The International Safety Management (ISM) Code aims to provide an international standard for the safe management and operation of ships and pollution prevention. Initially, it improved both onboard and onshore safety standards. In recent years, however, shipping safety statistics and research have revealed that ISM Code compliance has increasingly worsened due to accidents, deaths, and excessive sea pollution. The support of another management system is thus needed to overcome difficulties in implementing the ISM Code. Hence, this paper combines both management systems (ISM and Idea Management System, IMS) within the Seven C’s approach. This is a holistic approach to maritime safety management that integrates seven critical success factors for effective implementation of the ISM Code.

This approach may play an important role in creating organizational knowledge to raise an organization’s awareness of managing and linking know-how to position itself for the future. This will help to make ISM code management more efficient and may reduce accidents, deaths, and marine pollution by fostering the seven C components.