Air Canada - Case Study Example

Air Canada is the prime airline in Canada. It was founded in the year 1936 and it currently has 178 destinations globally. Montreal, Quebec is the airline’s corporate headquarters. Judging by its number of destinations, Air Canada comes up as the tenth-largest passenger airline worldwide. Just in the year 2011 alone, it had a total of CA$10.2 billion from passenger revenue only. This case study tries to examine the effect of political influence on the airline and hence provide solutions or advice to the various conflicts.

There are two perspectives to demonstrate the political influence. One of the ways shows that a section of politicians preferred to support the management in order to prevent the control of the actions of the workers (Organization behavior). Another level of influence suggests that the political order was largely conditioned by the desire of the politicians to protect the interests of the workers from the bad policies of the political establishment. In 2011, there was a conflict between the union and the management and the union members against the government. The best solution was to hold negotiations and identify the root cause of the conflict hence addressing the issue comprehensively.

In the new labor agreement negotiations, there were negotiation errors made by Air Canada Management that can be explained in terms of its omission of specific matters that touched on the welfare of the flight attendants. The management did not directly address the concerns of the flight attendants with regard to pensions and compensations. The conflict that ensued was mainly caused by the rigidness of the parties involved. In this particular negotiation, the management should have demonstrated their willingness to create better standards for their attendants and incorporate the aspect of motivation and trust. In any negotiation, success or failure is determined by how the parties involved in the conflicts balance their priorities in line with the situation at hand (Berkowitz). Case analyses have shown that the use of legal or structural coercion to force certain objectives is not sustainable and usually heightens the levels of conflict.