5 Jul 2022

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The Diversity in the Air Traffic Control World

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Academic level: College

Paper type: Research Paper

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Introduction 

Air Traffic Control (ATC) refers to the mainstay of what is debatably the main means of individual transport in the contemporary world. As a load of traffic continues to develop radically, Air Traffic Control has to manage always more aircraft constantly. Big European airports, for instance, the London Heathrow, undergo spikes of at least 1, 500 daily landings and take-offs. According to the sector's forecast, they predict a doubling in the international flight movements by 2030. Besides, with the developing adoption technology of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for civil uses, there is an expectation of extra boost in air traffic in the subsequent years (Batteau, 2001). 

According to history, ATC, as well as its related technologies of wireless communications, are based in the military. Most of the developments in communication, navigation coupled with surveillance (CNS) technologies are the direct outcomes of developments of wartime. For example, systems of surveillance radar and navigation functions which were formerly developed for armed forces were later embraced for civilian aviation. The change of application and purpose as well shifted the threat prototypes impacting the wireless technologies significantly. While the military may usually depend on secrecy, security via anonymity and superior decorum technologies to succeed in an arms race, the necessities in a civil environment of international collaborations are diverse (Wickens, Mavor, & McGee, 1997). In this setting, a pure security by design model, for instance, the protection of vital wireless communication via standard countermeasures of cryptography, would be greatly superior. Unfortunately, in the slowly transforming industry of aviation, such a drastic transformation in security approaches at the moment lacks in the horizon, and it is arguably uneasy to be present at this moment in time (Batteau, 2001). 

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The community of civil aviation stresses safety as well as has a robust and sustainably advancing safety record. Security though is not safety. Thus it needs a different approach. Historically, events have been recorded where communication technologies were wickedly misused to cause misery to aircraft. Eventually, including recently established aviation technologies that make a shift from the traditional radar to contemporary digital communication networks exclude security by intention in their specifications; rather the system depends almost absolutely on redundancy (Wickens, Mavor, & McGee, 1997). 

However, with the range of accessibility of powerful and cheap tools, for instance, the software defined radios (SDRs), the aviation community lost the significant technical benefit of safeguarding its communication in the past. The present reports proliferation shows indications regarding a possible cyber-attacks on wireless Air Traffic Control (ATC) technologies. Incidents of high-profile created more speculations in the media regarding the possible effect of insecure technologies on the air traffic safety. Such incidents include cases of emergency signals being hijacked or alleged military exercise instigating aircraft to vanish from radar screens of Europeans. By ignoring the individual's accuracy reports, the speculations are directly instigated by the fact that such attacks are possibly feasible and have been confirmed today by the academicians and hackers. Much extra research has been done on the security of freshly-developed Air Control Traffic (ATC) protocols as well as the systems of digital avionics installed in modern aircraft (Ek, Arvidsson, Akselsson, Johansson, & Josefsson, 2003). 

In the meantime, due to the exposures, allegations of exaggerated media broadcasting of cyber security problems have been created by the aviation community members. Others cite the impossibility of the cited IT systems of aircraft hacking in the real world or doubt the effect of attacks on wireless air traffic systems of communication in practice as a result of the broadly installed checks and balances applied in aviation. 

These examples indicate that, unfortunately, a majority who understand wireless security, lack effective expertise on air transport. Comparatively, the majority of stakeholders in aviation are abreast with the procedures and processes but do not realize the acuteness of contemporary issues of cyber security (Wickens, Mavor, & McGee, 1997). 

Exploration of Management of the Multicultural Workforce 

Cultural Anthropology and International Business 

Systems of technology have developed in scale than have the social representations that sustain them. The representations, "cultures" within systems of sociotechnical are no less a component of the dynamics system than are information resources or mechanical components. The culture of across-the-board technical system supplies the resources for sensemaking required by personnel engaged in the system alongside the legitimation symbols for personnel governing the system. When personnel concerned in the system cannot make sense of the system's behavior, disaster emerges. To the extent that the personnel concerned with the system cannot stabilize their system representations, normal operation may continue. By stabilizing of representations, is not uniform consensus or comprehension, but mutual awareness of basic constraints and conditions. For example, certain greatest risks to safe flight currently result from passengers. As the larger section of the public fly, understanding of the passengers regarding flight risks has reduced. Many passenger incidents endanger safe flight, either by carrying flammables in a compartment of passengers, opening luggage bins at landing times, and operating individual cell phones in the flight or threaten crew. On a larger extent, the varied operational standard in diverse regions of the world creates exclusive risks for worldwide flight (Batteau, 2001). 

