Free «The History of British Airways» Essay

In 1970’s, British Airways turned benefits. This resulted in neglecting to foster amongst BA’s overseers. Speaking about early 1970’s, it is necessary to take into consideration the fact that BA was concentrated on minimizing the cost to the country. It was clear that BA had turned to be extremely inefficient enterprise. The problem was mainly referring to many employees and  quite many managers. As for the level of its efficiency, it was lower in comparison with many other airlines abroad.

At the beginning of 1980s, BA ran the financial problem, and Sir John King (the former CEO) was named the head of privatization project and successfully completed the mission in 1987 (Datamonitor 2005).

In 1981, British Airways management was confident that the company was in need of some really radical change within the organization of the company strategy course. It was all due to possible bankruptcy that was approaching.

There was a decision to alter the basics of operation of humans who were aware of the fact that their main duty was just about making an aircraft take off and land successfully. The goal was to change this usual understanding of its mission in order to strengthen the inner climate within the company and also raise the reputation of British Airways in the world.

The customers, as chief executive officer said, are the heart of everything which the British Airways do. The aim was to make sure that a company offers an upgraded service to everyone who chooses to fly with it. The strategy of giving a good service to the clients and improve their travelling experience is studying and revealing of how the customers’ needs are changing.

The main key is to put the customers at the heart of everything with which British Airways is in touch. Moreover, British Airways has launched a popular new service which allows the customers to check-in or access real time arrivals and departures information through their mobiles. Furthermore, since 2008 till 2012, British Airways have improved the onboard experience for the customers, offering them greater space and privacy. For the youngest passengers, the company proposes an entertainment pack on long flights.

Ethics of British Airways

Ethics are an essential part of the British Airways industry. It is an important framework that guides individuals in the process of making business decisions. British Airways has formal declarations of their codes of ethics. British Airways has the code concerning the conflict of interest. It means that employees should not leave conflicts of interest unsolved unless approved by BA. The second code is misuse of opportunities and information. It means that employees are in charge to promote the company’s business interests when appropriate. Another example of a code is confidentiality. Employees must maintain the confidentiality of all information of the company.

Organisational Structure

Speaking about the strategies and goals of British Airways, it is useful to present the motto of this company which is ‘The World’s Favourite Airline’. It shows that the goal of British Airways is to provide world class level of services both in air and on the ground. The slogan also defines that the mission of British Airways is achieveing and maintaining the leading position on the international aviation and travel industry levels.

The first important goal for British Airways is taking care of the environment. The strategy is to minimize the environmental impacts of flight operations. This includes consideration of climate change, air quality, noise, waste, and recycling. The Environmental Compliance Group (ECG) was created in 2010 in order to bring together all the representatives from around the company to ensure that the risks of the environment and the environmental programs are properly managed. British Airways also states that aviation plays a full and fair part in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. In order to achieve this, the company tries to adopt new technologies, low-carbon fuels, and operating efficiencies. Furthermore, the company contributes to the education of the future workforce.

Charitable donation is also the strategy of British Airways. Organizational fundamentals are of great importance as they mainly define the ways in which the organization will be ruled in order to follow its goals and purposes (Cunnee 2008). They also describe organizational principles in the form of the number of directions that are utilized in a enterprise to establish the division of labor concentrating on keeping co-ordination. BA possesses a flat organization which is in touch with a little number of management stages yet a wide span of subordination.

The organization chart of British Airways is relatively flat with one level of hierarchy which separates top and bottom line employees. The enterprise entails ten inner branches, which are the following: planning, flight operation, investment and alliances, ground operation, commerce, IT, engineering, law, finance, and human resource.

Organizational Culture

In order to manage successfully the working organization system, British Airways adopted Lewin’s Model. According to Lewin, there are three of the steps of a strategic assessment.

The first step is unfreezing, which means that it reduces the changes. Moreover, it maintains behavior which identifies the need for change and the points that needed for improvement. In step two, movements for development of new attitude and behavior are used. The third step is re-freezing, which means the stabilizing the changes.

Organizational culture plays an important role in the business structure of British Airways. Organizational culture provides common goal.

According to the ‘British Airways 2009,-2010 Corporate Responsibility Report’, globally, aviation produces around 700 million tons of CO2 per year, which represents approximately 2 percent of total man-made emissions. This share is projected to grow. The solutions which British Airways are implementing balance the important contribution that is made by a sustainable and competitive aviation sector to the global economy with the urgent challenge of combating climate change. The company has its own climate change program. The aim of this program is securing a global sartorial policy regime, improving the carbon efficiency, and developing the potential of low-carbon fuels.

The British Airways is also working on the improving of air quality.

According to the statistics of ‘British Airways 2009-2010 Corporate Responsibility Report’, last year, the British Airways reduced the number of times when they exceeded departure noise limits by over 30 percents to a total of 25 occasions. These infringements were mainly the result of scheduling Boeing 747-400 departures into the more stringently regulated night time period due to extreme weather.

British Airways is working on the wasting and recycling issues. The amount of landfill waste that is managed through contracts at Heathrow and Gatwick reduced on an annual basis by 36 percents from 3,424 tons to 2,187 tons.

