[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;196034]Or - was it was the decision-making “box” where the captain found himself?
Remember the Movie “Master and Commander”? That captain had full control of his ship, his crew, his schedule and so forth. His instructions left many decisons up to his discretion. He could have sailed around the Horn or waited a few days for weather, could have sailed up the coast of S. American or back down the coast at will. It was understood the the captain alone was responsible for the success of the misson.
Not so today, over the years the decision making “box” - the area where the captain actually has control has gotten smaller and smaller. The captain on the JAX/SJU run has a very small decison making box, his range of options is limited. The captain today is essentially no more than a bus driver.
He is told what cargo to take, when to sail, critically what repairs will or will not be made and so forth. The office even, at times, decides when the captain will work and when he can sleep.
His area of responsbilty has however remained the same, still responsible for the outcome.
In this case there should have been in place a procedure to limit the captains ability to take on additional risk. For example there could have been in place a requirement that once the voyage violated the 1-2-3 rule, or something like it, the captain be required to get routing assistance.[/QUOTE]
It has been my experience and observation that the strongest boxes are the ones we build around ourselves. I am willing to consider that the captain regarded slowing down as the equivalent of pushing the “get fired” button.
As far as authority structures go, it has also been my experience and observation that one can build a structure that maximizes the potential and effect of good decisions or one that minimizes the potential and effect of bad ones, but it is very hard to come up with a system that does both. BP was a good example. John Browne’s radical reorganization into a what was in effect a venture capitalist/hedge fund structure was spectacularly successful in generating good decisions about financial performance. The problem was that the structure stripped away all things that inhibited bad decisions about catastrophic physical risk.
Cheers,
Earl