Introduction
The air transportation industry plays the key role in life of American people. The commercial airline system provides the Americans with the opportunity to attend negotiations or conferences on the other continents and travel to the desirable destinations when embarking on holidays and traveling with business visits. This innovative system is available for twenty-four hours seven days a week. Apart from carrying passengers, different cargoes can be transported all over the world. In most cases this industry is targeted to meet exclusively the commercial goals. With the rapid development of globalization and business relations, the establishment of cooperation has become the typical issue to consider by most organizations. As for this paper, it is mainly aimed at investigate the diversity of global airline industry.
Nowadays, the matter of air transportation is really important, because people are able to cooperate with each other (Ashford., Stanton., Moore 1997). It is obvious that cooperation is of great importance today due to providing people with all that they need. There must be partnership between people in order for plans and projects to exist and be implemented; and, thus, transportation emerged to be the basics of humans’ trade. Many business enterprises consider reaching different cities and numerous states the main point of promoting their products and services.
Concerning the international airline industry, one should be aware that it incorporates a variety of different diversity practices and the consideration of theories and multi-cultural factors necessary in terms of the airline industry development. According to the information that usually can be found on the official websites of the airline companies, the enterprise’s vision often refers to the world full of people able to get connected with each other everywhere in the world; these are people travelling to different countries, keeping in touch with their friends, and developing some new interests. What is more, the companies tend to be targeted to see the world with its business being not dependent on the distance; moreover, the companies are likely to claim the world to be a place where innovative technologies give the opportunities for using new goods and services (Oum & Yu 2000).
Missions
As for the mission of the companies, as a rule, it is concentrated on extending people’s reach. The players of airline industry are induced to develop the advanced networks aimed at enabling people to develop, learn and also grow.
Values
Among the main values of the leading companies within the field of airline industry, one can emphasize the following ones:
- Energy;
- openness;
- enablement.
The leading airline companies are aware that in order to achieve the highest results, it is necessary to be quite dynamic and energetic. Regarding the openness, the business players tend to be welcoming, sociable, and friendly to all its customers, suppliers, and employees. In addition, the enterprises follow the direct and exceptionally honest way of dealing in business.
Goals
Among the main aim of the companies, it is possible to distinguish the willingness to help people in achieving their goals taking into account the new technologies. What is more, the companies are aimed at giving the opportunity to raise the level of goods and services in healthcare, education, and other spheres of daily life.
Strategic Management Processes
Strategic plan of the companies focused on enhancing its profitability shows how it will match its internal strengths and weaknesses with external opportunities and threats in order to maintain a competitive advantage. The essence of such a strategic planning is to answer the following questions:
- Where are we now as a business?
- Where do we want to be?
- How should we get there?
The manager formulates certain specific strategies to develop the company. In this case, strategy is a course of actions.
The entire process of strategic management can be divided into three main stages:
- strategic analysis;
- strategy development;
- strategy implementation.
All these elements are, of course, closely related and, in fact, are enclosed in a single loop. There are different classifications of the process of strategic management, but all of them include the following basic principles of the strategic management:
- availability;
- priority;
- feasibility;
- phasing;
- complexity.
Availability
Availability of the strategic management is focused on the long term. The consequences of the decisions play a pivotal role in the fate of the company during a long period of time. The managers of the company must remember that the strategic errors are very difficult to be corrected. Moreover, their effects cannot be corrected by any operational methods.
Priority
When choosing a particular strategy, the company must be prepared to consistently adherence to it. What is more, the company should subordinate its tactical actions to strategic priorities. However, as strategic management is long-termed, it is carried out in an area of high uncertainty, so the company's leadership must always be ready for the corrective changes, which, however, must have sensible nature; that is why, they should not go beyond the agreed concepts of the company’s development. The long-term strategic policy defines all the subsequent works of the enterprise. The strategy of development and the ways to implement it are the basis for the construction of all of the operational plans. However, unfortunately, at this stage there very often occurs a failure. In the situation when the company needs a quick decision, the current interests often take precedence over the strategy, even despite of the fact that there is an approved strategic plan. Therefore, the ability to follow the strategy is very important.
Feasibility
In setting long-term goals and strategies for achieving them, the manager should take into account the real-life opportunities of the company. The goals should be achievable, and tasks should be rather tense and obviously doable. When the company introduces a system of the strategic management, its goals have to be slightly understated in order to make sure that they can be implemented. It is important that the mechanism started to work. With the working mechanism it is possible to make up for small losses incurred because of the shift in focus from the current activity to the strategic one.
Step-by-step principle
The implementation of the strategy comes in few stages: long-term objectives are performed through the implementation of both medium-term and short-term initiatives. Thus, the ultimate strategic goal is a consistent multi-step process that must be constantly monitored. In order to manage the implementation of the strategy in a more effective way, the company usually develops the strategic development projects. Each project has its own objectives and outcomes, well-developed plans, established a project team, and provided system of motivation, etc. Moreover, step-by-step principle of the strategic management demands a multiple re-analysis of the entire cycle of the strategic management. Companies are being forced to do it because, unfortunately, there is no beginning and no end in a cyclic process. Consequently, it is impossible to determine exactly where to start to develop a strategic plan - with an analysis or setting goals. Furthermore, in order to determine the purpose, it is necessary to conduct a survey; in order to analyze, it is necessary to have certain guidance for goals. The only way to break this vicious circle is to use an iterative approach to the development of the strategic plan of the company.
