Up In The Air: How Airlines Can Improve Performance by Engaging Their Employees

[Excerpt] In the chapters that follow, we explore the competitive strategies and employment-relations strategies found in the United States (chapter 2) and in a range of other countries (chapter 3), before and after deregulation. In chapter 4 we analyze recent trends in quality, productivity, and costs, as well as employee outcomes. In chapter 5 we look more closely at selected new-entrant airlines and find a wide range of competitive and employment-relations strategies being used in this segment of the industry. In chapter 6, we examine several legacy airlines and identify the distinct strategies they have adopted to respond to competitive pressures from new-entrant airlines. These chapters each focus on selected U.S. airlines and those based in some other countries. In chapter 7, we summarize the strategies of new-entrant and legacy airlines, and offer lessons about how airlines can and do change their strategies over time in their efforts to compete more effectively. We offer recommendations, using our historical and comparative analyses to discuss whether a path forward can be identified that can provide a better balance in stakeholder outcomes. We end on a positive note, arguing that if the parties learn from their experiences and from each other, in the United States and other countries, there is a path that deals with the pressures building up in the airline industry, offering hope for a better balance between investor, employee, customer, and societal interests. Key questions are whether and from where the leadership will come to get the industry moving down this path or whether the main parties might not take such action before there is a perfect storm

Country characteristics and the incidence of capital income taxation on wages: an empirical assessment

This paper examines the incidence of corporate income taxes on wages using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for 13 OECD countries. Within a wage-bargaining framework, our econometric analysis shows that a substantial share of the corporate tax burden is shifted from capital to labour. However, the magnitude of this shift is influenced importantly by country characteristics affecting the process of wage determination, such as the degree of capital mobility, a country's relative influence over the world price of output and trade unions’ strength

Professional Occupations, Knowledge-Driven Firms, And Entrepreneurship: A National And Regional Analysis

The worldwide dominance of Western nations in commercial knowledge-intensive services has declined between 1995 and 2010, but the slippage in revenue was only from 88 to 79 percent. The European Union and North America remain the two largest regions in consumption and in exporting. Four professional service sectors—accounting, law, engineering, and management consultancy—have shown stability or even growth in the past decade. Entry and expansion requirements in these fields, at home and abroad, constitute barriers for both individual professionals and companies. Entrepreneurship is evident in these sectors, as small and medium size enterprises have maintained their viability against large firms. Only accountancy shows a high degree of concentration, but competition in this sector, too, is expected from the emerging economies, especially China. Professional service firms of the West have forged strong linkages with both domestic and foreign clients via relationship marketing. Technology is an important factor via automation. Although each of the four sectors is facing both external and internal challenges, they continue to grow and appear to be meeting the challenges in part by more innovation and transparency

Reputation and identity conflict in management consulting

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this record.Based on a case study of a large consulting firm, this paper makes two contributions to the literature on reputation and identity by examining how an organization responds when its identity is substantially misaligned with the experience and perceptions of external stakeholders that form the basis of reputational judgments. First, rather than triggering some form of identity adaptation, it outlines how other forms of identity can come into play to remediate this gap, buffering the organization’s identity from change. This shift to other individual identities is facilitated by a low organizational identity context even when the identity of the firm is coherent and strong. The second contribution concerns the conceptualization of consulting and other professional service firms. We explain how reputation and identity interact in the context of the distinctive organizational features of these firms. Notably, their loosely coupled structure and the central importance of expert knowledge claims enable individual consultants both to reinforce and supplement corporate reputation via individual identity work

From practice to field:a multi-level model of practice-driven institutional change

This article develops a model of practice-driven institutional change - or change that originates in the everyday work of individuals but results in a shift in field-level logic. In demonstrating how improvisations at work can generate institutional change, we attend to the earliest moments of change, which extant research has neglected; and we contrast existing accounts that focus on active entrepreneurship and the contested nature of change. We outline the specific mechanisms by which change emerges from everyday work, becomes justified, and diffuses within an organization and field, as well as precipitating and enabling dynamics that trigger and condition these mechanisms. © Academy of Management Journal

Dynamically Integrating Knowledge in Teams: Transforming Resources into Performance

In knowledge-based environments, teams must develop a systematic approach to integrating knowledge resources throughout the course of projects in order to perform effectively. Yet, many teams fail to do so. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we examine how teams can develop a knowledge-integration capability to dynamically integrate members‘ resources into higher performance. We distinguish among three sets of resources: relational, experiential, and structural, and propose that they differentially influence a team‘s knowledge-integration capability. We test our theoretical framework using data on knowledge workers in professional services, and discuss implications for research and practice

Mutual Gains or Zero Sum? Labor Relations and Firm Performance in the Airline Industry

The authors examine competing theoretical arguments regarding whether union representation, shared governance, wage levels, and two features of the quality of labor relations—workplace culture and conflict in negotiations—lead to better or worse outcomes for airlines, and they test these interpretations using a mix of historical and quantitative data from major U.S. airlines. Both the qualitative and quantitative results suggest that relational factors—conflict and workplace culture—are more important determinants of performance than the structural factors of unionization, shared governance, and wages. The authors conclude that efforts to recover from the current crisis in the airline industry that depend primarily on reductions in wages or union power will at best bring only short-term relief from immediate financial pressures. Sustained improvement in service quality and financial performance will require more fundamental improvements in the quality of labor relations

Out of the Ashes: Options for Rebuilding Airline Labor Relations

The crisis in the airline industry and its labor relations system creates a window of opportunity to introduce changes that are essential to successful industry recovery. This paper summarizes the results of our research on labor relations conducted as part of the MIT Global Airline Industry Project and proposes a set of improvement initiatives. We recommend that (1) companies negotiate a "recovery compact" with its employees that includes plans for improving the workplace culture and climate and for expediting and resolving collective bargaining contract negotiations, (2) government leaders specify a window of time for industry and labor leaders to agree on changes needed in the Railway Labor Act, (2) the National Mediation Board engage industry and labor leaders in a process of transforming the agency's role to support the changes needed in the industry, and (4) industry, labor, and government leaders create a forum to support mutual learning and improvement