Passengers' flight in developing nations is a greater different issue from the developed nations. Equipment is outdated, technology is imported, though there could be less stress on passenger convenience and comfort and the facilities of air traffic management are non-existent or weak. As a result, the rates of an accident in Africa, Latin America and Asia are much higher compared to North America and Europe. This is simply because the developing nations are not yet at par with the developed nations in terms air traffic management, training and ground facilities. A different opinion would propose that in the current world system, the developed nations will constantly be a technological periphery. Besides, the higher rates of accidents in third world aviation are the disadvantageous side of affordability, convenience, and comfort of the first world aviation. 

These demonstrations are cultural, that is, an issue of negotiated contextual, self and other understandings. Even though anthropology delivers a flexible and elusive understanding of small-scale demonstrations, it is only starting to similarly understand the broad demonstrations that structure broad systems of technology. The strength of anthropology depends on ethnographic observation, understanding of the context as well as the responsibility to differences in culture. Collectively, these deliver substitute imaginaries for humanity to the retrofitted and decomposed human factors that are reaching their service life limits. There exist few kinds of research of human behavior as well as systems applicable to the civil aviation domain by principles of anthropology founded on ethnographic observation coupled with sensitivity to context. The studies indicate to the probability of a contextual comprehension of the demonstrations of aviation, and eventually of an anthropology of broad representations (Batteau, 2001). 

Communicating Across Cultures 

To land an aircraft entails a multifaceted set of exact transformations as it descends and slows down while approaching the runway and configures its wing to uphold stability. Temperature, the speed of wind and weight of aircraft influence the calculations of descent profile alongside speed of landing. Before the beginning of descent, a flight crew starts to plan the landing and planning the aircraft configuration and instrument settings to uphold a descent profile that lands the aircraft at the right place, at the right speed and time. As the aircraft slows down and approaches the ground, there is a shrink in the marginal error, navigational track, and trim. The flight crew consists of several accessible controls such as elevators, thrusters, and flaps, and speed breaks to maintain speed balance, sink rate, and attitude. 

The must be a consideration of self-regulation and communicative constructions of contexts. Irrespective of the ideologies of the organization that stresses vertical control through management, procedures, and lines of authority. Most of the behaviors are regulated contextually through lateral control. Contexts entail within them feedback mechanisms which are instrumental in maintaining the context stability. The feedback mechanisms are usually discovered solely through sensitive as well as sympathetic observation (Batteau, 2001). 

Linguistic, as well as other cultural understandings, are likely to expose some dynamics within a system that are usually transparent from a managerial viewpoint. For instance, the application of the system dynamics concepts and contextual interpretations to analyze an accident where there is technological complexity, coordination breakdowns, anticipations conditioned by diversity in culture and miscommunication added to a controlled flight into a terrain (CFIT). Research on aviation communication offers a third expanse where contextual consideration would be of worth. Even though cultural considerations are negotiated through communication acts, an acknowledgment of the multiple levels, as well as layers of communication, is needed to create anthropology of broad representations. Several kinds of research on communication in aviation presume a referential approach to communication where the utterances refer to an object that is unambiguous and any shortfall resulting from unambiguity is regarded as miscommunication or noise. 

Contrasting Cultural Values 

Pre-Imperial Peripheries 

Exclusion to the assumptions of a referential approach is discussed in Charlotte Linde's research of flight deck communication by applying both cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and simulator studies. According to Linde (1988) to mitigate phraseology such as informal lexical choice, informal syntax or third person as opposed to the first person was highly sensitive to social rank which included the first differentiations among flight engineer and first officer. Mitigating as well was indirectly linked to communication effectiveness. That is, frequent descriptions of drafts or topics orders failed more with the increased mitigation of speech. Irrespective of this, the flight crews that use mitigated speech were regarded as better crews. The paradox is that mitigation of behavior encodes the rational as opposed to the referential features of communication as well as contributed to the interaction smoothness alongside enhancing coordination among flight crew (Batteau, 2001). 

