Air Asia Cultural behaviour. We want to find out what makes Air Asia so successful over these 10 years, what is the drive behind the organisation?

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Introduction of Air Asia

Air Asia is a second Malaysian National Airline which provides a totally different type of service in line with the nation's aspirations to benefit all citizens and worldwide travellers.  Such service takes the form of a no frills - low airfares flight offering, 40%-60% lower than what is currently offered in this part of Asia.  Their vision is "Now Everyone Can Fly" and their mission is to provide 'Affordable Airfares' without any compromise to Flight Safety Standards (Air Asia, 2010).

The owner Tony Fernandes bought Air Asia from Malaysian government owned company in September 2001 for a cost of 1 Malaysia Ringgit. Air Asia was heavily indebted at the time and Tony Fernandes set about reforming the airline as a short haul low cost carrier, similar to those operating in the West at that time. The decision changed short haul flights around Asia and Tony Fernandes saw his business expand rapidly. The company grew from initial two planes in 2002 after its takeover to a fleet of 86 aircraft flying 30 million people around the world.

Today, Air Asia has flown over 30 million guests across the region and continues to create more extensive route network through its associate companies. Air Asia believes in the no frills, hassle free, low fare business concept and feels that keeping costs low requires high efficiency in every part of the business. Through the corporate philosophy of “Now Everyone Can Fly”, Air Asia has sparked a revolution in air travel with more and more people around the region choosing Air Asia as their preferred choice of transport.

Central Issue

We want to find out what makes Air Asia so successful over these 10 years, what is the drive behind the organisation, is it because of the influence of Tony Fernandes, the working culture of the environment he created, the motivation that he gave to his staff? So I will be using Johnson and Scholes Cultural web to identify how Tony Fernandes as a CEO influence the whole organisation of Air Asia culture and its operation in various ways.

The Cultural Web consists of the Paradigm which can be identify as the pattern or model that make up of the six interrelated elements of the work environment (Manktelow). By analyzing the factors in each of the elements, we can see the bigger picture of Air Asia culture and find out what is working, what isn’t working, and what needs to be change. We will understand better as to how the Paradigm influences the 6 elements are structured. The 6 elements are represented graphically as 6 semi overlapping circles which can be influencing the Paradigm but in our case it is influenced by the Paradigm.

Cultural Web Framework

Here we take a look at the 6 element of the framework.

Stories – The past events and people talked about inside and outside the company. Who and what the company chooses to immortalize says a great deal about what it values, and perceives as great behaviour (Johnson, 1997).

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(Ionides, 2004) in the interview with Tony Fernandes, he mentioned when he first started the low fare airline in 2001 people were saying that it would not succeed in Asia region, “everyone thought we were crazy but I knew it would work” say Tony Fernandes, his positive attitude of serving the people with his vision of "Now Everyone Can Fly" and the concept of no frills, low budget and hassle free has succeed, he paid off the initial debt of 30 million ringgit within a few months.

At time Tony Fernandes will get some days to do ...

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