Complexity
A comprehensive analysis and recording of the information allow reacting to changes in the external and internal environments. In order to develop an effective strategy, the managers of the company must take into account many factors. At this stage the study of the external environment is more important. It is necessary to keep the track of all the bottlenecks to know what internal resources are available for the company, and whether it will manage to implement a strategy. At the same time, the manager should remember that, especially at the beginning, it should not sink in a large volume of information. That is the reason why all unnecessary information should be immediately cut off. The company should be focused on the development of the priority strategy.
In the process of strategic management implementation, it is necessary to conduct the strategic analysis. It is needed in order to provide managers with all necessary information for the right development of the strategy of the company. When trying to conduct the analysis, managers should, first of all, know what should be include in the analysis and what information is relevant to managers in the process of development company’s strategy. Many efforts have already been made to formalize this process; that is, to determine the standard formats of strategic analysis, the observance of which will provide the company with the necessary information to develop a strategy (Doganis 2001). In this case, it is important to make mention of such successful diversity practices as, for instance, leadership hiring targets, diversity teaching, the development of ERG networks, and, finally, the analysis of diversity by the chief managers of the airline enterprises.
Talking about organizational development, one should mention its important theories. First of all, Lewin suggested his three step theory, which became very popular afterwards. By his theory he defined three steps for the organizational change, which are unfreezing, transformation and refreezing. Under unfreezing the theorist implied the necessary change that needed to be done. Transformation stood for the organizational development as a process that was done. Refreezing denoted the shift from the problems to the effective organizational routine. Moreover, Lewin suggested one more theory associated with organizational development, the one that is based upon the action-research model. In this case, the organizational development may be successful if it goes through problem identification, hypothesis development, and hypothesis testing and data analysis step-by-step. What is more, the theory predicts the repeated action. This way, the changes can be made by going through this circle for several times.
It is necessary to pay attention to one more theory, which is called the general system theory. This theory indicates the external environment influence on organizational development. The transformation can be made only when the problem is derived or chosen from the environment. No less important is the Burke’s theory of organizational change. His theory is totally based upon constant interaction between inner organizational and personal structures and factors. To be more precise, the successful organizational development can be seen when the leadership skills, knowledge, external environment, inner company’s culture, organizational and individual performance and approaches and strategies depend on each other.
The successful organizational change is possible only under the favorable conditions. Here it is necessary to have all interrelated elements at their best. First, the successful environment within the organization must be provided. The company has to possess the strong leaders within the staff, who can be in charge of decision making and the development of new strategies. Apart from that, the top management has to take into consideration the advices and recommendations of the simple managers form every department. The managers should know all their functions perfectly, so that the problem cannot happen due to somebody’s lack of knowledge on the certain department level. This may increase the individual performance, which will result in high organizational performance. Applying the business models, inventing the decision-making plans, the staff is more likely to choose the right direction or strategy for organizational development. Finally, the managers should take into account organizational development theories and clearly define their goals for the future.
As for the leadership theory, it is necessary to take into account the importance of Fiedler’s theory regarding the position power. The thing is that there must be strict and vivid subordination in any kind of enterprise in order to succeed in running business. The leaders having the ability to emphasize their power will definitely reach required heights in the “ruling”.
There are many diverse strategic matrixes that are intended for the standard strategic analysis in its various aspects. However, in practice, only a small number of techniques are used for this purpose. What is more, it is necessary to realize that, on the one hand, in order to develop a strategy, it is necessary to have enough information, and, on the other, there should not be too much information. In addition to the volume of information, the time factor is also rather essential. Sometimes it is more important to make not the most accurate and informed decision today than the most informed and balanced tomorrow because the information, which was used for developing the right decision, can be outdated tomorrow, or it can be too late to make the right decision, as it will not save the situation.
The Bilateral Agreements in Airline Industry
The protection of nation’s airline industry against predatory forces is possible after the process of USA global integration. Strengthening the international relationships, USA will be less prone to conflicts. The bilateral agreements in this case aid American authorities to establish the direct cooperation with air transportation services of other nations on the grounds of consensus. First of all, it is the cooperation between the governments when signing the bilateral airworthiness agreement during sending and getting the diplomatic notes. Secondly, the safety has always been, is, and will always be the most important goal of any bilateral agreement. Signing the aviation safety agreement, the cooperation will be provided practically in all aviation areas: maintenance, protection from wars, general safety, flight operations and environmental certification.
