Hr Practice
Global Aviation Human Resource
Management: Contemporary
Compensation and Benefits Practices by Steven H. Appelbaum and Brenda M. Fewster
Abstract
The commercial airline is an extremely competitive, safety-sensitive, high technology service industry. People, employees and customers, not products and machines, must be the arena of an organisation’s core competence.
The implications are vast and pervasive affecting no less than the organisation’s structure, strategy, culture, and numerous operational activities.
Completed by 13 respondents (executives), this audit presents a series of select findings of a human resource management audit carried out in 2001-2 and contains extensive data on airlines from nine countries from around the globe. The conclusion drawn from these three bodies of work is that, with the exception of a handful of high performing airlines, the industry as a whole continues to function as per a traditional, top-down, highly divisionalised, industrial model of operations and governance. This model is manifestly inappropriate in such a highly knowledge-based service market as the airline industry. HRM expertise in general and compensation and benefits in particular are required now, more than ever, to spearhead the strategic development of a customer-centric, learning-oriented workforce that is capable of adapting quickly to the strategic goals and change imperatives facing the airline industry.
Biographical Notes
Dr. Steven H. Appelbaum
holds the Concordia
University Research
Chair in Organizational
Development and
Professor of
Management, John
Molson School of
Business, Concordia
University, 1455 de
Maisonneuve Blvd. West,
Bureau GM 503-9,
Montreal, Quebec,
Canada H3G 1M8.
Brenda M. Fewster, MA,
MBA, Webster Library,
Concordia University,
1455 de Maisonneuve
Blvd. West Montreal,
Quebec, Canada H3G
1M8.
Introduction
Strategy in the aviation and airline industries is premised upon two fundamental drivers
Management: Contemporary
Compensation and Benefits Practices by Steven H. Appelbaum and Brenda M. Fewster
Abstract
The commercial airline is an extremely competitive, safety-sensitive, high technology service industry. People, employees and customers, not products and machines, must be the arena of an organisation’s core competence.
The implications are vast and pervasive affecting no less than the organisation’s structure, strategy, culture, and numerous operational activities.
Completed by 13 respondents (executives), this audit presents a series of select findings of a human resource management audit carried out in 2001-2 and contains extensive data on airlines from nine countries from around the globe. The conclusion drawn from these three bodies of work is that, with the exception of a handful of high performing airlines, the industry as a whole continues to function as per a traditional, top-down, highly divisionalised, industrial model of operations and governance. This model is manifestly inappropriate in such a highly knowledge-based service market as the airline industry. HRM expertise in general and compensation and benefits in particular are required now, more than ever, to spearhead the strategic development of a customer-centric, learning-oriented workforce that is capable of adapting quickly to the strategic goals and change imperatives facing the airline industry.
Biographical Notes
Dr. Steven H. Appelbaum
holds the Concordia
University Research
Chair in Organizational
Development and
Professor of
Management, John
Molson School of
Business, Concordia
University, 1455 de
Maisonneuve Blvd. West,
Bureau GM 503-9,
Montreal, Quebec,
Canada H3G 1M8.
Brenda M. Fewster, MA,
MBA, Webster Library,
Concordia University,
1455 de Maisonneuve
Blvd. West Montreal,
Quebec, Canada H3G
1M8.
Introduction
Strategy in the aviation and airline industries is premised upon two fundamental drivers
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