Developing a novel change management tool in global tanker shipping companies

Abstract

Change is a constant reality for all organizations in the business world. Adapting upcoming changes is a critical need for companies to keep up with modern world dynamics. It can cause severe consequences not to be able to adapt emerging changes such as economic losses, reputational losses, being not in compliance with both national and international regulations. For this reason, the term change management is becoming more and more important for all kinds of organizations. Maritime industry is one of the great examples of this constantly changing business athmospheres. Updates in maritime rules and regulations, sustainability practices, decarbonization, digitalization, technological innovations and possible transition to autonomous ships are key examples of the modern maritime transformation. These elements require a wide range of changes that can be a challenging issue for maritime shipping companies. In this context, there are two key guidelines that are related to management of change in tanker shipping companies. One of them is the Element 7 of the Tanker Management Self-Assessment (TMSA) that was established by Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF). The other guidelines is "Management of Change for the Marine and Offshore Industries" that was developed from American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), the classification society of the U.S.A. Although there are guidelines that cover mostly technical sides of the change management, there is a need for a more extensive approach that covers all aspects of change management including technical management, organizational management, financial management and performance assessment of change management. With this motivation, this thesis aims at developing a novel change management tool namely enhanced management of change (e-MoC) to improve the change management capability of global tanker shipping companies. The e-MoC Tool has key elements to improve all aspects of a change process including current MoC guidelines, organizational change management models (e.g. Kotter's 8-Step change model), microlearning approach, Earned Value Management (EVM) financial performance measures and an assessment section for evaluation of the effectiveness of change processes. Besides, this thesis utilized the Fuzzy DEMATEL method to analyze the relationship between the steps of Kotter's change model and examine the relative importance of the model steps. A real case of a change implementation, installation of ballast water treatment system onboard tanker ship, was obtained from a tanker shipping company to conduct a case study. The case was analyzed, and a scenario-based study was conducted in which the e-MoC Tool was utilized to manage the entire change process. The case study aimed at examining the effectiveness of the e-MoC Tool, analyzing possible contributions of the tool for change processes and its advantages over current change implementations. Findings show that e-MoC has great potential to improve the change management capability of tanker shipping companies in various aspects, such as coordinating people in the organization towards the change, reducing resistance to change, enhancing the effectiveness of trainings, improving financial performance, and conducting useful assessments to analyze the change management performance. Further studies might aim at integrating generative artificial intelligence to improve e-MoC capabilities or exploring the effectiveness of other organizational change management models, financial management approaches or performance assessment methods.