School Climate and Career Commitment

This study examines the relationship between school climate and career corrmitment among recruits to the merchant marine. In a crossnational sample of academies in England, Spain and the United States, corrmitment to a maritime career is found to be associated with the school climate in which training takes place. Specifically, recruits being trained in a climate of high structural rigidity are more likely than recruits being trained in less rigid environments to have made a career decision and to have made that decision in favor of a short career at sea. Furthermore, the above relationship is shown to be contextual in nature. Regardless of their personal perceptions of the climate of their school, recruits in structurally rigid academies express less commitment to a maritime career. This finding is interpreted as a result of the normative order in a structurally rigid environment discouraging the formation of an occupational identity and encouraging an instrumental orientation to a maritime career.

for this implies that the fonner members have in effect put them to the test and found these values wanting. 11 6 On the other hand, for an occupation with minimal relationship to core societal values and with a low skill level, a large manpower turnover would seem of much less consequence as long as a large pool of potential workers exists. More relevant, perhaps, to maritime occupations is that if large attrition rates are observed by prospective members, they may question the value of investing themselves in such a career and additional resources would need to be channeled into recruiting new members. Furthennore, where adequate job performance necessitates a long training period involving expensive equipment and highly trained personnel, high attrition rates are more difficult to tolerate than where adequate job performance requires little investment by the organization in the training of recruits.
Recruits to the merchant marine spend four years in vocational training involving, in addition to the ordinary costs of education, 4 specialized, expensive equipment including in the case of the American academies an ocean-going ship for training purposes.7 Such investment in recruits is jeopardized by a predominantly truncated career pattern.
The research on career corrmitment in maritime occupations suggests that corrmitment problems stem from the nature of the occupation itself.a Maritime life is physically and emotionally demanding.
Horbulewicz9 has documented many of these demands which include such conditions of work as the climatic conditions in which work is performed, the confinement of shipboard life, and the noise and vibration levels of some work tasks. Further, separation from family, friends and a normal social life, necessitated by long periods of time at sea, is an additional hardship of maritime life: One cannot walk down to the corner bar for a drink, or walk in the woods, or shop at the local stores. Physical space is limited from stem to stern and from port to starboard beam. Social life is restricted to fellow shipmates, and these you must take or leave; one's watchpartner, the men congregating in the messroom, these are your companions. There is no wife to be with for weeks on end, no children to play with, no girl friend to visit. For weeks the ship will dominate the sea domaine. Until the first landfall life becomes the routine of watches--4 hours on, 8 hours off.10 In addition to the confinements of shipboard life, life at sea presents many hazards. 11 • • • the seaman preparing for departure to sea, 7 In England and Spain shipboard training is carried out on in-service merchant vessels. Academy students in England are actually employees of shipping companies and receive their sea training aboard company vessels. 8 see for example references cited in footnote 3 above. 9Jan Horbulewicz, "The Parameters of the Psychological Autonomy of Industrial Trawler Crews, 11 in Seafarer & Corrmunit , ed: Peter H. Fricke (London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1973, pgs. 67-84. lOMariam G. Sherer, Shipping Out (Cambridge: Cornell Maritime Press, Inc., 1973), p. 9. 5 is always aware, consciously or not, that each trip on a ship has lurking uncertainty in it. There is much more security ashore. Yet after each sojourn ashore the seaman must prepare himself once more for his sea voyage and the uncertainties of the venture."11 Furthermore, the myths of romantic adventures in foreign ports dissolve as officers find they are required to spend most of their time in port aboard ship overseeing ship operations, and what romance and adventure do exist fade with repeated travels to the same ports.
Further, technological advances in the occupation are reducing time ashore in foreign ports: Today, with quick turnabout due to automation, ability to load and unload ships quickly and high cost of dock facilities, a seaman may have only a day or two, if that in a port .•. Ships also tend to dock in port towns, not the cities themselves and are miles away, in many cases, from the center of tourist attractions. Thus ships dock in Southampton--rarely in London, or Cherbourgh, and not Paris, Bremerhaven, Bayonne, Port Newark, or in other boon docks here and there, for the most part, hours away from the center of town. So, of the seaman's precious few hours of shore leave, an hour or so of it must be spent in corrmuting."12 In addition to the actual rigors of a seafaring life, corrmitment problems appear to be exacerbated by a lack of knowledge of these demands, not only among the general population but more importantly among recruits to the occupation. Although maritime occupations are vital economic and political activities, they are perfonned for the most part in isolation from the general population. A large segment of the population is removed from observation of maritime activities simply by virtue of its being situated inland. Even in coastal areas, lllbid., p. 10. 12Ibid.,p. 12. 6 however, maritime pursuits are not performed in the midst of the dayto-day activity of the general population. While mailmen, shopkeepers, and bus drivers, for example, are encountered routinely, people engaged in maritime activities are not. Thus exposure to the realities of maritime life is generally limited to those working aboard ships.
