British Airways - Organizational Structure
School of Management and Economics
Business Administration (FE3101/IB3101)
FE3101:1/IB3101:1
Basic Organization Theories Module
Paper – Fall 2009
Structural Perspective: British Airways
André Costa Choi Sin Man Jiyun Baek
0
1 – Introduction In different working fields, companies face the pressure of globalization, and they must find new ways to overcome this challenge. The following example, introduces the case of British Airways, which needs to deal with the globalization issue trying to reduce the operational costs, increase profits and provide suitable services to customers. According to British Airways annual report from 2008/2009, the airline carried more than 33 million passengers. It earned nearly ￡9 billion in revenue, a 2.7 percent increase from the previous year. At the end of March this year, it has 245 aircraft in service. It shows that the BA financial performance is improving after the financial crisis and the fluctuated oil fuel prices changes (British Airways – Annual Report and Accounts 2008/2009). However, it is a unfortunate fact that in the 2008 report of scheduled international passengers carried, which is based on International Air Transport Association, indicated that British Airways was ranked in the fifth place while the Ryanair, Lufthansa, EasyJet and Air France ranked above the BA. It was shocked to them because they were always first ranking to investigation about airlines. This figure pointed out that BA needs to plan long-term strategies in order to compete with those four airline companies in Europe and in the all world. The British Airways now tries to establish itself as a high-performing, marketfocused and global premium airline. In this paper, we focus on the structural perspective of the BA‟s company in these recent years. Depending on the three different CEOs in BA, they are the Robert Ayling, Rod Eddington and Willie Walsh respectively, this paper divided into three periods of analyzing the structures of BA. Thus, this
Business Administration (FE3101/IB3101)
FE3101:1/IB3101:1
Basic Organization Theories Module
Paper – Fall 2009
Structural Perspective: British Airways
André Costa Choi Sin Man Jiyun Baek
0
1 – Introduction In different working fields, companies face the pressure of globalization, and they must find new ways to overcome this challenge. The following example, introduces the case of British Airways, which needs to deal with the globalization issue trying to reduce the operational costs, increase profits and provide suitable services to customers. According to British Airways annual report from 2008/2009, the airline carried more than 33 million passengers. It earned nearly ￡9 billion in revenue, a 2.7 percent increase from the previous year. At the end of March this year, it has 245 aircraft in service. It shows that the BA financial performance is improving after the financial crisis and the fluctuated oil fuel prices changes (British Airways – Annual Report and Accounts 2008/2009). However, it is a unfortunate fact that in the 2008 report of scheduled international passengers carried, which is based on International Air Transport Association, indicated that British Airways was ranked in the fifth place while the Ryanair, Lufthansa, EasyJet and Air France ranked above the BA. It was shocked to them because they were always first ranking to investigation about airlines. This figure pointed out that BA needs to plan long-term strategies in order to compete with those four airline companies in Europe and in the all world. The British Airways now tries to establish itself as a high-performing, marketfocused and global premium airline. In this paper, we focus on the structural perspective of the BA‟s company in these recent years. Depending on the three different CEOs in BA, they are the Robert Ayling, Rod Eddington and Willie Walsh respectively, this paper divided into three periods of analyzing the structures of BA. Thus, this