transportations highly confined than across the Taiwan Straits (mainland China and Taiwan). This study strives to explore the present employment status of Taiwanese ship officers under the influence of special shipping across the Taiwan Straits, and to make sure if such an employment trend has a negative impact on the future operating mode of Taiwan shipping companies. By means of field interview and questionnaire, this study collected the employment data of ship officers from 21 leading shipping companies in Taiwan, and made a statistical analysis. The research findings show that the existing cross-strait shipping relationship, which is seriously distorted by the hostility between the governments of Taiwan and mainland China across the Taiwan Straits, has made Taiwanese shipping companies turn to flagging-out in order to enter the extensive shipping market of mainland China. This leads to a decline of job opportunities for Taiwanese ship officers. Ironically, the ship officers from mainland China pose a biggest threat to those in Taiwan in this respect. In addition, the operating modes of Taiwanese shipping companies also change gradually in tune with the increasing number of non-Taiwanese ship officers (mainly those from mainland China).

Career development for women in maritime industry: organisation and socialisation perspectives

ABSTRACT For centuries, the maritime industry has been a recognised place in society dominated solely by men, and even though there were women involved, they were mostly on the periphery. This research aims to fill the gap of women’s career development in this field, by investigating the relationships among the degree of organisational socialisation, women’s workplace culture, and the career development of women in the maritime workplace. The analyses are conducted with the structural equation model with 202 valid questionnaires. The results indicated that women’s workplace culture has a significantly negative relationship with the degree of organisational socialisation, and then in turn, it has a significantly positive relationship with women’s career development in the maritime industry. Finally, the results also indicate that the mediating effect of organisational socialisation existed between women’s workplace culture and women’s career development. According to the empirical analysis, this study makes conclusions as well as suggestions for the maritime enterprises as the reference for human resource management.

Organizational change for port authorities: a social information processing analysis

Port authorities, like other organizations, have been constantly required to evolve in response to business, environmental, and technical changes since the 1980s to continue improving their competitiveness and performance. However, people often resist change due to various reasons, and the uncertainty of change has been pointed out as one of the most important reasons why this happens. This study contributes to social information processing (SIP) research and constructs an SIP model to explore employee’s response to port organizational reform in Taiwan. Empirical results are consistent with general job schema, where employees with job security orientation are less supportive of port corporatization, and those with corporate development orientation are more supportive of port organizational reform. Organizational trust and job conception are related to port workers’ attitude to port corporatization. Nevertheless, organizational communication does not positively moderate the relationship between job schema and employee attitude to port organizational change.

Taiwanese investment in Southeast Asia

For the “Go South” policy in Taiwan, small- and medium-sized enterprises played an important role in the 1980s and 1990s. This is an exceptional case as theoretical predictions and empirical evidence, found in most countries, have indicated that foreign direct investment originated mainly from large firms. This paper examines the determinants and investment strategies of Taiwanese FDI in Southeast Asian countries. First, it reviews the evolution and current situations of Taiwans investment and the economic rationales during the 1980s and 1990s. Then, it identifies three types of investment strategies: defensive investors, initiative investors, and institutional investors, and compares them in terms of their different economic rationales, investment patterns and networking activities.