Bridging Practice and Policy: A Meta-Synthesis of Nine Qualitative Studies on Indonesian Sea Transportation Management

Abstract

Indonesian sea transportation management research has grown rapidly, yet each study typically stands alone, leaving unclear whether recurring practical concerns — gaps between policy and practice, or between different professional ranks — reflect a genuine structural condition or a coincidence of overlapping topics. This study conducts a meta-synthesis of nine qualitative studies completed in 2026 under a single coordinated Indonesian maritime research programme, spanning seafarer route knowledge, domestic-international safety culture, sustainability competency, autonomous navigation governance, shipboard leadership, occupational conflict, service quality, blue economy awareness, and workforce social sustainability. Following a meta-ethnographic translation-and-synthesis procedure, reported themes from all nine studies were extracted, compared, and integrated into cross-cutting categories, cross-checked across three distinct methodological sub-designs represented in the corpus. Two robust cross-cutting themes emerged, each supported by five of the nine studies: a persistent divergence between formally documented management structures and lived operational practice, and a separate asymmetry in how different professional ranks and roles experience that practice. Two additional, more narrowly evidenced themes concern practitioner agency and an aspiration-implementation gap in sustainability commitments. The synthesis offers Indonesian maritime institutions a prioritised, corpus-triangulated evidence base for reform beyond what any single constituent study could provide.