Organizational Culture in Etihad Airways

Organizational culture refers to the unique values and manners of an organization that contribute to the psychological and social environment of the same. The culture of an organization is conveyed in its inner working, beliefs, self-image, shared vision, future expectations and interactions with the outer world (Qubaisi  2015). These aspects have a powerful influence on the employees of the organization and direct how they would behave, dress and perform in their roles. Every organization has its unique set of boundaries and guidelines that maintain and develop the distinctive culture of that organization.

Airlines are significant modes of transport in the present world in which maintaining a distinct organizational culture is highly essential. Etihad, the national airlines of United Arab Emirates and the second-largest airways of UAE is a flagship association with excellence of organization culture (Hogan and Coote 2014).  Etihad currently operates in six continents with over 1000 flights per week and bears the reputation of first-rate service and customer satisfaction (Etihad Global 2017). The corporate culture of Etihad is established around evaluating and perfecting the business with several balanced scorecards measuring the airline’s key performance indicators. Etihad not only earns a huge amount of profit share but also contributes a major part of its economical benefits for the development of Abu Dhabi, its home base. In order to sustain as a leading airline, Etihad concentrates on ensuring maximum standard of security, transparency and integrity (Kim and Song 2015).

Organizational Culture in Etihad Airways.

To examine different aspects of organizational culture

To evaluate the impact of organizational culture on the work performance of Etihad Airways

To discuss what challenges the chosen organization faces while implementing the organizational culture

To recommend possible ways of improving Etihad’s corporate culture

Organizational culture is integrally associated with the system of TQM or Total Quality Management. In fact, quality control and adherence to the organizational culture act as significant determinants of success (Qubaisi  2015). The culture of an organization includes level of behavior on every individual member’s part, confidence and trust among the associates as well as of the customers, impacts of dispute resolution, quality of service provided by the organization and most importantly how transparent and convincing image the organizational has to its clients (Huang 2014). Considering the quality factor, it can be said that culture of an organization should be capable of making the entire system function accordingly in the first place (O’Connell and Bueno 2016). It is in fact, one of the most significant variant of accomplishment or disappointment in employing the theory of Total Quality Management in organizational culture (Kim and Song 2015).  

TQM and Organizational Culture

Undoubtedly, workplace ethics and performance are the key determinants of organizational culture. Every airline industry has some certain guidelines to be adhered by the employees in order to deliver the highest possible performance and exhibit a lofty morale (Hogan and Coote 2014). To discuss Etihad’s work culture in particular, it has been declared in their mission that the work practices are implanted in every level of their business planning and execution (Hogan 2012). Etihad also concentrates on ensuring environmental protection, ascertaining the expectations of society and community, engaging the employees wisely while looking at their interests as well as striving for continual development (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015).  

Risk orientation or innovation in a service industry like airlines is characteristically different from the manufacturing sector (Goodheart and Smith 2014). There are some obvious patterns of differences in terms of risk orientation in airline industry, between the services provided and the views dominated by suppliers and customers (Etihad Global, 2017). The ever-growing expectations of the flyers consistently seek to open new horizons of innovation and advancement in aircraft manufacturing, passenger safety, comfort, carbon emissions and fuel consumption as well (Gimenez-Espin,  Jiménez-Jiménez and Martínez-Costa 2013). The perspective of innovation largely relies either on adopting technologies externally developed felicitating provisions of new service or enhance the quality of already existing ones.

Etihad as well as other airline organizations place huge importance on taking decisions for their people concentrating on the possible consequences of these decisions on the people of the organization. It can be hypothesized that organization administrators who prioritize fairness and incorporate attributions regarding disciplinary decisions are keen on maintaining a strong reputation of organizational culture (Huang 2014).

Attention to detail encompasses precision in exhibition, analysis done for improvement and most significantly attention to specification (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). This orientation is a congruent part of organizational culture in Etihad as it orchestrates its service to meet the value-driven expectations of the customers. This national airline of United Arab Emirates ensures its customers’ flying experience of premium quality and every aspect regarding the business is scrutinized on regular basis (Goodheart and Smith 2014).  

The leading airline organization of U.A.E, Etihad airways has been one of the fastest growing aircraft carrier organizations. One of the major hindrances behind the growth of airline organizations is several economic and political factors working as regulators. In case of Etihad, its several competitive strategies including codeshare-partner policy and minority equity venture have allowed to expand Etihad considerably against the mighty global airlines (Gimenez-Espin,  Jiménez-Jiménez and Martínez-Costa 2013).