Organizational Strategy

The organizational strategy of British Airways is also to continue to introduce innovative products and to embed One Destination throughout the customer journey. British Airways is working globally, which means working towards global approaches in order to deliver the product worldwide and look for a new sponsors and champions. British Airways create a more inclusive working culture and widen the talent pool for new colleagues.

One should also mention such a point as institutionalizing, specifically new approaches which are extremely necessary in order to be one of the leading airline companies around the world.

As for the institutionalizing, it mainly involves demonstrating of how new ways, treatment, and viewpoints can help improve the general situation within the company.

British Airways is focused on the principles of rational approaches to certain obligations.Various situations within BA exemplified this matter; as for the main ones, they are celebrating achievements including workers of the following levels within mentioned occasions.

To some extent, this approach seems to be not a big deal concerning the attempt of stabilizing and fortifying the productivity within the organization. Nevertheless, it matters much. The main point is that employees become more enthusiastic and willing to work fruitfully. The inner atmosphere of common understanding, stable promotion, and vivid incomes results in raising the level of self-criticism that plays great role in business success model. When BA was positioned against a real struggle with British Caledonian over route providers, King together with his team managed to rally signatures of over 26,000 workers for accepting a request.

Research and Development

Recently, the company started to reconsider its approach concerning graduate e-recruitment. Being the leading enterprise in graduate recruitment marketplace, BA is determined to receive maximum profit that is provided by the world web, and, thus, be one step ahead of the competitors and augment value for applicants, recruiters, and line mangers. To implement these plans, BA decided to launch a bespoke on-line application program that is able to quickly screen candidates and reveal their high potential pool for further assessment. The main element of this system is an on-line core capability (or competency) evaluation questionary. To be sure that the system was designed in a proper manner, BA enjoyed the support of Cubiks, a specialist HR consulting agency with a worldwide recognition in e-selection.

Marketing Decelopment

British Airways management regularly elaborates new behaviour systems and share values by mentioning numerous programs such as Putting People First and Managing People First. The mentioned above programs helped in developing the principles of management outlook to the whole enterprise. One can easily conclude that it is not just about the sense of duty of certain employees that leads to the effectiveness within current organizations but also scheme of different secondary factors that at first appear to be of minor importance.

BA uses very important concept, marketing management. The main principal of the organization of BA are to offer flight opportunities to customers across numerous locations in the whole world. The product basics of BA undergoes the services of flights that are proposed in different variations, for instance, the difference between such divisions as the businesses, first, and economic classes. This strategy is done in order to satisfy the customers.

Price is the cost that is put on the substitution of goods or services in the process of the marketing schedule. Clients pay sums in order to provide certain demands (Smith 2007).

British Airways adopted a high quality service approach. The low-cost airlines give establish not so expensive fares. Nevertheless, they do not provide high comfort including such things as TV, free meals, and beverages on flights in comparison with BA.

What concerns the refreezing stage, BA has launched new systems in order to establish behavioral environment in the organization. That is why to the company designs and modifies new recruitment policies. The latters were invented to hire new people. To reach the goal, BA has pointed out the principles of parity and diversity through the process of employment. The aim of these trainings was to find the organization’s management model and help create new models that could be appropriate for the new environment of BA (Goodstein 1991).

The organizational structure of British Airways has a global recognition and value. The British Airways operates in a highly competitive market. There’s a risk from other airlines and even from other modes of transportation. Sometimes competitors offer their services at a lower price or they enjoy other competitive advantages.

Recommendations

Concerning the recommendations, it is useful to say that BA has accepted new principles of some specific approaches towards the organization; yet, quite often it can not offer necessary way-out for every difficulty. Consequently, there must be both hard and soft approaches implemented to have flexibility and efficient control. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, British Airways is the world’s leading airline which has a long history regarding organizational change. Internal and external pressure forces BA to adapt corporate culture, value, belief, and company mission in order to improve the organization’s performance.

The airline has managed to survive the recession despite having made profit losses. British Airways contributes to a significant share in the UK economy. BA has a huge manpower of over 40,000 employees (Hoovers 2006).

Reflection on Module

Speaking about the role of British Airways in the transportation trade, one can obviously conclude that it is an important factor for many business enterprises. The fact that it corresponds to reality is beyond any possible doubts. With this, it is also necessary to take into consideration the fact that the BA continues to conduct certain improvements via different innovations and systems including strategies of developing their company. One should not forget about the need of endless improving of the company due to the fact that BA has a determinative impact on keeping the leadership. The company is definitely aware of that with the fact that better services can help maintain their established reputation and image to their market.

Discussing the item of the company’s strategies, such as the mergers and improvement of amenities and services, it can vividly attract more clients. Furthermore, it can guarantee highly-qualified service to many passengers and airline personnel. The thing that one should also keep in mind is that lasting innovations are to have both positive and sometimes even negative influence upon the organization of the certain company.

Yet, with the help of professional managers, these problems will always be minimized. In any way, only the company that is focused on constant search of some new approaches to running business can expect rising of its financial returns and increasing of the reputation. One cannot but claim it to have evident fundamentals. An ability of staying useful to the customers during all the time is considered one of the main keys to success. As for the British Airways, it is one of its principal goals.