Stuck in the Middle Revisited: The Case of the Airline Industry

When Porter (1980) introduced his typology of business strategies, he used Laker Airways\u27 as an example to illustrate the danger of being stuck in the middle between the two basic types of competitive advantage, namely low cost and differentiation. However, the changing nature of competitive pressure in many business sectors and the accompanying need to perform well simultaneously in several aspects of operations performance, have eventually lead Porter (1990) to revisit his early idea. When presenting Porter\u27s generic competitive strategies, most strategy textbooks now offer a new choice, namely the integrated cost leadership/differentiation strategy (Coulter, 2002; Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2003), or the best-cost provider strategy (Thompson & Strickland, 2001). Given this background, the purpose of this theoretical paper is to build upon the strategic management and operations strategy literature to develop a conceptual framework that will subsequently be used to explore the extent that airline companies successfully pursue the best-cost provider (or integrated cost leadership/differentiation) strategy, and how they manage to resolve the trade-off between low-cost and differentiation. We aim at revisiting the stuck in the middle prescription by demonstrating that a number of aviation strategic options exist between the \u27\u27traditional\u27\u27 and low-cost model

Strategic Management as a Key to Educating the New Aviation Professional

Differences and similarities between management and strategic management are discussed in this article and a framework for the aviation strategic management process is proposed. The steps of the aviation strategic management process include 1) scanning the aviation environment, 2) analyzing the aviation organization, 3) formulating the corporate strategy, 4) formulating the business strategy, and 5) implementing the corporate and business strategies through the formulation of functional strategies. The article argues that knowledge of strategic management principles along the abovementioned process can help aviation organizations, just like organizations in other industries, achieve high strategic and financial performance and develop a clear understanding of industry competitive dynamics. Aviation Strategic Management as a course of study can significantly enrich the educational experience of students in aviation programs and mold them into competent aviation professionals as it provides an effective way to synthesize technical information and applythis information on everyday industry issues. We propose that strategic management can and should be an inextricable piece in aviation curricula, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels and can be used as an excellent theoretical foundation for aviation capstone courses

The great divide between business schools research and business practice

  In their 2005 Harvard Business Review article, Bennis and O’Toole described business schools as being “on the wrong track” as a result of their focus on so-called scientific research. Some commentators argue that business schools have slowly lost their relevance since the end of the 1950s when they undertook a major overhaul in response to the harsh criticism of the Ford and the Carnegie Foundations on the state of theory and research in business administration. Inspired by Khurana’s (2007) book on the development of American business schools, this article describes the debate on the relevance of scientific business research that can be found in the popular business press and the academic literature, and suggests a number of structural and cultural changes to increase the relevance of business research and its impact on practice.  Dans leur article publié en 2005 dans la Harvard Business Review, Bennis et O’Toole décrivaient les écoles de gestion comme étant « sur la mauvaise voie » en raison de l’importance qu’elles accordent à la recherche soi-disant scientifique. Certains observateurs soutiennent que les écoles de gestion ont lentement perdu leur pertinence depuis la fin des années 1950 alors qu’elles ont entrepris d’importants remaniements en réponse aux critiques sévères formulées par les fondations Ford et Carnegie quant à la théorie et à la recherche en administration des affaires. Inspiré par le livre de Khurana (2007) sur le développement des écoles de gestion américaines, cet article dépeint le débat sur la pertinence de la recherche scientifique en gestion qui fait rage dans la presse d’affaires et la littérature académique, et suggère des changements structurels et culturels qui pourraient améliorer la pertinence de la recherche en gestion et ses effets sur la pratique

A Focus on Engagement: Defining, Measuring, and Nurturing a Key Pillar of AACSB Standards

The 2013 Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) Standards emphasize three “pillars” upon which schools accredited by the association must regularly demonstrate quality improvement, namely, impact, innovation, and engagement. Focusing on the last of these, our article examines the concept of engagement through both a content analysis of the 2013 AACSB Standards and an empirical study exploring different types of course-level engagement within an undergraduate business course (measured using the Student Course Engagement Questionnaire; Handelsman, Briggs, Sullivan, & Towler, 2005). The results of our content analysis of the 2013 AACSB Standards underscore the focus placed on engagement within the AACSB documentation. However, it is also noted that the definition of engagement within the AACSB Standards is somewhat vague. The findings of our empirical study (N = 142) suggest that students were engaged in the course and that three of the four types of engagement measured (skills, participation/interaction, and performance engagement) were positively correlated with final performance in the course

Avoiding rework in product design: evidence from the aerospace industry

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study commissioned by an aircraft producer that is concerned about the efficiency of its new product development process and the high number of engineering changes generated during aerospace programs.Design/methodology/approachThe paper focuses on nine structural design projects and explores the factors explaining the inter‐project differences in the number of engineering changes required after the structural drawings are released to the methods department. The method of inquiry used in this paper combines questionnaire‐based measurement of design performance with in‐depth semi‐structured interviews of managers and designers.FindingsThe research results suggest that, in an industrial context where both time pressure and labour shortage are considerable, design practices such as functional diversity, intense communication, collocation and strong project leadership, are associated with higher design performance. Furthermore, in a specific organizational context where the design work is divided among various companies located in different regions, effective partner integration is another key success factor.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the strength of the findings is inevitably limited by the small number of observations, the results raise some important questions about the effect of time pressure and labour shortage on product development performance.Practical implicationsThe results suggest that design performance is likely to increase if the production sustaining phase is actively promoted within aerospace companies, since this activity provides designers with considerable learning opportunities.Originality/valueUsing sensitive internal data on engineering changes and rich qualitative material, this paper indicates how design performance can be improved in organizations that tend to rely on design rework and other safety nets to achieve their quality objectives and comply with industry regulations.</jats:sec

Le developpement de nouveaux produits: une comparaison des pratiques japonaises, britanniques et nord-americaines

This article presents the results of a study designed to identify the best product development practices in Japan, the United Kingdom and North America

New product development benchmarks: the Japanese, North American and UK consumer electronics industries

This paper presents the results of a benchmarking study into new product development in the high-end audio industry in Japan, North America and the UK. A total of 38 companies were visited and interviewed, and detailed benchmarking data obtained from 21 companies and 31 new product development projects. Measures of company characteristics, new product development performance, context and practice were taken. Performance was gauged by several measures, including leadtimes, cost and schedule adherence, internal and external quality and product profitability. Factor analysis revealed two main performance indices: ‘planning and control’ and ‘profitability/efficiency’. The organization of the development process was assessed by examining project team composition, linkages between key constituencies of the development process (e.g. Development, Manufacturing, Suppliers), and processes of information capture and exchange. Comparison between projects in Japan, North America and the UK revealed that UK projects were generally executed more quickly than those in Japan and North America, but displayed a higher incidence of post-launch problems. Japanese leadtimes were the longest, and Japanese companies performed relatively poorly on measures of development productivity. However, their manufacturing performance was vastly superior to that of Western companies