Workplace Ethics and Performance

Unlike other industries where there are no major boundaries set by global rules, the aviation industry is governed by regulations majorly among them being IFR and VFR (Whalen 2016). Besides, there remain separate rules and ethical regulation inside the individual organizations that ensures the stability of the organization despite the fluctuations in business situations (Goodheart and Smith 2014). Practice of rule orientation makes a company predictable and a consistent deliverer of desired outcomes. However, the practice of this orientation must be flexible, capable to be modified according to market fluctuations.

A well thought, reliable and convincing research methodology is able to deliver a valid research outcome. Research methodology refers to the range of action processes carried out step by step in a systematic manner consisting of devising plans, data collection, layout, explanation and analysis. The research methodology needs to be in line with the research objectives and timelines attuned to the type of research.

The following hierarchical image assists to identify the elements of research methodology done in this project:

The rationale behind conducting this research is to set up an audit of the organizational culture of Etihad airways towards research informed decision-making and management.

Choosing research philosophy is an important step of research action as it establishes the particular perspective selected for conducting the research as well as the impact of stance (Kim and Song 2015). The research philosophy found to be appropriate for this research is positivism, which adheres to facts gained through data collection primarily as well as interpretation.

As opined by Gratton and Jones (2010), the blend of inductive and deductive approach would be appropriate for carrying out the research work. In the initial stage, the research approach is likely to be deductive due to the already determined design and primary data collection from the surveys while later the research is likely to become inductive with qualitative approach supported by interviews (Whalen 2016).  

The research is, therefore, going to be conducted based on the ‘mixed-method’, which is a blend of both quantitative data collection by survey questionnaires and qualitative data via interview. To conduct a comprehensive research the ‘mixed-method’ of data must be synchronized with the research approach.

Conducting the research to prepare an audit of the organizational culture of Etihad Airways is based entirely on primary data collection. Data retrieved from face-to-face interview with the persons on managerial and HR level in the organization will be the key source of qualitative data (Mowday, Porter and Steers 2013). On the other hand, the survey that will be conducted among the regular customers of Etihad, its employees and the people in its administration level hopefully will suffice the quantitative data collection (Kim and Song 2015). Thus, the quantitative data will be needed in investigating relaxed associations between the variables under the research.

Risk Orientation and Innovation

Quantitative data will be based on conducting surveys on the prepared questionnaire already prepared involving the present day challenges that the people of an organization are likely to face and the difficulties or the quality issue that most customers face with other airlines (Whalen 2016).  

Qualitative data will be based on interview conducted with people in the higher managerial as well as in the HR level who may answer the inside organization strategies and ethics, which will help in preparing the audit details of their organizational culture (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). A few selected participants completely eligible to perform the interview will be conducting it.

In order to collect qualitative data the following persons will be interviewed:

1. Celeste Mejia (Senior HR Admin at Etihad Airways)
2. Ray Gammell (Group Chief People and Performance Officer
   Etihad Aviation Group )

The interview with Mr. Ray Gammell and Celeste Majia will be conducted approximately for 20 minutes and half an hour respectively.

The objective of conducting these interviews is to bring out the company’s beliefs and values towards its people and the customers. In addition, the interviews also intend to explore how Etihad’s organizational culture is different from its competitors in the industry.

The quantitative data will be collected through survey conducted with the prepared questionnaire mentioned in the end of the proposal.

Quantitative data for this research acquired from the survey will be analyzed through a Statistical Package for Social Sciences SPSS and MS Excel while the qualitative data obtained from the interview answers will be analyzed employing thematic analysis. Quantitative analysis of data will be done by investigating the numerical data gained systematically with percentages and frequencies, ranges, descriptive and exploratory analysis while qualitative data will be analyzed reviewing the information and transforming it into data along with processing it for patterns or themes.

While conducting the research, the researcher will ensure that the participants taking part in the research activities meet the ethical rights entirely. As per the Data Protection Act, 1998 a researcher must maintain the privacy of the data until it is published, which will definitely be adhered (Hudson 2016). Besides, the researcher will make sure that the details of the respondents are Not revealed.

Academic quality of the research such as concept acknowledgement, plagiarism, citations and copyright will be under firm consideration.

