Competences, skills and career expectations: insight from the Italian seafarers' labour market
Seafarers represent a critical resource for the shipping industry since they significantly affect the competitiveness of shipping companies. Nonetheless, few prior contributions have been addressed to labour performance in this sector and several literature gaps still persist. Therefore, the paper aims to identify the main hard and soft skills of seafarers, according to their onboard position and qualification. Moreover, the manuscript provides valuable insights on the Italian shipping labour market, by investigating how Italian seafarers evaluate their own skills and competences and future career expectations. We administer an ad hoc structured questionnaire to Italian seafarers involved in deck, engine and hotellerie departments, receiving 694 usable responses. The outcomes provide an in depth overview of the Italian Seafarers' labour market, leaving several rooms for future academic studies. In addition, the results are expected to support both maritime and port related managers as well as policy makers when modelling public and private employment services. Francesco Parola, Associate Professor, Department of Economics and Business Studies, University of Genoa (Italy) E mail parola@economia.unige.it Giovanni Satta, Associate Professor, Department of Economics and Business Studies, University of Genoa (Italy) Email Giovanni.satta@economia.unige.it Luca Persico, Researcher, Department of Economics and Business Studies, University of Genoa (Italy) E mail luca.persico@unige.it Franceso Vitellaro, PhD student in transport and logistics at Italian Centre of Excellence on Logistics Transport and Infrastructure, University of Genoa (Italy) E mail francesco.vitellaro@economia.unige.it Received 4th September 2019; accepted 6th December 2019. DOI: 10.15167/1824 3576/IPEJM2019.3.1231 Francesco Parola, Giovanni Satta, Luca Perisco, Francesco Vitellaro Competences, skills and career expectations: insight from Italian seafarers' labour market Impresa Progetto Electronic Journal of Management, n. 3, 2019 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2