This lack of knowledge of the realities of a life at sea has been observed among recruits to maritime academies. Bassis and Rosengren found that exposure to the occupation through the training process changed student perceptions of a maritime life: Overall, students who have yet to be exposed to the socialization process in these academies manifest a considerably more optimistic set of perspectives toward the role of merchant marine officer. In comparison with upperclassmen the inductees appear to minimize the physical dangers of the occupation, the stress, and the boredom of the occupation, and to exaggerate the romance and thrill of shipboard l ife.13 Inductees in maritime academies, those with only a few weeks exposure to the institution, were much less likely than students who had been at the academy for at least a year to agree with such statements as "Time often passes very sl<Mly on voyages," and "The physical dangers are very great when working at sea. 11 In addition, new recruits were much more likely to feel that shipboard life is romantic and thrilling.
This tendency for new recruits to be more optimistic and less realistic about the career than are more experienced students is supported too in Hopwood 1 sl4 work with cadets in the British Merchant Navy.
13sassis and Rosengren,"Socialization and Occupational Disengagement,, "Some Problems Associated with Selection and Training, 11 pp. 105-114 passim. 7 In addition to this lack of direct experience of maritime life, literature and the entertainment media generally focus on the romance and adventure of a seafaring life. Life at sea is often portrayed as a romantic battle between man and nature and a seafaring man as something more than an average man-on-the-street. After an exhaustive study of the sailor in British fiction, Watson concludes: ... the English sailor, and possibly any sailor from Socrates' Jurymen to Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, is much the same sort of person in all ages; and that differing presentations in literature are chiefly due to changing views as to which of his characteristics are virtues and which vices.15 But regardless of which traits are considered virtues and which vices, seamen are portrayed in romantic, almost larger than life tenns 11 • • • the noble pirate, polite and bloodthirsty, the swearing boatswain, blunt and brave, the humours captain, thoroughly despicable, the plain dealer, misanthropic and honest, the merchant skipper, pious and practical, and the heart of oak, rough and loyal . .. 11  18 Hopwood, "Some Problems Associated with Selection and Training," p. 109. 9 conditions) rewards of the occupation, career conmitment will be examined as it is related to the context of the training experience, specifically, the school climate in which training takes place.
School climate is a rather broad tenn used to refer to the general, overall social context of the school setting. The concept of school climate developed from attempts to understand the impact of schools on students--to understand how and in what ways students are cognitively and affectively changed by their experience in school.