The principal constraints of conducting this research are the limited period as well as the inadequate budget. In addition, the qualitative data will be more of quality if the interview time can be extended which seems difficult due to the time constraint in extremely high profiles (Qubaisi, 2015). Besides, the confidential data required to conduct the research will need consents from high level followed through feasible channels.

Rule Orientation and Stability

The comprehensive study on the topic of organizational culture from the literature in form of academic contents from journals, books or newspaper articles will clear the existing position of the selected topic in the aviation industry as well as in the chosen organization (Vveinhardt, Gulbovaite and Streimikiene 2016).

Questionnaires will be framed supervised by the mentors, maintaining relevance with and validity and authenticity of the content. Besides, the interviews will be conducted in a way so that the purpose of it becomes fulfilled while not penetrating into any offensive context.

After data collection is done, it will be assembled, compiled, classified and then analyzed within the prearranged reporting format (Hudson 2016).

The research findings are likely to establish the following objectives:

• Whether the organizational culture of Etihad exhibit a commitment to ethical values and integrity
• Whether the management perform continual remediation activities in regular interval
• Whether there are any exceptions in following the organization’s policies
• Whether the present organizational culture of Etihad require any modification

The concluding report of the research will be in the format of a Dissertation incorporating all the chapters of Introduction, Literature Review, Finding, Data Analysis, Conclusion and Recommendations.

6. Conclusion

This research if allowed to be conducted as mentioned in the proposal will be able to come across the much-appraised organizational culture of Etihad Airways and the manner how they strategize the required modification in their organization. It is evident that the unparalleled customer reviews about the airline is due to their consistent modification in corporate culture, which is equally professional and thoughtful at the same time. The interview with higher officials of Etihad Airways will be helpful in obtaining direct and exclusive information about the organization’s working culture while the survey data will give an insight into the realistic position of the chosen organization’s culture. This research is going to be an authentic one in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of the organizational culture calculating the contingency factors and financial concern of the company to maintain the existing culture.

References:

“Etihad Official Website”, 2017. Etihad Global. N.p., 2017.

“Our Responsibility – Etihad Airways”, 2017. Etihad Global. N.p., 2017.

Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S., 2015. Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge.

Gimenez-Espin, J.A., Jiménez-Jiménez, D. and Martínez-Costa, M., 2013. Organizational culture for total quality management. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 24(5-6), pp.678-692.

Goodheart, B.J. and Smith, M.O., 2014. Measurable Outcomes of Safety Culture in Aviation-A Meta-Analytic Review. International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace, 1(4), p.1.

Gratton, C. and Jones, I., 2010. Research methods for sports studies. Taylor & Francis.

Hogan, J. 2012. Code of Conduct- Etihad Airways. [online] Available at:

https://resources.etihadairways.com/etihadairways/images/E_Book/HTML/Code_of_Business_Conduct2014_English/assets/common/downloads/Code%20of%20Business%20Conduct%202014%20English.pdf

Hogan, S.J. and Coote, L.V., 2014. Organizational culture, innovation, and performance: A test of Schein’s model. Journal of Business Research, 67(8), pp.1609-1621.

Huang, W.C.S., 2014. Human reliability analysis in aviation maintenance by a Bayesian network approach.

Hudson, M., 2016, June. Increasing Corporate University Training Options within Aerospace. In Conference Proceedings. The Future of Education (p. 405). libreriauniversitaria. it Edizioni.

Kim, C.Y. and Song, B.H., 2015. A Study on Safety Culture in Aviation Maintenance Organization.

Mowday, R.T., Porter, L.W. and Steers, R.M., 2013. Employee—organization linkages: The psychology of commitment, absenteeism, and turnover. Academic press.

O’Connell, J.F. and Bueno, O.E., 2016. A study into the hub performance Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways and their competitive position against the major European hubbing airlines. Journal of Air Transport Management.

Qubaisi, J.M.M.L.F.A., Elanain, H.M.A., Badri, M.A. and Ajmal, M.M., 2015. Leadership, culture and team communication: analysis of project success causality-a UAE case. International Journal of Applied Management Science, 7(3), pp.223-243.

Vveinhardt, J., Gulbovaite, E. and Streimikiene, D., 2016. Different Values Forms in Organization: is the Congruence Possible?. Montenegrin Journal of Economics, 12(2), p.117.

Whalen, J.M., 2016. The Hofstede model and national cultures of learning: a comparison of undergraduate survey data (Doctoral dissertation, Colorado State University. Libraries).