Strategic Management of British Airways Company

Scope of competitive rivalry: primarily major carriers (revenue more than $1 billion). Legacy carriers developing low-cost offshoots

the period a journalist for the Financial Times noted "British Airways has become the first

“Change, in its broadest sense, is a planned or unplanned response to pressures and forces. Hence, there is nothing new about change or the need for it.” (Jick & Peiperl, 2011, p. Intro xx). Change in a business environment or in a military atmosphere is very rarely embraced with open arms. As leaders, how we choose to openly show our support for change coupled with how we communicate this change to our subordinates will make or break the difference in the overall success or failure of those very things we are attempted to change.

Global airline alliances in another issue included in Virgin’s external environment. Alliances benefit airlines in many ways as they enable them more market access, convergence of technologies and even help overcome legal barriers (Anon., 2009). One weakness for Virgin therefore is not being part of an alliance such as Oneworld Alliance (Anon., 2009), in order to take full advantage of its potential Virgin should look into adjusting their market strategy and look into joining an alliance, if not form its own.

Understanding the adversarial nature of the airline industry is very important in helping us understand and evaluate British Airways' current position in the industry and how Porter's Five Forces Model can assist the company in increasing its profitability by making better strategic decisions.

British Airways has focused its mission and objectives towards satisfying its key stakeholders that include employees, customers, Government and the British public. The company has been successful in dealing with cultural differences that arise between the UK and foreign countries, adopting a geocentric approach to hiring workers. The airline has also created a flexible organisation that responds quickly to the changing needs of

• Economic crises & Terrorism. Competitors (Lufthansa, Air France, and KLM) Natural disasters e.g. Iceland Volcano eruption.

British Airways (BA) is a company that encountered several difficulties back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The poor performances of the organization, was leading the company to failure. BA was offering a service that even though it accomplished the mission of the company, was not providing customer satisfaction. The organization was not taking into consideration the needs of the costumer and was not providing an acceptable customer service experience. “Productivity at BA in the 1970s was strikingly bad, especially in contrast to other leading foreign airlines” (Jick, Peiperl, 2010, p.28). Due to numerous changes, the company increased their revenues and became a respectful and well know organization.

We recommend a new mission statement after a consultation process involving our group members. The mission statement can replace an

Mergers or alliance - The growth of strategic alliances with other airlines such as Emirates could bring about substantial returns including more frequent flights and Frequent Flyer passengers, an extended route network, and cost and efficiency benefits.

a. Macro - The macro issues that British Airways faced as it entered into the 1980s lied in the structure of the organization and it’s increasing inefficiencies over the years, as well as the company's lack of focus on customer service. The board of British Airways being given control over two state-run airlines hurt the company by spreading out its autonomy, which made it hard for leaders within the organization to realize its inefficiencies. According to Jick and Peiperl (2011), “as a civil service agency, the airline was allowed to become inefficient because the thinking in state-run operations was, “if you’re providing service at no cost to the taxpayers, then you’re doing quite well” (p. 28). This type of thinking also resulted in the company’s lack of effort in their customer service department. Passengers on the aircraft were not the priority, and because of this, the company lost a lot of respect from customers which reflected poorly on the company.

Initially we discuss the organisation’s mission statement and identify how the vision of the company is reflected though the strategic objectives. It is established at CSR plays an important role one Virgin Atlantic

Within the marketing management sector of a business the importance of strategic planning is paramount. There are two main situational analysis techniques that are used within the industry to do this, SWOT and PEEST. Mintzberg and Waters (1985) wrote about the importance of an error free strategy formulation allowing for the most efficient path to be taken when achieving the chosen objective. With the use of a multitude of academic sources and my own notes I shall reveal the importance of this in relation to British Airways’ decision-making process.

In today’s extremely competitive market environment, it’s almost close to impossible to without partners and this seems to have become a dominant feature in the airlines industry. Alliances are an immediate result of globalization, increased competition among the airline companies and most importantly due to customers increasingly demanding ‘from anywhere to anywhere’ service which is almost impossible for any airline to supply efficiently. As a result of which, airline companies across the world unite their various resources by entering into strategic airline alliances.

Today in the ever changing and volatile industry that is aviation every action taken has a significant impact on not only your business but also the competition and stakeholders. With any competitive market player in the aviation industry every decision made is a critical one, and behind any decision will be a strategy. These decisions and strategies implemented will put the airline, airport or manufacturer into one of 4 key strategic positions. The business will either be; the leader, usually the biggest with the most funds. The challenger who’s trying to become the next leader. The follower, who as the name implies follows the leader and challenger in focusing on a market share. And Finally the Niche who has a very specific, yet profitable market often avoided by the big players. All of these strategic positions work in their own right and have advantages and disadvantages to them, hence why an airlines strategy may change many times over the lifetime of the carrier.