Not only are students assumed to be somehow different as a result of their having gone to school, but the particular kind of experiences they have and the kinds of places in which they have them would seem to be related to student outcomes.19 These studies often involved examining objective physical and social characteristics of schools, e.g. size, sponsorship, demographic characteristics of participants, as they were related to such student outcomes as self concept, motivation, and achievement. An at least implicit assumption of these studies was that physical and social characteristics of schools School climate, then, develops from objective qualities of the environment, but it is something more than simply a sum of these characteristics. School climate is perhaps best defined as a collective attitudinal interpretation of the environment. Although the concept of school climate is not as explicitly defined in the literature as it is above, two observations of studies employing this concept lead to the above definition. First, in these studies school climate is empirically measured by surrmation of the perceptions of individuals in a particular context. Thus it is a collective rather than an individual attribute. As Blau points out, some ... concepts refer to attributes of social collectivities, not to those of individuals, but they have counterparts that do refer to characteristics of individuals. Individuals can be described in terms of their orientations and dispositions, just as groups or entire societies can be described in terms of the prevailing social values and norms; and individuals can be distinguished on the basis of their social status, just as corrmunities can be distinguished on the basis of the status distribution in them.21 Second, at least implicit in discussions of school climate is the implication that climate is created and defined by those experiencing 20Feldman and Newcomb, p. 124. 21Peter M. Blau, "Structural Effects, 11 American Sociological Review 25 (1960): 178-93. the situation in day-to-day interaction. In other words, interpretations of stimuli by those experiencing them intervene between the objective properties of the situation and the resulting climate. 22 Because it is a collective, interpretive concept, school climate is open to variation among maritime academies because institutions vary in tenns of institutional properties, e.g. size, physical isolation, sponsorship, etc., and in terms of social characteristics, e.g. demographic composition of faculty and students. Objective environmental properties are open to a variety of interpretations, interpretations that are influenced by the total mix or interaction of physical and social properties of the school and its members. An illustration from maritime literature may help make this clearer. In a study of maritime officers, Hopwood found that a particular group of future officers expressed the opinion that life at sea was 11 • • • superior [to landbased alternative~ in terms of opportunity for social interaction, 112 3 an opinion that would seem in conflict with the objective reality of life aboard ship. Hopwood interprets this as understandable, however, because this group was recruited from Ireland and Africa where the sea 22 several studies have investigated the relationship between school climate as an objective property (measurement of such properties as size, student-faculty ratio, number of non-academic events, etc.) and as a subjective property (measurement of student perceptions of these same properties). While some overlap exists, students' perceptions of their environment do not always match the objective properties of the situation. See for example, Alexander W. Astin . .. one of the most powerful variables in sociological analysis is the concept of social class. With startling consistency, social class is found to be associated with the wide variety of dependent variables with which the sociologist is concerned. The power of social class as a detenninant of attitudes and behavior is one of the best documented of sociological findings.
Social class, however, consists of a number of component elements. One cannot assume, therefore, that if social class is related to X and is also related to Y, then the same aspect of social class exercises the effective influence in both cases.  Consider the following simple example: In the first case one finds a relationship between class and exposure to public affairs programs and in the second case a relationship between class and home ownership. The same aspects of class may not be the effective influence in the two cases. In the first case it may be level of education which is the crucial element in exposure to public affairs programs, whereas in the second case it may be income which affects home ownership. In both cases we say social class is responsible, but it may be different aspects of social class which produce the observed effect. If social class is related to self-esteem, perhaps it is social prestige which is the effective influence. If class is related to economic liberalism, perhaps it is union membership. If class is related to membership in certain groups, perhaps old family is responsible. If class is related to certain attitudes, perhaps style of life factors are centrally implicated.27 Rosenberg's discussion suggests that determination of the most "centrally implicated" component in a particular analysis is a decision based on theoretical consideration of the variables. And it would seem too that the context in which the variables are to be examined must be considered. In determining the most crucial dimension of school climate to consider in a study of career commitment, the following criteria are considered relevant: 1) the concept should be theoretically meaningful to a discussion of career commitment; and 2) it should be a characteristic of academies which has empirical variance.
Examination of the qualitative data28 available on the maritime academies and their students suggests the dimension of school climate most relevant to a discussion of career commitment is one which captures the extent of repressive control of the institution over the student--repressive in the sense that students feel controlled by externally imposed rules governing their behavior with little input 27 Morris Rosenberg, The Logic of Survey Analysis (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1968), pp. 48-49.
2 8see page 17. Chapter II, for a discussion of the available qualitative data. 14 into the fonnulation of rules and little access to the people who formulate and execute the rules. On the one hand, proper behavior is narrowly defined and on the other the student has little or no formal input into this definition. In addition, the structure limits infonnal student input by prohibiting informal interaction between the student and those who define proper student behavior and who keep watch over it. We have named this dimension of school climate 11 structura l rigidity. 11 In maritime academies, as in any social group, patterns of social organization fonn as people interact on a regular basis. Social control in the institution develops and is maintained through the normative system which evolves--a nonnative system influenced by defines a range of acceptable behavior within the maritime academy and acceptable orientation toward future career plans. Where, for example, in the instance Hopwood 3 0 reports, most students feel that a life at sea is socially rewarding, the normative mileau will probably reward positive identification with academy goals, including corTVTiitment to a maritime life. On the other hand, where a majority of students feel confined by academy and shipboard life and controlled by, rather than integrated into, academy and shipboard life, the normative mileau will probably reward behavior that is oriented away from academy goals and toward more individualistic ends.
