Organisational Change in Aviation Organisation - Literature review Example

ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE IN AVIATION ORGANISATION By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Table of Contents ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE IN AVIATION ORGANISATION 1 Table of Contents 2 1.0 Introduction 3 2.0 Change Overview 4 3.0 Motivating Change 5 3.1 Creating Change Readiness 5 3.2 Overcoming Change Resistance 6 4.0 Evaluating the Power of Change Agent 7 4.1 Managing Transition 8 5.0 Providing Change Resources and Developing New Skills 9 6.0 Human factors practitioners as change agents 10 6.1 Implication of future human factors change agent 12 7.0 Conclusion 14 8.0 References 15 Organisational Change in Aviation Organisation 1.0 Introduction Scores of organisations in aviation industry experience continuous pressure to change so as to achieve their organizational goals in the ever-changing market place.  Aviation industry is experiencing more and more change and there is pressure for and staff reductions as well as organisational change. Basically, organisational changes like outsourcing or making use of contractors, reducing levels of staffing, changing roles and responsibilities, or combining departments are normally not examined and managed as comprehensively as process changes. These changes may, if poorly implemented or conceived, have a harmful impact on safety (Dawson, 2010, p.13).  Even slight organizational changes can have noteworthy effects on hazards management. Continuous or rapid change can as well have a harmful effect on health in addition to inadequately handled organisational change may heighten the employees’ stress experience. The issues of changes in organization are the basis of organisational competitiveness, development, functioning, and, still, effectiveness (Cummings & Worley, 2009). The manner in which workers in aviation industry are motivated, promoted and managed at workplaces has turn out to be a crucial key to evaluate and improve organisational marketability and efficiency, and this as a result has became a element of the broad organisational strategy. The aviation industry has been competitive and ever-changing; therefore, the research paper seeks to evaluate a change that has occurred in Southwest Airlines, and later discusses the implication of human factors change agent in the future. 2.0 Change Overview Southwest Airlines is a chief airline carrier in aviation industry situated in Texas, U.S., and focuses on short haul flights across the country. At present they operate more than 737 aircraft and 500 Boeing in almost 70 U.S. cities and seen as one of the U.S. biggest airliners anchored in domestic passengers. As of 2009, the company has been producing profit for 37 consecutive years, and this success is attributed by information technology. For some years, the airliner was left behind in terms of technology by other major carriers, and so operations at the company were turning out to be more multifaceted. Therefore, the airliner had to increase their technological state to continue being profitable. CEO Gary Kelly together with CIO Tom Nealon came to realize that technology was required if they had to advance their core operations. It became clear that Southwest Airlines technology was lagging behind, and even though, the management saw no need to catch up, they comprehended the significance of changing their business processes for effectiveness (Kontzer, 2005). To enable this, the airliner implemented numerous changes such as improving the relationships at front end customer, improving maintenance personnel kiosks, as well as automating processes whilst maintaining the touch of the customer. In this case both CEO (Gary Kelly) as well as CIO (Tom Nealon) remained in the front line to bring success at the airliner, and the changes were successful. Considering that southwest Airlines sustained profits in addition to its maintained simple approach is an apparent sign of their achievement at making business processes better while improving the customer relationships. 3.0 Motivating Change Arguably, motivating change is a crucial factor in development of any aviation organization, and change is continuous in success of these organizations. The economy, trends, needs of the customer, and markets are all factors that impact the organization, and also are factors that continuously change. Consequently, companies that are unable to change, become unsuccessful, and the change brings uncertainty. As a consequence of uncertainty, Cummings and Worley (2009, p.165) posits that members of the organization are time and again unwilling to change except if there are good reasons backing the change. Because of this, change is motivated through: creating change readiness as well as prevailing over change resistance. 3.1 Creating Change Readiness In this regard, Cummings and Worley (2009, p.166) posits that there are three techniques that may motivate change: first, organization’s sensitization to change pressures, where external or internal pressure brings a change cause in the organization. This can be attributed by international competition or poor service/products, but still, organizations must foremost understand the issue. The second technique is finding out inconsistency between the desired and current state considering that huge discrepancy in organizational desired state and current state may motivate change. The third technique is to put across positive change expectations and can occur when organizational members have anticipations on how the organization ought to be. So when the organization fails to meet such expectations, change motivation could crop up (Cummings & Worley, 2009, p.166). In Southwest airlines case, they utilised the second technique, which is discovering inconsistencies between the desired and current state considering that Southwest Airlines was dissimilar as compared to the its major competitors because of technology. Whereas a number of airlines utilised programs like Sabre Global Distribution System (GDS), Southwest decided to make use of this program, just as an autonomous program and just for distributing their product through the internet, writes Kontzer (2005). This proves that the program only enabled purchase of plane ticket through the company’s website. Even though, this was a strategy implemented by the airliner to save cost, they still lagged behind technologically as compared to other carriers. Furthermore, as mentioned by Kontzer (2005), their kiosks offered little service to passengers; considering that their aircraft were not automated so aircrafts used more time out of service. So the company’s propriety database required quick enhancement. Evidently, this confirms an inconsistency between their desired state and their current state. So in their current state, the airliner was profitable but so as to remain profitable they had to spend on technology so as to achieve their desired state (advancing their core operations). 