Airline Codeshare Alliances - Marketing Boon and Revenue Management Information Systems Challenge

The paper juxtaposes the challenges that airline codeshare alliances create for analytical information systems on the one hand and their motivation from a marketing perspective on the other. The authors review the state-of-the-art literature on potential marketing benefits and analyze the impact on airline planning systems. In this regard, revenue management systems are of particular interest. Based on a simulation study, the authors infer a severe impact of decentralized codeshare controls as currently widely implemented in the industry on revenue management performance. In the scenarios examined, complementary codesharing reduces alliance-wide revenues by up to 1 %. Losses increase when a carrier experiences high local demand or a high degree of codeshare demand, and disseminate over the whole network. Virtual codeshares also cause losses of 0.3 % to 1.5 % depending on the discount level offered by the marketing carrier and on the demand structure. Finally, the authors formulate a set of managerial implications based on these findings

An explanatory theory of power in inter-organisation relationships: evidence from the aerospace and defence industry.

Bourlakis, Michael - Associate SupervisorThis thesis concerns the phenomenon power, heralded the most fundamental yet contested phenomenon / concept in social science. The focus is establishing the essential qualities that describe, characterize, and explain power in inter- organisation relationships (IOR-power) to inform debates on the significance of IOR-power to supply chain performance. The thesis is founded on an iterative and critical synthesis of core academic perspectives spanning 50 years and 27 practitioner perspectives obtained from three field studies, unearthing meanings and experiences attributed to IOR-power. It is argued that IOR-power standing replete with unresolved contestations has been under-theorised and under- valued in the literature and in practice. An imbued distain for IOR-power is fuelled by an untenable dichotomisation of consensual IOR-influence and coercive IOR- power – unnecessarily stripping IOR-power of much of its potency – leaving both precariously sharing the burden of explaining IOR-behaviour wherein accounts thus far are insufficient to explain IOR-outcomes of interest. Underpinned by a dialectical critical realism perspective, the main contribution is a plausible theory of IOR-power, a fundamental explanatory process building block complemented by a conceptual framework supported by evidence from the aerospace and defence industry. Advancing alignment with natural-based power, IOR-power is more comprehensively claimed to be the combination of embedded individual behaviour, human creations, and Nature, at work exploiting resources in pursuit of goal attainment – an emergent, downwardly inclusive social and natural-based process governing IOR-outcomes. Accordingly, IOR-influence is distinct from but wholly integral to IOR-power that is rendered situated, negotiated, and indeterminate. IOR-power is conferred its full weight in explaining IOR-performance across economic, social, and environmental domains rendering adopted perspective and attribution salient in IOR-power accounts. The only antithesis of IOR-power is IOR-powerlessness wherein empowerment and disempowerment stand as theoretical bridges.PhD in Leadership and Managemen

Analysing the Network & Schedule Performance of Airlines and Developing a Passenger-Centric Commercial Methodology for Air Services

In the aviation industry and academic literature, there are a number of methods to compute and benchmark the perceived quality of the airline schedule. However, these are open to criticism in the sense that they solely use the airline’s schedules as the input for the quality computation rather than the consumer’s perspective. Injecting dynamic consumer preference metrics on top of the existing network evaluation methods is the aim of this research. Therefore, the research brings a new and innovative passenger-oriented perspective on airline network and schedule design, an outlook regarding the “quality” of supply rather than the sole “quantity” of the supply. The model also helps to compute schedule-service quality indexes by understanding consumers’ priorities and preferences through a survey. Using the schedule data of main legacy and low cost carriers in the Middle East, Europe and Africa the model produces a “realistic market share” estimation for each airline serving particular routes. The model’s outputs provide guidelines to effectively shape the airline planners’ investment decisions in the sense that, the airline executives will be enabled to numerically assess the estimated realistic market share change of a potential investment and to benchmark the performance of their products against competitors. Moreover, the research contributes to the academic literature by conceptualising the comparative and competitive advantages of airline schedules and network designs from a consumer-centric perspective