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

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.