How Integrated Operations has Influenced Offshore Leadership Practice

This chapter discusses how Integrated Operations (IO) has affected new ways of working and addresses leadership practice in particular. It investigates both the positive and negative effects of IO in terms of virtual leadership teams and local leadership offshore, and how this may affect safety on board. IO contributes to the onshore organization being more actively involved in problem-solving and decision-making in offshore operations compared to earlier. This way, it has become easier to reach a shared situational awareness concerning planning and prioritizing of operations on board. However, the authors find that the integration of sea and land has not been successful in achieving increased hands-on leadership offshore. To explore this issue, they discuss findings from different research projects studying IO and changes in work practices onshore and offshore at different installations/assets in a Norwegian oil and gas company.