While lack of integration between student and institution appears to be less than desirable in any kind of educational experience,3 1 in vocational education a clash between student and institution would seem to be an even greater negative force. The faculty in maritime academies represent the students• future vocation more directly than do the faculty in non-vocational education. For example, students pursuing a bachelor's degree in English may be pursuing that degree in preparation for a number of careers, e.g.
teacher, journalist, author, editor, etc. The faculty, therefore, would not necessarily be an important occupational reference group for 30Hopwood, 11 Some Problems Associated with Selection and Training, 11 p. 103. 31 stern, for example, reconmends greater restraint on the part of liberal arts colleges in exercising control over the lives of students. On the basis of his analysis of several such colleges, Stern argues that excessive control of student behavior is associated ~ith lack of personal corTVTiitment on the part of students and results in a negative perception by students of the intellectual climate of their co 11 ege. G. G. Stern,11 Student Eco 1 ogy and the Co 11 ege Environment," Journal of Medical Education 40 (1965): 132-154. 16 a student. Maritime students, on the other hand, are preparing for a rather specific occupation and those instructing them are members of this occupation. Thus a clash between student and institution would appear to be more of a clash between student and future career than it is where the educational experience is farther removed from the occupation itself. While students in the latter case are able to dismiss conflicts with a rationalization that things will be different when they get out into the real world of journalism or business, those in maritime academies may be less able to do this as relationships with faculty and institution generally are more indicative of future relationships within the occupation than they are in the instance above.
This study then will explore the relationship between occupational co111J1itment and the context of career preparation. More specifically, it will address itself to the relationship between the structural rigidity of school climate and career corrmitment among recruits to the merchant marine. A second body of data that is drawn on heavily in this study for theoretical suggestions and verification purposes consists of 1 This research was partially supported by grants from the International Center for Marine Resource Development, the Research Committee of the University of Rhode Island, and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Rhode Island. 18 approximately sixty hours of tape-recorded interviews made by or. William Rosengren on the campuses of the seven maritime academies and with shipping company executives and ocean-going ships' officers.
The survey instrument discussed above was formulated on the basis of this body of qualitative data.

Operationalizing Career Conmitment
Career conmitment is nominally defined as the attachment of a student to maritime life, the strength of his feeling that a maritime career is worthwhile. It is operationalized by the question "How many years do you plan to stay at sea?" This means of operationalizing career commitment, along with subsequent decisions on how to handle the responses, is suggested by the qualitative data discussed above.
While this measure of conmitment may be inappropriate for other occupations, among maritime students and current members of the occupation it is a common topic of conversation. Although it might be unusual to hear a doctor, plumber, or sociologist asking a colleague how many years he planned to remain at his job, this is a quite common question among individuals in maritime occupations. What is perhaps more surprising is that the answer to this question is almost always given as an exact figure--6 years, 11 years, 19 years--rather than in an expression such as "for awhile," "I'll see how it goes," or "until I retire. 11 It is thus felt that the number of years an individual plans to stay at sea is a meaningful indicator of his commitment to a maritime career. 19 Career commitment is categorized as follows, based on the tertile breaks in the data: little conmitment, less than five years; some commitment, 5 to 15 years; high commitment, 16 or more years.
A fourth category of the conmitment variable stems from a number of considerations. Some respondents failed to specify a specific number of years when asked how many years they planned to stay at sea. Non-response to particular items is a corrrnon occurrence in survey research and is handled in a number of ways, e . g. removing non-respondents from the sample, giving them a mean score, giving them a score on the basis of a statistical procedure which estimates their probable response. The decision as to which alternative to take in a particular study is based on consideration of the entire situation, i.e. sample size, theoretical meaning of the item and of non-response to that item, etc. After careful consideration, nonrespondents are included in a fourth category of the variable, titled 11 undecided. 11 This decision is based upon theoretical considerations suggested by the qualitative data. Although ordinal measurement of this variable is jeopardized by this decision, because the number of years planned at sea is a very real issue for maritime students, it is felt that non-response to this particular item indicates an uncertainty rather than an unwillingness to answer the question. Exclusion of non-respondents or estimation of their probable response are thus deemed inappropriate.
