The Impacts of Internship at Sea on Navigation Students' Seafaring Commitment

Abstract

Internship is a socialization process for school students to experience before entering the job market. This study explores the internship mechanism that affects navigation students' seafaring commitment as well as their intentions to remain in the internship company by looking into the work context and organizational socialization process that interns experience aboard. The main results of empirical analysis reveal that work context (route and ship type) are associated with socialization as well as intentions to remain (in the internship companies), in the meanwhile the socialization process ('coworker support' and 'future prospects') mediate the relation of work context with intentions to remain. In addition, we also find that seafaring commitment mediate the effect of socialization on intentions to remain. Implications of results for practice are provided.