Alternative Approaches to Airline Organizations

Abstract

Airline organization structures are designed to serve some or all of the following purposes:

• * Achievement of Corporate Strategies

• * Provision of safe and efficient operations

• * Customer service

• * Control and motivation of employees

These may sometimes be in conflict resulting in tension between the particular parts of the structure which has primary responsibility for helping the total organization achieve the specific purpose. Our survey has found that in the 1980s the main ‘tension points’ in airlines are between the Operations and Customer Service functions and between the Personnel and the Finance functions and in defining the role of information management. In later chapters we shall consider this in greater detail.