Identify and analyse current difficulties faced by British Airways

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Contents

INTRODUCTION 3

2 PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES FACING BRITISH AIRWAYS 3

2.1 Absenteeism and Lewin's force field analysis 3

2.2 Union battle and McCalman & Paton's Tropics Factors 4

2.3 PEST analysis 5

2.3.1 Political factors 5

2.3.2 Economic factors 6

2.3.3 Socio-cultural factors 6

2.3.4 Technological factors 7

3 IMPLEMENTATION OF CHANGES 7

4 BARRIERS TO CHANGE 8

5 CHANGE AGENT 9

6 RESISTANCE TO CHANGE 9

7 FURTHER REQUIREMENTS FOR ASSESSMENT OF SITUATION 10

8 BIBLIOGRAPHY 10

8.1 Books 10

8.2 Journals 10

8.3 Websites 10

Introduction

The last few years have seen a lot of difficulties for everybody in the airline business. This report aims to identify and analyse current difficulties faced by British Airways, as well as suggest steps to implement change and outline any barriers and resistance to change.

2 Problems and opportunities facing British Airways

2.1 Absenteeism and Lewin's force field analysis

British Airways are currently struggling with staff shortages as the level of absenteeism for the company's employees are high above the average and acceptable figures for the industry. Employees are said to be unmotivated and morale is low as increase in pay is low and the restructuring of the company have led to 13000 job losses. The problem can be analysed by using Lewin's force field analysis:

Driving forces Resisting forces

- Technology - Employee attitudes

- Pressure for increased performance - Management skills

- Competition

In order to solve the problem of absenteeism, the driving forces should be strengthened, while resisting forces should be weakened. The recommended actions to achieve this are the following:

- By increasing the use of new technology, British Airways will be less dependent on their staff. Although this will not solve the problem of absenteeism, it will change the importance of it.

- Competition and pressure for increased performance will continue to strengthen as airlines go to new and innovative lengths in order to survive in the industry.

- To deal with employees attitudes, an incentives scheme will encourage staff to work harder and avoid absenting themselves. By keeping staff informed and making them feel included, employees will feel much more comfortable in a time with so many changes. Motivational courses can also help to keep up morale.

- Management skills can be changed from being a resisting force to a driving force by investing in more training for management into employee relations.

2.2 Union battle and McCalman & Paton's Tropics Factors
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British Airways are faced with the threat of a long fight with its unions as well as a possible expensive strike ahead as the organisation has cut thousands of jobs as a part of its restructuring programme.

By applying McCalman and Paton's Tropics Factors to this problem, the type of change situation faced can be identified, which guides the design, planning and implementation of any change:

As the illustration above shows, the problems British Airways have with its unions are soft problems or "messes" as the Open University has described it. Messes tend to be ...

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