By constructing the variable on the basis of both quantitative and qualitative data, it is felt that the cat_ egories of the conmitment 20 variable reflect the real meaning that the question of the number of years planned at sea has for maritime students.
Operationalizing the Structural Rigidity Dimension of School Climate The structural rigidity dimension of school climate is conceptualized as the feeling by students as to the extent that their behavior is extensively confined by rules, that they have little formal input into the formulation of these rules, and that they have little access (informal input) to those who formulate and execute these rules.
It is operationally defined on the questionnaire by means of the following four items: --There is an elaborate set of rules and regulations to which students are expected to conform.
--Faculty exercise a lot of control over student behavior outside of the classroom.
--Student opinion influences how this academy is run .
--Faculty are relatively inaccessible to students outside of class.
Respondents are asked to indicate for each of the above items whether they feel each statement is either 1) a very accurate description of conditions at their academy, 2) somewhat accurate, or 3) a very inaccurate description of conditions at their academy. A fourth possible response on the questionnaire is "don't know." However, because we have no theoretical rationale for assuming non-response has any particular meaning (as was the case with the career commitment variable), and because sample size permits, "don't know" respondents along with those for whom scattered data on the scale is missing have 21 been eliminated from the sample.2 Thus only respondents with a score of l, 2 or 3 for each of the scale items are included in the sample. 3 After reverse scoring the items on rules, control of behavior, and inaccessibility of faculty, the scores on this variable range from low structural rigidity (4) to high structural rigidity (12).
Retaining the substantive meaning of the response categories, respondents are categorized on this variable as follows: 4 thru 7, low structural rigidity; 8, moderate structural rigidity; 9 thru 12, high structural rigidity.
The above is a measure of how individuals perceive the climate of their school. In order to examine the contextual relationship between school climate and career commitment a contextual measure of school climate is constructed based on these individual responses.
Construction of this contextual measure is discussed below under Analysis Procedures.

Analysis Procedures
The relationship between the structural rigidity of school climate and career commitment is examined using crosstabulation procedures. But before examining this relationship, the seven maritime academies in the sample are first categorized on the measure of structural rigidity discussed above so as to obtain a contextual 2 oan D. Nimmo and Charles M. Bonjean, Political Attitudes and Public Opinion (New York : David McKay, 1972), pp. 215-227. 3 After removing from the original sample of 1993 those respondents for whom scattered data is missing (619)   Buzzard's Bay (America) 9.21 Castine (America) 9.27 Warsash (England) 9.48 aF = 5.51; df = 6 1986; p < .01.
As can be seen from o. C. Heath and Company, 1976).

RESULTS
This chapter is an empirical analysis of the relationship between school climate and career commitment among recruits to the merchant marine. The reader is reminded that the measure of school climate used in this analysis is a contextual measure, a property of the institution rather than of the individual. Thus any relationship that is observed is interpreted as a relationship between a quality of the training experience and a property of individuals exposed to that experience.
The crosstabulation between school climate and career corrmitment is presented in Table 2. Before examining Table 2, however, the format used in this table necessitates explanation. A chi square is computed for this and subsequent tables to test the statistical significance of the findings. In addition, for each cell in Table 2 the observed and expected frequency and contribution of that cell to chi square is presented as a further aid in interpreting the association.
The format for each cell in Table 2 is as follows: the first entry is the percentage that cell is of the row total.
the second entry is the observed frequency, the actual number of cases falling in that cell.
the third entry is the expected frequency, the number of cases that would be expected to be found in the cell if cases were distributed 24 25 by chance alone. The expected frequency is computed by multiplying the row total by the column total for each cell and dividfog by N.
__ the fourth entry is the contribution of that cell to the total chi square. Adding the contribution of all cells results in the total chi square, which is presented at the bottom of the table along with the degrees of freedom and probability level. Chi-square = 100.08; df = 6; p < .001.
The resulting chi-square in Table 2  Moreover, recruits in Climate 3 are also less likely than recruits in Climates 1 and 2 to be uncertain about their career plans.
Only 26% of students in Climate 3 express ambivalence about their career plans compared to more than 40% in both Climates 1 and 2.
