History of Qantas Airways
Discuss about the Organizational Structure and Effectiveness for Qantas Airways.
Qantas Airways is the flag bearer of Australia and the largest airline of the country according to the fleet size, covering international destinations with international flights. KLM and Avianca are the two top and leading brands in the sector and hence Qantas Airways is on the third position. It was found in November 1920 and it began its global services in 1935 (Qantas 2018). The word Qantas comes from the acronym for its original name Queensland and has a nickname called the “The Flying Kangaroo” and is also considered as te fouder of the of One world airline alliance. It is based out in Sydney and the main hub is Sydney airport. Qantas had a 65% share in the Australian market and carries approx. 14.9% travellers in and out of Australia. Many subsidiary airlines run under the Qantas banner in the regional centres. It also owns Jet-star Airways which is a very low-cost airline which operates for both international and national services in Australia and New Zealand and has many Jet-star branded airlines.
It was founded in Queensland, Winton on November 16, 1920, by Hudson Fysh, Fergus McMaster and Paul McGinness. The domestic competitor is Ansett Airlines (Qantas 2018). An early TV promotional campaign was organized in 1969 duration which ran for several decades and the prime objective of this campaign was aiming towards the American public and it presented a koala. The koala was ranked one of the biggest commercial ad campaigns which featured renditions by children’s choirs.
It gives sponsorship to the Qantas Wallabies which is the Australian national Rugby Union team. It also promoters Socceroo’s. It is the major promoter for the F1 Australian Grand Prix. It signed a four-year contract with the Australian national cricket team. It also supported same-sex marriage and the LGBTQ community. Qantas has several in-flight entertainment systems. In 2015 it signed a deal with HBO for 120 hours of television teleprogramming (Qantas 2018). Qantas offered all 12 Airbus A380s and a Boeing 747 400. It offers 14 individual suites in a 1-1-1 layout.
Qantas has mobile applications as well for Android, iOS and the Windows platforms.
The Qantas Sales Act, under which it was privatized, had limited the foreign ownership to 49 %. Other overseas carriers were subject to other limitations under this Act combining the 35 percent limit and it was amended in 2014. In 2011 it announced the financial losses and the market share decline. More than 1000 jobs were lost in Australia and a new airline would be set up with a diverse name. The change was necessary for the losses in the airline’s operations happening internationally like Emirates and Singapore Airways which is more competitive and because of Australian international deregulation in 1980’s (Qantas 2018). Qantas operates in cities like London and Hong Kong even after cessation of services. It opened onward flights to London via British Airways. Qantas has Jetstar Hong Kong and Eastern China Airlines Corporation. Earlier Qantas was privatized in 1995, which led to cancellation order of 787 Dreamliner to minimize the expenses. Qantas and Emirates started their alliance in 2013 which had offered 98 flights per week. In September same year, it announced $250 million net loss which ended on 31st December. The company has various subsidiaries which are led and controlled by various team executives and staff who have authority and obligations for exercising the areas of operations (Allen, Blasko and Corbett, 2016). The employees are arranged so that the execution had duties which are in sync with the company’s objectives. Additionally, the 2 business sections have operational functions. It focuses on the strategies of the firm for converting and modifying the business corporation for improving the Qantas Domestic Business. The analysis shows that the framework of the entity is matrix type. The topmost members have the corporate governance and executive as well. The highest level is for the policies and practices of the organization. The various departments like the administrative, commercial and project management. The departments have various teams for the goals to be achieved.
Sponsorship And Alliances
The leadership styles are very important for decisive the direction of the organizational success. It is the effective aspect which keeps on motivating the employees for implementing tactics and plans. And some of these styles are regularly used for the organization for authoritarian and delegations styles (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson and Gellatly, 2011). Authoritarian style means that the manager has people to do what they are expected out of them without any advice first. And the participative or the democratic style includes the leader and the work-force in the process of decision-making. Although the final decision has to be taken by the leader most times it takes the opinions of the employees as well. The delegating style allows the employees to take decisions of their own, although, the leader is accountable for the decisions of the staff (Saebi and Foss, 2015).
Qantas airlines seem to accommodate largely all the characteristics of the leadership styles in the company management and operations. The managing authorities of the business organization has been very serious of the handling of the management in diverse cultures of the employees and the views of the shareholders. Hence, the company is rational in making decisions or might end up in conflicts with both the employees and the stockholders, although, there are some cases where the company was authoritative. Which led to making decisions from the staff and the unions are against (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). The decisions resulted in criticisms from many stakeholders involving loyal customers and experts from the industry. Like, the company closure in Singapore was dealt with a lot of outrage by the stakeholders. They argued that the CEO was more commanding than being self-governing. The Qantas portrayed an authoritative style. Despite the management showing authoritative it also showed participative leadership styles as well (Wheelen, Hunger, Hoffman, and Bamford, 2017).
