Command of Vessels in the Era of Digitalization

Recent discussions on digitalization, and autonomous ships provide a disruptive picture of how the maritime industry may be transformed in this process. The magnitude of this digitalization trend is very different from the one of implementing e-Navigation initiated by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2006 to harmonize, integrate, exchange, present and analyze marine information on board and ashore by electronic means. A rapid speed of digitalization of ship operation is causing controversy. For example, the maritime industry has not yet come to a consensus about agreed definitions of “autonomous ship”, “unmanned ship” and a “remote-controlled vessel”. Some pioneering industry developers, invest in the digitalization of ship operation to make the maritime transport more reliable, safe and efficient. Whilst such technological developments promise safe and efficient business models to a greater extent, it has not been much discussed how people on board will be affected by digitalization with a particular attention to the notion of leadership. Command of vessels has been traditionally considered as a human domain. The ways in which leadership is displayed on board and how each task is dedicated to the members of a shipboard organization will be radically different in the era of digitalization. Based on the qualitative data obtained from semi-structured interviews, group interviews and participant observation with maritime experts in Norway, the paper discusses the impact of digitalization on organized work in ship operation, implications of digitalization for leadership, and leadership required in the era of digitalization. It concludes that human-automation coordination as well as human-human coordination are the key to support the future operation of ships.