Organisational Structure And Leadership Style Of Qantas

The Growth of International Aviation and Airline Industry

Discuss about the Organisational Structure and Effectiveness Method.

The international aviation and airline industry will grow and shows strong predictable future in providing benefits to both Australia and global marketplace. Economic growth and its development are large factors behind expansion in airline business where high disposable income is realised from emerging markets. Both domestic as well as international aviation force has strongly grown where its size is expected to be doubled till 2030. Demographic reasons where increased number of population is been observed in both Australian as well as international countries also indicates increase in demands for more travelling through Australian airports (Australian Industry Standards Ltd., 2018). This report will understand the way Australian airline industry performs their company’s structure to overcome barriers in airline industry. Qantas is the second oldest airline company in the world which is situated in Australia and therefore this report will make a close study about its organisational structure and effectiveness in airline industry.

Qantas headquarters is situated in Queensland of Australia and was established in the year 1920. The two main airlines it deals with are Jetstar and Qantas. The main goal of the company is to deliver fair returns to the stakeholders while carrying safe and sound business strategy. The vision of the company states to become top airline industry where people are provided with safe and healthier travelling experience. The company’s main income is realised from passenger’s revenue and about 26% of its expenditure is made in jet fuel for flights. More than 28,000 satisfied employees work for the company globally. Qantas operates in more than 40 countries globally where Qantas together with other subsidiary airline companies serve more than 30 million travellers every year.   Qantas has a significant market share with high earnings as it follows strategies in order to expand its business. Qantas corporate strategy in international market depends largely upon countries environment along with firms’ decisions and corporate actions (Alam, n.d.).

Company’s structures become critical while determining the way through which roles and responsibilities along with other organisational duties like monitoring, coordinating and allocation can be distributed among people.  A company structure provides with a mechanism that helps in following the data of company’s management in all levels. Organisational objectives and strategies are main reasons behind formation of company structure that assists its executers follow specific managerial criteria. Normally, organisations follow centralised or decentralised organisational structures. Qantas has been seen following both centralised as well as decentralised company structure for fulfilling its organisational objectives. Qantas comprises of several subsidiaries that are supervised by executives who are provided with authority and responsibility for carrying business operations over there.

Qantas’ Company Overview

The employees of the company are arranged in a mode where carrying of their duties aligns with Qantas business objectives and goals. There are separate CEO’s managing company’s businesses in two distinct divisions, Qantas International and Qantas Domestic. In order to improve domestic business as well as transform Qantas international to top airline industry, company follows divisional structure where operational function and commercial division are supervised by different supervisors. The company’s structure analysis reveals that the company adopt matrix form of structure. The top management area of Qantas comprises of corporate governance members and executive managerial teams. The company gives authority to its top level management area for making company’s policies and practice procedures along with implementing them in different organisational areas. After the top executers, there are many departments   who manage different roles of company’s business like administration board, commercial and operational managements, functional and project management etc. These departments are allocated with different work and are monitored by top managements to ensure they meet organisational core objectives (CAPA – Centre for Aviation, 2012). 

The leadership style followed by the company determines the success and direction of the business. According to Zaccaro and Klimoski (2001), organisational leadership is a process that involves proximal outcomes which contributes to the achievement and development of organisational objectives. The leadership styles can be identified with the application of non custom pressure on organisational style where leaders are grounded through cognitive and social processes. Therefore leadership style can be inherently circumscribed by system dynamics and characteristics in which leadership are contextually defined (Zaccaro & Klimoski, 2001). Leadership style can be authoritative or participative, depending upon the nature of leader and circumstances. Participative and democratic leadership style involves the employees and the leader in decision making process where the decisions are finalised by ultimate leaders but opinions and ideas of employees are also considered. On the other hand, the delegation style leadership makes the leader responsible for decisions made by both leader and the employees (Bolden, n.d.).

The leadership style by Qantas shows that it accommodates all the characteristic of leadership style in its management dealing with operational activities. The top executives provides critical examination while dealing with management related to diversified cultured employees and during the times of reviews made by shareholders (Qantas Airways Limited, 2018). Under this style, company is able to manage in avoiding conflicts between diversified culture employees along with managing significant decisions critically. There are again many scenarios where the company require to be authoritative that has made many employees and trade unions turned into unfavourable perception. Many stakeholders along with industry experts and loyal customers have also criticised for such leadership traits. The company’s closure with Singapore was one of the major critical decisions made by Qantas that was highly criticised by people. It was argued at that time whether the CEO of the company’s decision was becoming more authoritative than democratic (Taylor, 2017). This scenario shows Qantas apply authoritative leadership style in few areas. Despite of being authoritative, Qantas also allows participative leadership style and delegates some attributes to its employees.