Qantas leadership style is also seen in elements like:
Vision: It has been clearly understood by the management of the business entity that the team can only be effective, with a vision. And to allow this, the leadership style of the business organization is based on offering tactics, direction and a vision to support the employees of the company for the execution of the tasks (Davis, 2015).
Diverse management: The business enterprise includes of the people from various fields. The team of the business entity team offers various skills views and education for developing the management (Hair, Wolfinbarger, Money, Samouel and Page, 2015). Again the fact that team is from the different fields and also provide for various traits which needed to make the company effective.
Leadership Style at Qantas Airways
Seeking opinion from employees: Employees of the company is very important during the process of decision making within the organization (Voet, 2014). It is because it is involved with activities regularly and also they perceive the progress. Qantas Airline had documented the value of information of the workforce and the top management to consult them various decisions. They argue that they do not help by including the employees for the process of making the decision and encourage them.
Collaborative: Qantas believes that the leaders are open, honest and collaborative. This technique makes the workforce feel inspired and the work towards achieving the goals and targets (Denison, Nieminen and Kotrba, 2014).
A good and effective strategy should go with the vision and mission of the company. It is a roadmap for the company to achieve its goals and objectives (Lupton and Beamish, 2014). The company makes various strategies according to the nature of the problem it wants to tackle. The business entities use various tactics and plans for the national firm and the international operations as well. Similarly, Qantas also has strategies for the Australian and foreign markets.
Qantas has managed to maintain the competitive marketing strategies although it was facing a tough competition from the many carrier workers like Virgin Airlines. Despite the tough antagonism, the firm has been consistent to apply the price war strategy (Morris, Tod and Oliver, 2015). Qantas targets low-cost customers where it has already outperformed its competition. Qantas is making use of the concept of portfolio divergence to improve the customer base in the domestic and international markets as well. This resulted in company prosperity opportunities in the national market. Other tactics are:
Cost efficiencies: The ultimate goal of every company is to decrease the cost to the lowest level and at the same time increase the profit margins. This strategy was mainly adopted by the companies as a technique for marketing (Rothaermel, 2015). Because of the profitability is a strong competitive advantage a firm can use to outdo the competition. Qantas has realized the value of cost efficiency and applied it to enter both domestic and international markets.
Segmentation of the Brands: Qantas has segmented the company into various brands. This helps the company to fulfill the needs of various customers (Egeberg, Gornitzka, Trondal and Johannessen, 2015). For example, the strategy helped the company to cater the needs of various categories of customers like corporates, business travels, and leisure travels.
Marketing Strategies of Qantas Airways
Expansion to a less airline dominated region: The Company’s expansion to areas like Asia has helped the company to form in new regions before new players enter (Daft, 2015). For example, the expansion in Asia helped to claim a large market share as compared to the competitors.
An efficient organization structure should help the organization to form perfect strategies in the roadmap to gain the mission, vision, and objectives of the company. Qantas has a very strong structure which helps cater the interests of the stakeholders (Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick and Kerr, 2015). This has effectively been achieved by adopting a mixture of various leadership styles. Through this integration of the various aspects of leadership styles, the leaders were able to act according to the situation and address the problem at hand. The company leadership has been transformational and therefore it is effective leadership style. The evidence for it is the success in the industry in both the domestic and the international market.
From the analysis of Qantas Company marketing strategies, it has been clear that the different nature of the business should use different strategies for marketing. Qantas airline might have applied the suitable and right strategies. This can be seen in both the success in the domestic and the international market (Cummings and Worley, 2014). By using these strategies, Qantas has claimed a very significant share in the market. Hence, I conclude that the company has applied the best marketing strategies. This is the reason why it has dominated both the domestic and the international market.
Conclusion
In the limelight of the above-executed analysis, it has been inferred that the defining organizational structure and the adopted strategies are a crucial task for any of the business corporation. Organizational structure is the framework of a business entity that provides directions to the workforce and the other working employees for performing the operations and their obligations. The business strategies are the tactics or the plans that are adopted for tackling with the competitors and dealing with the various aspects of the business environment. Organisation structure, marketing strategies, and the leadership styles are the key aspects of the success of any organization. The companies that use the concepts effectively and efficiently are bound to run a smooth pace in both their industries and markets. Qantas airline had realized the success by keeping these aspects into consideration. The structure helped the organization to use the resources and give away duties for effective decision making effectively. On the other hand, the leadership style gives the direction to the organization. And finally, the strategies determine the profits the business has gained as well as the competitive advantage.
References
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Ashkenas, R., Ulrich, D., Jick, T. and Kerr, S. (2015) The boundaryless organization: Breaking the chains of organizational structure. John Wiley & Sons.
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Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G. (2014) Organization development and change. Cengage learning.
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Qantas, (2018) [Online]. About Qantas, Available at https://www.qantas.com/travel/airlines/about-qantas/global/en. [Assessed on 22nd May 2018].
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Wheelen, T.L., Hunger, J.D., Hoffman, A.N. and Bamford, C.E. (2017) Strategic management and business policy. NJ: Pearson.
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