Not only are the percentage differences greatest in the low commitment category, but these three cells contribute more than half of the total value of the chi-square. An additional 25% of the chi- Thus Table 2 indicates that recruits to the merchant marine who are being trained in a climate characterized by high structural rigidity are more likely to have made a career decision and are more likely to have that decision be one of short-term commitment to a maritime life.
In order to strengthen the contention that the observed relationship is indeed a contextual one--that the relationship observed in Table 2 is not simply a result of how individuals perceive their environment but rather that climate is a social relaity which impinges upon individuals despite their personal perception of it-- Table 3 examines the relationship between school climate and career commitment while controlling for individual perception of school climate.  Table 3 shows that the significant relationship between school climate and career coll1Tlitment found in Table 2 remains when individuals' perception of school climate is controlled. Examination of percentage differences reveals that regardless of individual perception of school climate, recruits in Climate 3 are more likely than recruits in Climates l and 2 to indicate a low level of career coll1Tlibnent. Among those who perceive a climate of low structural rigidity, for example, only 2% of those in Climate l indicate low corrmibnent compared to 26% of those in Climate 3.
Conversely, regardless of individual perception of school climate, recruits in Climate 3 are less likely than recruits in Climates l and 2 to express long-term commitment to a life at sea.
Among recruits who perceive a climate of high structural rigidity, for example, 22% of those in Climate l express high commitment compared to only 16% of those in Climate 3.
Thus Table 3 indicates that the contextual relationship between school climate and career corrmitment found in Table 2 exists over and above any relationship between an individual's perception of that climate and comnitment. Regardless of how they personally perceive the climate of their school, recruits in a climate characterized by high structural rigidity are more likely to express a low level of career comnitment and less likely to express a high level of comnitment than recruits in a climate characterized by low or moderate structural rigidity. In addition to expressing less commitment to a maritime life, recruits in a climate of high structural rigidity are less likely to indicate uncertainty about their career plans than 29 recruits in less rigid environments regardless of how the climate of their training experience is perceived by them personally.
While Table 3 has given further support to the relationship between school climate and career corrmitment, it is difficult to interpret from Table 3 whether the relationship is primarily contextual in nature or whether it results from some interaction between context and perception of context. If, for example, an interactive process is involved in the observed relationship we would expect to find: (1) the largest percentage of those expressing high conmitment should be found among those in Climate 1 who perceive low structural rigidity.
(2) the largest percentage of those expressing low conmitment should be found among those in Climate 3 who perceive high structural rigidity.
(3) the largest percentage of those expressing uncertainty should be found among those in Climate 1 who perceive low structural rigidity.
None of the above propositions nor their corollaries are seen to hold in Table 3, arguing for a contextual rather than an interactive relationship. However, percentage differences in some cases are small, and it is difficult to argue for their significance other than pointing out the persistent lack of support for the above propositions. In addition, percentage differences between Climates 1 and 3 differ considerably among the low, moderate and high categories of individual perception: among those expressing low conmitment there is a percentage difference between Climates 1 and 3 of 24%, 20%, and 12% respectively in the 30 three perception categories. Among those expressing high conmitment there is a percentage difference of 5%, 19%, and 6% respectively.
This might be interpreted as support for an interaction between school climate and perception of climate.
Because of these difficulties in interpreting Table 3 in terms of anything other than support for the relationship observed in Table 2, there is a relationship between individual perception of school climate and career commitment it would seem more appropriate to interpret the relationship as an association between commitment and the interaction of school climate and perception of that climate. In that case, further interpretation of Table 3 would seem appropriate. The percentage differences, for example, observed between Climates 1 and 3 among the three categories of individual perception might then be examined further. Table 4 gives no support to a relationship between individual perception of school climate and career commitment. Examination of percentages in Table 4 reveals no differences in conmitment between recruits who perceive the climate of their school as having low, moderate or high structural rigidity .. In addition, the chi-square does not reach the .05 level of significance. Therefore, Table 4 supports interpretation of the relationship between school climate and career commitment as a contextual relationship. A final conclusion drawn from the analysis was that the relationship between school climate and career commitment is primarily a contextual one. The school climate in which recruits are trained was 32 related to their career commitment while how they individually perceived that climate was not found to be associated with their conmitment to a maritime life.

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
While the findings in Chapter III support the existence of a relationship between school climate and career commitment, they invite two sources of concern: l) Might the relationship be spurious?
