Management Employment-Relations Strategies: Perspectives from Studies of European (and American) Airlines
Name
paper to resubmit.pdf
Size
389.28 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7beaa53590aad0108cc307a5b9017818
Author(s)
Bamber, Greg J.
Gittell, Jody Hoffer
Kochan, Thomas Anton
von Nordenflycht, Andrew
Alternative Title
Contrasting Management and Employment-Relations Strategies in European Airlines
Date Issued
November 2009
Journal
Journal of Industrial Relations
Publisher
Sage Publications
Citation
Bamber, G. J. et al. “Contrasting Management and Employment-Relations Strategies in European Airlines.” Journal of Industrial Relations 51.5 (2009): 635-652.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We discuss deregulation (liberalisation) and some of the international institutions that influence the management of people in airlines. As a point of departure, we summarise contrasting models from successful ‘new entrant’ airlines: Ryanair and Southwest. We consider examples of various categories of airlines in different ‘ideal types’ of institutional context: liberal-market economies and coordinated-market economies. These are two varieties of advanced capitalism. The former include the United States, Britain, Ireland (and Australia). The latter include the Germanic and Scandinavian countries. We classify airlines according to which strategies dominate their efforts at cost reduction. Alongside these differences in strategies, we analyse differences in two aspects of employment-relations strategies. First, employers can focus on controlling employee behaviour or seeking their commitment to the goals of the airline. Second, employers can seek to avoid, accommodate or partner with unions. We show that, in terms of employment relations, the variety of capitalism context helps to influence employers’ strategies, but airlines (and other enterprises) still have some scope for exercising strategic choice, in spite of their institutional and regulatory context.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022185609346185
