Impact Of Organization Characteristics On Sustainable Competitive Advantage During Strategic Change In Airlines

Abstract

Firms in the airline industry are using resources and capabilities to build sustainable competitive advantage and how these resources and capabilities are used are subject to change when the organization is responding to change from external forces. This leads to change of the whole organization as a system. This study focuses on organization characteristics which make up the organization including business processes, structure and culture and how these are managed during strategic change to build sustainable competitive advantage in airlines. With Porter’s five-force model and the value chain model, this study aims at analyzing the dynamic environment of airlines with forces that lead to strategic change and how these affect the three organization characteristics. The study employed survey research design with a sample of 173 drawn from executive directors, senior managers and managers and pilots through stratified sampling who were picked by simple random sampling from airlines. Self-administered questionnaires and personal interviews were used as well as data from books, journals, periodicals, company reports, press releases and the internet. Data analysis was done using descriptive analysis (percentages, frequencies and averages) and chi-statistic followed by data presentation on bar graphs and tables. The study concludes the three elements of organization characteristics namely business process, culture and structure are interlinked. They are disrupted during strategic change and require integration for consistency help build sustainable competitive advantage. It is recommended that managers and policy makers in airlines view organization characteristics as subsystems that depend on each other to build sustainable competitive advantage during strategic change. Further researchers should incorporate operational level employees and customers in the target influence to establish their role in organization characteristics during strategic change process.