In addition, those scientists who support bilateral agreements can see this issue as the key to the future market development. This development can be influenced by three major factors, such as marketing advantages, competition and nationality and ownership rules. Increasing the size of networks, it is possible to extend the entire airline system. In his research airline industry expert Holloway speaks about the practical airline economics as the well-planned system of modernizing the trade relations on the international arena can be noticed nowadays. Nationality and ownership rules generally limit the power of U.S. airlines to purchase the foreign carriers. Considering bilateral agreements, the airlines should be owned and controlled by nationals of the state, where they are registered. Scientists from this group state that the key element that needs to be fought is competition. In such a case, the routes will be free for planning and management by one particular company (Holloway 2002). Although the multilateral agreements are signed within the countries, which are included in trade unions and some other organizations, the bilateral agreements should be also used, because they allow only two countries to focus on precise policies that can be easily agreed by two independent parties during the negotiations.
The Basic Multi-Cultural Factors Impacting Diversity in the Airline Industry
Safety
The thing is that different geographic regions of the world occur to have particular level of understanding the issue of safety. To make it clear, it is worth saying that, for instance, Europe and the U.S. emerged to have serious cognition in terms of the customers’ safety. As a result, it is possible to conclude that the low accident rates make the abovementioned sectors of airline industry rather reliable from the perspective of providing security for its clients (Hayward 1997). However, on the hand, taking into account Asian airline companies, it is necessary to state that these enterprises have less sophisticated framework of airline industry. Consequently, in Asia as well as in Middle East, one can emphasize much higher accidents rate.
Culture and Human Factors
As for the culture, one should understand that it is the system of behavioral principles. The thing is that some scientists draw attention to national culture that they consider as the major cause of different accident rates. The point is that they managed to uncover the notion of equating the accident rates with the cultural awareness of particular nation. Consequently, it is necessary to understand that the significance of culture on performance is unquestionable.
Difference in Cognition
According to tremendous differences between various nationalities, some experts integrate cultural development, insight, and social awareness with linguistic evolution. Nisbett’s surveys communicate the idea that American, Australian and British crewmembers appear to have the lowest points when inspecting the power distance. Moreover, these results are approved by some other scientists, including Helmreich and Meritt.
Different Rates of Training Awareness
Considering the multi-cultural differences, one cannot but mention different attitudes towards passing training procedures (Helmreich & Merritt 1998). The thing is that, in accordance with numerous experiments, the pilots of different cultural codes have quite dissimilar approaches to perceiving certain operations.
Risks Seeking
Inevitably, Western and Eastern people proved to have different understanding of risk. All in all, the rate of risk is found to be dependent on certain activity. In the experiments aimed to compare the risk cognitions of Americans and Chinese population, Chinese emerged to have more risk-seeking nature of character.
Communication
Indisputably, the language proficiency is the matter of great importance in terms of performing safe operations (Nisbett & Norenzayan 2002). As a result, all the crewmembers are obliged to pass English proficiency tests in order to demonstrate their clear communication and understanding the commands. Notwithstanding this fact, the ability to communicate proficiently is not likely to guarantee the interpretation of this message with the same meaningful context. The thing is that in each chatting passage, it is possible to distinguish implicit and explicit data. Some scientists decided to compare the implicit meanings available despite the similar explicit conversation. For instance, the word yes to a Western individual means the agreement with the interlocutor. Nevertheless, the same word can appear to have exceptionally the meaning of acknowledgment without any signs of agreement to an East Asian person.
Decision Support
There are obvious differences in terms Easterners and Westerners memorize focal objects; it has implications for the elaborations of information performance. Moreover, the research may disclose vivid differences from the perspective of the operators’ usage of radar data.
The Perceptual Field
In accordance with the tests that Nisbett conducted, it is possible to advance an argument that the differences in data processing are obvious. The thing is that after some experiments the pilots from different cultural environments demonstrated different responses upon certain information blocks. This study gives a chance to become aware that there are differences in the process of reasoning and cognition of East Asians and Western people. Basically, each kind of multi-cultural peculiarities is likely to influence the airline industry differently. However, it is clear that the need to have an inclusive approach to each person descending from particular portion of populations is justified.
In conclusion, it is necessary to say that diversity practices and consideration of all the multi-cultural factors as well bringing theoretical constructs are the integral part of the global airline industry. That is why, in view of many widely-acknowledged business experts, it is worth applying a variety of management innovations in order to succeed in running business.
Reference List
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Doganis, R 2001, The airline business in the 21st century, London: Routledge.
Gordon, A 2008, Naked Airport, A Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary
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Hayward, B 1997, Culture, CRM, and Aviation Safety. Paper presented at the 1997
ANZASI Asia-Pacific Regional Air Safety Seminar. Retrieved January 7,
Helmreich, R. L. & Merritt, A. C 1998, Culture at Work in Aviation and Medicine.
Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate
Holloway, S 2002, Airlines: Managing to Make Money, Ashgate, Aldershot
Hutchins, E., Holder, B. E., & Pérez, R. A 2002, Culture and Flight Deck Operations.
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Nisbett, R. E., & Norenzayan, A 2002. Culture and Cognition. In D.L. Medin (Ed.),
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Oum, T. and Yu, C 2000, Shaping Air Transport in the Asia Pacific, Aldershot: Ashgate.
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