A referential approach of communication decontextualizes it. Features of communication that respond to or define the context are disregarded. Therefore, it was noise causing a critical crash when the American 965 pilot on approaching Cali spoke into COMI (the ATC channel). From a contextual lookout, however, the situation is interesting as it developed a false logic of understanding of the controller (Wickens, Mavor, & McGee, 1997). 

Any piece of human communication entails several layers of relational meaning that are apparent only in context. Teamwork within the operational personnel is dependent on context-building as well as context-regulating information that are lost in the model of reference. Understanding the collapse or breakdown of such a teamwork needs as much information concerning the timing, intonation, phrasing, kinesics alongside other nonverbal features of communication (Wickens, Mavor, & McGee, 1997). 

In summary, there is pressure between retrofitted and decomposed understanding of human possibility that is personified in human factors coupled with the adaptive and self-regulating abilities that are personified in anthropological concepts and ethnographic observations. This tension is compared with the tension between the international regulation of aviation such as Airbus, One World, ICAO as well as the messy realities of local nuance as well as diversity that will constantly establish cultures of the world. The noticeable stress placed on flying outside the metropolitan core proposes that aviation or more precisely aviation technology whether in stressed crews, accident rates or corporate unprofitability, has but faultily colonized the industrializing world. This highlights the probability of understanding the aviation representations by individuals whose lives are linked to flight. 

Operational stresses in profit making aviation today reflect a fragmentation as well as instability of the demonstrations. Building on contextual sensitivity at which ethnography excels, the next step is to understand the representations of the broad mechanisms that stabilize and destabilize the range of the technological system (Wickens, Mavor, & McGee, 1997). 

Post-Imperial Peripheries 

In the past 15 decades, mechanized transportation as well as communication-railroads, buses, steamships, airplanes, telegraphs, telephones and telecommunication alongside the internet have changed the individual and societal radii that at one point demarcated human scale and eventually the boundaries of anthropological understandings. "Anthropological" is applied here in a typical sense of concern with the human kind nature, an enterprise extremely urgent than just poking within the dusty attics of the humanity mansions. An anthropological theory has abandoned the hypothesis of clear cultural or societal boundaries, however anthropologists still often seek out-of-way, places to conduct their field study. Presumptions regarding locality, as well as rootedness, still find their way into anthropological writing, though they are not particularly recognized. Sufficient proof of this can be established in the ideology of “culture" that be found with a set spatial match up. A more precise representation of what was previously known as " culture" would be a fluid accumulation of elements of culture, negotiated with neighbors as well as mutable in accordance to shifting political strategies. 

Aviation together with telecommunication has primarily changed the moral interconnectedness the world. More than the last hundred years ago mothers were in a position to remind their children about the starving population in Asia, inspiring them to clear their meals. Christian missionaries may start a palliative relief attempts, feeding some thousands. However, famine and distant wars posed some threat except probably to concessions colonial trade. The 20th C. was the duration where the world transformed to a complete industrialized organic from an agricultural production alongside a village life that is loosely articulated around sparsely distributed cities. Technologies that were developed in San Jose are fast applied in Mysore, and buying decisions in Little Rock result to layoffs at factories of clothing located in Djakarta. The skirmishes in Yemen Gulf tax the SUV owners' pocketbooks. 

Technology and trade structure the interrelations among nations and regions. Trade relationships entail the movement of good as well as are subject to challenges of geography. On the other hand, technological relationships entail the movement of concepts. Besides technological relationships are the prior adequacy, and the system of the world might be living based on borrowed time of exhaustion of resource alongside environmental degradation. Difference and Otherness are less linked to space as well as a place than they were in the past ten decades. The transportation, as well as communication technologies, are both bringing the world together as well as forming new disunions within it. 

