Organizational Change in the Shipping Industry: Issues in the Transformation of Basic Assumptions

Abstract

The shipping industries of Northern Europe have undergone major technical, economic, and social changes in their environment since the mid 1960's. The organizational structures in shipping have strong historical traditions and extensive institutional protection. There have been many experiments in new forms of organization and the four main directions of these changes are analyzed in relation to the underlying “basic assumptions” of the traditional forms of organization. The evolution of change strategy from sheltered field experiments to participative design strategies and the linking of innovating centers is discussed in relation to resistances to change at occupational, corporate, and institutional levels. Sufficient diffusion of these changes to offset the major threats in the shipping environment is viewed as unlikely because of the inertia and opposition to change of institutional bodies.

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