2) How is it possible that the context of training is related to commitment while individuals' perception of that context is not?
This chapter will address each of these questions in turn.

1) Might the relationship be spurious?
While research findings are often open to questions of spuriousness, research employing cross-cultural data are particularly sensitive to this criticism. Becausa culture is a pervasive, powerful influence on human behavior, even the most casual reader might question the findings of a study employing cross-cultural data when the effect of cultural differences are not explicitly taken into account.
The sample used in the present study includes recruits to the merchant marine in three countries--England, Spain and the United States.
In addition to three different cultural systems, these three countries present three different opportunity structures for those entering a maritime career. 33 The United States academies train seamen for a declining merchant fleet, as evidence by the fact that the gross tonnage of the American fleet declined from about 40 million in 1946 to about 10 million at the end of the 1960's. In addition, the majority of the some 1 ,000 merchant vessels in service in 1966 were of World War II vintage. At the same time, the number of passenger vessels of American flag has also decreased, while the number of non-commercial seagoing vessels such as research ships in the service of agencies such as the NOAA has correspondingly increased.
By way of contrast, the British schools train personnel with similar skills for a more stable merchant marine economy and one with employment options for graduates which are only now beginning to appear in the American market. Finally, the Spanish counterparts train deck and engine room mates for an expanding shipping industry, as evidenced by the reported growth of the fleet from 250 in 1945 to over 2500 in 1968.1 Thus in addition to less tangible cultural differences, one might suspect that commitment might vary among these countries as opportunities for job placement and rewards vary. It was because of these obvious differences between countries in culture and opportunity structure that Bassis and Rosengren2 first thoroughly examined the effect of national differences on commitment to a maritime life before going on to explore other factors that might contribute to occupational commitment. Using the same data as employed in the present study, Bassis and Rosengren found no support for a relationship between national affiliation and career commitment.
As clear and as important as these cross-national differences may appear to be, they in fact bore no relationship to the degree of commitment expressed by students in each country. That is, there is no relationship between national characteristics of either maritime students or schools and occupational commitment. 3Ibid., p. 136. 35 In addition to the above. support that the relationship between school climate and career commitment found in the present study is not spurious by reason of national differences comes from the manner in which the contextual measure of school climate was constructed (see page 22, Chapter II). Examination of mean scores on the school climate variable revealed that differences in school climate cross-cut national affiliation. The three English schools, for example, were distributed across all three categories of the school climate measure. Thus there is no reason to believe that the relationship between school climate and career commitment found in our sample is spurious by reason of national differences.
An additional possible source of spuriousness is that of the entering characteristics of recruits. As discussed in Chapter I, many recruits enter training with a romantic, unrealistic view of a maritime life. Could it be then that these students, as they become disillusioned during training, express less commitment than students who enter the academy with a realistic view of what will be expected of them. If prior knowledge of a seafaring life were differentially distributed among the academies in our sample, perhaps by reason of their location or recruitment of a particular type of student. this might account for the relationship that was observed between climate and commitment.  seacoast. They found these background characteristics, along with all other entering characteristics for which data was available, did not vary significantly among the academies. Thus differences in commitment observed among the maritime academies in the sample must be accounted for by something that goes on during the academy experience rather than by something recruits bring with them to the experience.
To the extent that the arguments above are valid, we can proceed on the assumption that the relationship between school climate and career commitment is not spurious and can address the second question raised by the research.

2) How does the context of training influence individuals' commitment to a maritime life?
Our research has identified school climate as a salient property of the academy experience and has shown that the climate in which training takes place is related to the occupational commitment properties of its own that are not found in any of its members taken separately. As Blau points out: The conception of structure or system implies that the component units stand in some relation to one another and, as the popular expression "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" suggests, that the relations between units add new elements to the situation. This aphorism, like so many others, is a halftruth. The sum of fifteen applies, for example, is no more than fifteen times one apple. But a block of ice is more than the sum of the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen that compose it. In the case of the applies, there exist no linkages or relations between the units comprising the whole. In the case of the ice, however, specific connections have been formed between H and 0 atoms and among H 2 o molecules that distinguish ice from hydrogen and oxygen, on the one hand, and from water, on the other. Similarly, a busload of passengers does not constitute a group, since no social relations unify individuals into a common structure. But a busload of club members on a Sunday outing is a group, because a network of social relations links the members into a social structure, a structure which is an emergent characteristic of the collectivity that cannot be reduced to the attributes of its individual members. In short, a network of social relations transforms an aggregate of individuals into a group ... and the group is more than the sum of the individuals composing it since the structure of social relatiogs is an emergent element that influences the conduct of individuals.