A new disunion within the world created by communication and transport networks is the humanity decomposition into integral parts for better adaptation to the environment that is endangered. The whole disciplinary association of "human factors" is founded on the principle that human beings whether groups, communities or individual lives may be decomposed into components for purposes of modifying a sociotechnical structure. Thus, it elaborates or contradicts the observations made regarding the self-organizing as well as self-regulating abilities of the contexts. The pressure between external control and self-regulating is not new. In aviation the pressure is radically framed as a result of operating in hazardous space, the physical separation of acute contexts, that is, the center for traffic control, flight deck; the officiating of external control (SOPs, ATC), alongside the dangerous outcomes of disrespecting the weighing scale between the two. 

An exclusive feature of civilizations is that they are described by their legacies of technology. In contrast to the former societies, which had comprehensive methods, civilizations are compromised by legacies of technology having roots deeper as compared to any individual's life span. In these legacies exists coded enormous arrays of occupations representations, consumption, authority, and rituals. In ways that previous toolkits were not, the technological legacy is further than the grasp of the individual citizen and even group of citizens. Sometimes, this makes it appear out of control. Disastrous failures, for instance, the 747 crash, define the parameters of civilization, the society's co-existence as well as its technological legacy. Overall, disastrous failures take place when a group has designed a technology that a different group is ill-prepared to apply. 

Also, a group may be courageously experimenting with a technology before being accumulated adequate experience to possess implied skills of the technology's parameters of a safe act. In most instances, what shows to be a technological failure, is a social failure systematized in the spheres of technological nexus, an increasing scheme failure that the user alongside managers failed to contain or notice. Even as industrial communication and transportation are eliminating the world's old borders, they are forming new borderlines within it. On the success of technological periphery, waves of intermittent innovation from subsequent threats for balances of operation. The eventual quotidian emphasizes of crews who are overworked; equipment that is abused, as well as passengers who are ill-treated, are so familiar and remarkable. Only infrequent crash punctuation reminds the citizens that aviation to some extent is a strange set of difficulties (Wickens, Mavor, & McGee, 1997). 

A modern subject in anthropology, as well as development theory, is the degree to which communities of the capitalist world have the ability to pre-arrange their individual adequacy. Also included, is the degree to which this ability is destabilized by national government coupled with international institutions. International institutions destabilizing self-adequacy on the capitalist world begin with multinational corporations together with the World Trade Organization alongside global relief agencies. The same attempt at consideration has not yet been made regarding the technological world. 

Frozen in the academy's amber, anthropological theory as differentiated by the daily attempts of ethnographers alongside practicing anthropologists has not come at par with the new international technological marginalization structure. However, a system of world theory, with its understanding into economic marginalization, is well developed within anthropology. The duplication of a technological periphery is rarely discussed. Metropole-hinterland and core-periphery correlations once linked to geographic distance are getting broken, only to be substituted by technological distance relationships and dependence. Communities establish their integrity as well as security under attack from technologies that provide the capability of escape from the marginalization of economics. Early years of anthropology aimed at the holistic of humanity, both in its common evolution of history and in its modern diversity (Wickens, Mavor, & McGee, 1997). 

As ingenious evolutionism was condemned, and as the enterprise of the colonial persisted on being conversant with the people of the hinterland, anthropology changed to a comparative sociology alongside comparative economics, including comparative humanism and political science of indigenous people from the study of humanity. In the modern engineered realm, indigenes are "users" and operation of their "human factors" is similarly an enterprise of the colonial. The boundary phenomena of an industrial civilization entail degradation of the environment, dislocation of economics and industrial accidents. These phenomena are both of a capitalist periphery system and a process of marginalization of technology, which in the engineered periphery is forming new kinds of insecurity and dependence. 

Managing and Maintaining Organizational Culture 

Managing as well as maintaining organizational culture entails studying safety culture. Most of the dimensions studied in the model of safety culture are predominantly positive at the attitude to safety, risk perception, and safety-related behaviors locations. Similarly, safety cultures vary both across varied locations as well as across varied personnel levels at similar locations. The outcomes regarding the working situation are mostly positive components. Nonetheless, there is the less positive view of the working condition of the assistance of air traffic control at the en route center compared to air traffic controllers (Ek et al. 2003). This is as a result of the variation in the organization of work for this given group. To some extent, less flexibility may not be so shocking; this is as a result of innate features in the operative situation of work. Moreover, with regards to communication in typical work, there is the need of training concerning communication during emergency situations. Either training at times could be inadequate, or the safety ambition among air traffic controllers is very high and may combine both. Persons at higher age perceive poor communication. 

