Effects of Leadership Style on Job Satisfaction and Intention to Stay in Shipping Industry

With changing technology, enterprises are expanding towards internationalization and globalization, and shipping market is also positively developing towards maritime liberalization and internationalization. International trade enhances economic development through shipping industry. Apparently, shipping trade would be booming and such a trend would significantly affect economic development. Shipping development requires human devotion for the operation. However, a lot of shipping businesses currently encounter the problem of manpower shortage at sea. Owing to the special workplace and the unique and professional characteristics, shipping companies have to emphasize the gap of seafarer shortage and the trend of seafarer loss. For this reason, it is necessary to investigate seafarers' intention to stay in shipping industry. Aiming at shipping industry, off-shore operation staff of China Cosco Shipping Co., Ltd. is distributed 300 copies of questionnaire, and 261 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 87%. Research results show significantly positive effects of (1) leadership style on job satisfaction, (2) job satisfaction on intention to stay, and (3) leadership style on intention to stay. According to the results, suggestions are proposed, expecting to search for the route to enhance seafarers' intention to stay for the gap of human resources and the trend of seafarer loss as well as reference for human resource management in shipping industry domestically.