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Despite technological improvements, the number of maritime accidents is still high. The human element still plays an important role in maritime operations and leadership and communication issues are two key elements that can threaten safety, as happened in the Costa Concordia and El Faro disasters. In this paper we investigate the possibility of introducing shared leadership principles in the current vertical model, interviewing 11 seafarers belonging to two international maritime associations. We conducted Skype interviews and we qualitatively analyzed them using the software Atlas.ti. We describe six elements – organizational culture and ship's climate, error isolation, leadership, mentoring, multiculturalism and teamwork – that, combined together, can foster or inhibit safety. Results highlight the dual role of the captain as mentor and leader, suggesting the need to share responsibilities among crewmembers. Additionally, results emphasize the pivotal role that organizations have in defining the safety environment for preventing errors. Therefore, this study advances the proposition that the maritime system could implement the shared leadership model into the vertical hierarchy.

Despite the increase in regulation and codes, there is a relatively small body of scientific literature on maritime disasters management, especially in terms of human factors that affect the success of the evacuation and safety procedures. This paper provides an analysis of passengers’ behaviour during the Costa Concordia disaster of 2012, in which 32 people died. We use 49 passengers’ witness statement made available by the court of Grosseto to understand how the evacuation occurred. We examine whether the main factor in reducing the effectiveness of the evacuation procedure was the lack of effective management or the behaviours among evacuees, or a combination of the two.\ud \ud Results of the analysis suggest that passengers reacted with solidarity, helped each other and that such spontaneous and pro-social behaviour possibly contributed to reduce the number of casualties. By contrast, competitive behaviours happened only in relation to specific environmental constraints and were limited to the proximity of safety boats.\ud \ud The deficiencies in command in the Costa Concordia evacuation highlights the need to increase the skills of personnel called to manage an emergency at sea and the need to create ad hoc training programs that consider also unexpected scenarios.\ud \ud Understanding how people (both staff and public) deal with an emergency and the factors that affect their decision is pivotal to help planners to review their strategy, anticipate similar events, and consider all the factors in future plans and regulations. While human error is always a big factor in maritime disaster, its impact can be considered and mitigated with specific procedures and adaptable plans.