To some extent managers as well can be positive on safety culture. ATCCs can as well report the better perception of safety attitudes than non-managers. Within the en route center, persons who have skills of leadership notice more positive safety attitudes than persons who lack positions of leadership. The prevailing diversity in safety culture between distinct levels of organizations could be as a result of varied prerequisites at every level that is likely to impact the answered even though the culture is similar. Even though it is likely to motivate a constant research of the coordination on safety amid the levels, robust linkages amid the levels are founded on goal positioning with feedback, action alongside learning both within and throughout the levels are essential in sustaining the safety. 

The overall outcome of the organizational environment is that ATCCs vary from one another based on specific dimensions. For instance, the "trust" dimensions show that the emotional or expressive security, as well as trust in the relationships in the organization, is improved at the en route center than the arrival together with departure centers. Also, the dimension of "conflict" shows that the prevalence of individual and emotional pressures is lesser at the centers of arrival as well as departure (Ek et al. 2003). 

The civil air traffic industry is highly under organizational pressure as a result of fast technological developments alongside national and international competition within the industry of aviation coupled with other media of transport as fast trains. Moreover, the reduction of passengers as a result of recession together with the 2001 terror attacks increases the stress. The widely known is the changes within the organization as the contributor to critical accidents in other industries. Thus, this requires the aviation industry to look into and apply robust safety management routines. 

To familiarize with the snowballing efficiency demands, technical advancements and harmonization with the air traffic control (ATC) international standardization, the air navigation for services for Swedish (ANS) are implementing key transformations regarding the development of commercialized spheres, structures of new leadership, new work practices as well as new work organizations. For instance, transmissions to the advanced computerized air traffic control (ATC) system. These basic transformations in the organization may have an impact on the basics of safety work and present transformations in the current culture of safety alongside safety driving forces. This will, in turn, have an impact on air safety (Ek et al. 2003). 

According to the Swedish HUFA-project, it will study as well as monitor the safety culture, the climate of the organization, psychosocial work environment, team level work environment and effectiveness of leadership in the progression of transformation processes. In the sequence of the three dimensions rounds, studies will be done to identify how the transformations will impact the areas. The focus of the investigation is to study correlations between the areas so that a base for enhancing safety culture can be developed. Moreover, the application of a reporting system as well as analyzing near-occurrences run by ATC themselves is monitored in the project. 

Summery and Conclusion 

Interfaces of culture will always be a component of global aviation. The issue for safety is not to eradicate the interfaces but to mitigate the probable threats they pose. Systematic studies of the interfaces in diverse regions across the world will expose strengths and weaknesses in the international system. These accomplishments and failures will aim at future attempts to enhance the interface. So as to excel, there is a role to be played by those inside as well as outside the dominant model, that is, the role of insiders and advocates of the dominant model which include advancing safety in the sector by applying resource-rich advantages. Besides, they should recognize that unavoidable cultural boundaries surround several solutions alongside advances. Moreover, they play a role in recognizing full assimilation into the dominant model is not usually possible as a result of diversity in contexts. Also, they accept mainstreaming and adaptation as binding strategies of safety and open the door for mainstreaming, that is concepts from outside the main culture as a means to building robust international sector. Nevertheless, they support systematic studies of interfaces of cultures in diverse operating contexts and develop programs that establish cultural mediators that include exchange and internships (Merritt, & Maurino, 2004). 

References 

Batteau, A. W. (2001). The anthropology of aviation and flight safety.  Human Organization 60 (3), 201-211. 

Ek, Å. Arvidsson, M.; Akselsson, R.; Johansson, C. R. & Josefsson, B. (2003). Safety culture in air traffic management: air traffic control. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2ea3/d0ebe3ed8af4ef296463c23b8c4a2b3ab54b.pdf. 

Merritt, A., & Maurino, D. (2004). Cross-cultural factors in aviation safety. In  Cultural Ergonomics  (pp. 147-181). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 

Wickens, C. D., Mavor, A. S., & McGee, J. P. eds. (1997). Flight to the Future: Human factors in air traffic control . Washington, D.C: National Academy Press. Retrieved from https://www.nap.edu/read/5493/chapter/1#vii. 

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