Qantas’ Organisational Structure

The chief reasons behind following such leadership styles were to become effective and more dedicated towards company’s vision. For realising increased growth, Qantas made a leadership style to provide management with direction and strategy for supporting company’s vision while ensuring effective execution of tasks by employees. The diversified teams of Qantas comprise of people belonging to different fields. They offer variety of expertise and skill with highly qualified staff that are suited for Qantas superior work managements. The fact that the teams belongs to various discipline shows that the leadership style provided by the company is to make company’s practice more effective (Qantas Group Business Practices, n.d.). Employees of Qantas have often provided the company with crucial ideas while making decisions for the company. Since they are involved in the activities of the company, they are aware of Qantas work policies and governmental regulations. Therefore, they are able to provide with acceptable solutions. Qantas has recognised the significance of employee’s participation and hence the top executers of the company always seek advices from its employees. This leadership style of the company not only helps in fulfilling organisation goals but also motivates and encourages employees while making them feel a sense of ownership. Along with it, collaborative approach of leaders make management becomes open and honest to all. With this exclusive leadership style, Qantas had not only made its employees feel motivated but also made entire process of the company more effective and goal oriented.

Effective organisational strategies are always conventional to the organisation’s mission and vision. Strategic planning acts as an umbrella that includes summary of activities through a planned performance evaluation. Organisational effectiveness deals with solving dilemmas faced by them with providing best practices and technical support. According to Fairholm (2009), the administrators of company’s controls organisational endeavours that are essential to be aligned with present appropriate practices. Controlling these mechanisms is only a part of strategic planning where in reality the strategy thinkers emerges to fill up the gap while overcoming the limitations behind it. The integrated leadership style along with foundation of strong strategic planning results in bringing effectiveness in organisational performance standards (Fairholm, 2009). For this many companies implies various strategies according to the nature of issues. International companies like Qantas apply different strategies applicable separately in domestic and international operations.

Qantas Airline has made different strategies for International market as well as Australian market. Although Qantas faces tough competition with other airline companies like Virgin Airline, it continues to remain competitive in marketing strategy. The company has been consistently applying pricing strategies to win the competition (Amadeus, 2006). While dealing with domestic strategy, Qantas targets both low-cost consumers as well as higher class people by providing with different on board class reservations according to the costs. This strategy has majorly outperformed its competitors where they still struggle to maintain pricing factor. Qantas also maintains diversified portfolio for domestic customers and international market which has made the company gain expansion in both global as well as local market.

Qantas’ Leadership Style

The main objective of Qantas is to reduce costs as maximum as possible so that local as well as international travellers are able to afford travelling with it. On the other hand, company also tries to maintain sustainable profit margins to fulfil its organisational requirements. By making effective pricing strategy, many international companies have been able to gain competitive advantage but profitability also becomes strong reason to outperform competitors in marketplace. Qantas also recognises the significance of cost efficiency and therefore have applied both pricing as well as cost effective strategy in domestic as well as international marketing strategy (Parker, 2015).

Qantas have divided its flying divisions into several brands to penetrate markets with brand segmentation strategy. This strategy has made company cater to the requirements of its customers in effective manner. From this strategy, Qantas has been able to manage different categories of its customers like leisure traveller, celebrities, corporate people and business travellers. The company’s expansion strategy allows it to establish its operation in new markets. Other countries like Asia have supported the growth of Qantas Airline remarkably where the share in Asian market of Qantas has been increasing day by day (Creedy, 2011).

Structure and strategy are the directions and scope of organisations to achieve advantages from it through configuration of resources for meeting with the requirements of market and stakeholders expectations. According to Kavale (2012), business strategy refers to the determination of objectives and business goals by adopting a course of action and allocation of resources to fulfil the required goals and objectives. Structure is the elementary notion that can be tangible or intangible referring to the observation, nature, recognition and permanence of relationship of entities. Structure can be formal or informal but includes the line of authority and process of communication between several administrative departments and officers. The information flows according to the line of authority. The managements adopt different leadership styles and organisational structure to meet with the demands for fulfilling organisational goals (Kavale, 2012). Hence it becomes essential in recognising both of them before making comments on structure and strategy of any company. Since this paper have made analysis of Qantas organisational structure and leadership styles, it can be made sure that the company has been following an effective layout in both global and domestic fields.

The marketing strategies of the company show its diversified nature in capturing markets. Qantas adoption of pricing strategy also shows its concern towards customers which have gained many loyal customers attached with it (Qantas, 2011). The success of the company and its social response has been recognised by government of Australia and thus governmental support enables the company while performing international operations. Qantas also gains high market share which restricts entry of new competitors or at least makes difficult for new entrants in Australian Airline industry. The leadership style of the company shows universal application of ideas where the company does not restricts giving decision making power to top executors only. However, due to harsh conditions, company also heeds to take unfriendly decisions for the sake of company’s objectives. The success of company in international market and domestic regions is mainly due to adaptation of diversified work culture that allows penetrating in new market with the help of people present over there. Therefore, Qantas Airline has been ruling Australian Airline market with prominence.

Conclusion

The analysis made of Qantas Airline reveals that it is the most admired Airline Company in Australia which is seeking rapid growth in domestic and international market. The mission and vision of the company indicates that Qantas are highly focussed on providing safer and affordable experience to its customers while providing maximum outputs to its stakeholders. The company’s exceptional strategy for achieving superior growth in international and domestic market shows its dedication towards expansion strategy. However, the corporate strategy selected for rapid expansion requires making few changes in its leadership styles for avoiding public disagree in crucial decisions. This report has revealed business traits and formulas that are adopted by Qantas Airline industries. This shows that company’s effective management system and sound strategic policies have made it one of the most successful organisations present globally.

References

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