We are left then with the more interesting question of how 11 • • • an emergent element ... influences the conduct of individuals." 5 Peter M. Blau and W. Richard Scott, Formal Organizations (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1962), p. 3. 39 More specifically, how does the climate of traini.ng in maritime academies influence an individual's commitment to a life at sea regardless of how he personally perceives that climate?
Such a group influence on the individual might be explained by the fact that behavior does not proceed in a vacuum but rather within a social context. The range of acceptable behavior within this context is defined, legitimated and enforced through the normative order.
Individual proclivities may lean outside these boundaries, but in order to survive within a social context the individual must bring them back to within acceptable bounds.
Because social life cannot flow smoothly where each confrontation of individuals is a completely fresh experience with no rules, no expectations for the other's behavior, nor guidelines for one's own, a social organization develops which defines rules, expectations and guidelines. A normative system emerges in response to the need for order in social interaction. Such a system defines not only acceptable modes of behavior, e.g. responding to another's friendly greeting in kind, but also acceptable attitudes and orientations toward a multitude of issues and ideas, e.g. man's needs have precedence over other animals'. This normative system serves the individual, providing him with a set of expectations for his own and other's behavior, and serves the group as a whole as it protects the group from disorder. It is thus the normative order which is the mechanism through which individuals' behavior is influenced by the group.
Basically, the way in which the normative order influences and controls individual behavior is through a system of sanctions-punishments and rewards. While the form of these vary with the group 40 in which they develop, broadly speaking punishment ranges from the most subtle, benign form of ridicule to the much more explicit, forceful, even life threatening kinds of actions. Rewards range from a symbolic pat on the back to the conferral of status or monetary honors.
While each of us grows up learning a kind of generalized societal normative system, each group we join has its own set of norms to be learned and obeyed. These nonns develop from particular conditions within the group and external conditions that impinge on the group.
A group of soldiers, for example, will develop a normative system that is a reflection of the kinds of circumstances with which it is beset.
In non-combat groups, soldiers might ridicule their country's involvement in the war or perhaps harass a fellow soldier; but in a combat group faced with i1m1ediate danger any behavior that weakens the morale of the group or places it in greater danger is likely to be actively discouraged through the normative system. At the same time, status in the group might be allocated to members who are particularly active in keeping up morale or who take personal risks for the sake of the group's safety.
Thus a normative order develops within groups in response to the need for order in social life, and this normative system reflects the particular conditions facing the group.
Just as the combat group develops norms to meet the needs of social life peculiar to that group, so too the students at a maritime academy probably develop a normative order sensitive to their particular situation. While it is difficult to observe how a normative order develops and how each of its components arises from a particular condition of the group, it is possible to speculate on how a particular 41 property such as school climate enters the normative order and takes on consequences for individuals' commitment to a maritime life.
An interesti~g contradiction in the training of recruits to the merchant marine is that while academy traini _ ng has some of the same properties as training in the professions, ~.g. medicine  While the academy is seeking to foster a maritime identity among students, it would appear to be putting up roadblocks to such an identity fonnation where academy life can be interpreted by recruits as free from the influence of mere recruits. 11 Mere recruits 11 is perhaps the significant definition that comes through to students in a climate which is structurally ~igid. Because students in such a climate are systematically excluded from decisions that can be viewed as part of the occupation they are seeking to enter and are discouraged from having infonnal encounters with members of the occupation who are training them, recruits are encouraged to identify themselves as outsiders rather than as junior colleagues. The differences between outsider and junior colleague in status and self image would seem a crucial factor impinging on the normative order of trainees. Where the majority of recruits regard themselves as outsiders to the academy and the occupation it represents, the normative order will reward outsider behavior and punish or at least discourage junior colleague behavior. Thus corrrnitment is not likely to be encouraged by a normative order that discourages a junior colleague orientation to the academy. This may take the fonn      There is a good relationship between officers aboard ship and shipping company officials ashore