3.2 Overcoming Change Resistance According to Dawson (2010, p.15), the key sources that resistance may derive from on an organizational level include: cultural resistance, technical resistance, as well as political resistance. Cultural resistance occurs when people believe things should be done in a certain way and not the current way while technical resistance crops up from consistently pursuing similar procedures and considering the invested in the state of affairs (Cummings & Worley, 2009, p.167). On the other hand, political resistance occurs when changes have an effect on stakeholders’ power. The resistance to change can be combated through: support and empathy. Aviation organizations should understand that empathy and support is important since it enable the leader to understand the reason of resisting to change. Another method to overcome resistance is through communication considering that effective communication may reduce rumors and gossips concerning the organizational change. Through communication, leaders can get rid of uncertainty which results in resistance. Another method is involvement and participation, and it occurs when organizational members are directly involved in the planning process as well as change implementation. Aviation organizations should understand that the more involved organizational members are in the change process then resist to the change will less likely happen. Even though, Southwest Airline fails to clearly point out how it overcame resistances of its employee to their implemented changes, the airliner has a rigid internal communication policy. 4.0 Evaluating the Power of Change Agent Evaluating the Power of Change Agent is assessing the leader who is responsible for change or the department experiencing the power of change. By comprehending the power of change agent, agents of change can comprehend their power as well as how to make use of that power to influence workers in their organization. According to Cummings and Worley (2009, p.166), leaders with a strong charisma as well as reputation may produce lots of power in the organization. At Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher the former CEO, founder, and Executive Chairman is a good example of a change agent. Herb Kelleher is well-known for his humor, business acumen, as well as his stupendous repute in the transportation industry. In that case, Herb Kelleher played a crucial role in influencing change at Southwest Airlines. From time to time change may bring about stress on the change agent, and to make change possible they must be there emotionally for others whilst not getting any support reciprocally. For a number of change agents there could be a necessity to create a support system, and they may be outside consultants or trusted colleagues. At Southwest Airlines when making changes CEO and CIO benefited from this form of support network. Considering that the organization was so technological backwards, resistance to change was imminent, but thanks to the network that was objective and listened to individual ideas, the company managed to go through the difficult situations that arose. 4.1 Managing Transition Change does not occur promptly, and so aviation organizations must make allowances for change transitional period to have effect. Basically, there activities that aviation organizations may utilize to facilitate change include: commitment planning, activity planning as well as change management structures. In this regard, activity planning is akin to a plan on how to realize organizational goals as well as get to the desired change. Activity planning must recognize tasks as well as connect those tasks with priorities and goals of organizational change (Cummings & Worley, 2009, p.167). Goals of Southwest Airlines were to enhance customer relationships as well as automate their processes, and so they recognized the desire to improve functionality of customer kiosks, bring up to date the check-in system, expand database for customer proprietary, as well as ameliorate maintenance kiosks. All the above mentioned goals will generally improve the experience of the customer, but to put into practice these activities, Southwest had to create midpoint goals to ease achievement of the end goal. Commitment planning basically is identifying stakeholders whose dedication is required to make the change take place. A good example of commitment planning at Southwest Airlines is CIO Tom Nealon desiring to improve maintenance kiosks, and prior to making this change; he required commitments from the airliner CEO as well as the front line management involved in putting these changes into practice. During organizational change it is occasionally crucial to allocate a structure to make easy change like putting a particular leader in control of change management. In Southwest Airlines case, the CEO and CIO Nealon were the change agents in their effort to enhance and improve their core operations. 5.0 Providing Change Resources and Developing New Skills Organizational change always needs more resources like additional human capital or finances, and consultations, training, meetings, as well as collection of data is time and again required during organizational change. In Southwest Airlines case, this was a challenge when making effort to perform the required improvements. CIO Tom Nealon made it known that even though they desired to better their services the airliner would not splurge on technology investment. Nealon had pointed out that their budget was anchored just in a particular flat percentage of their revenue, and this form of attitude could have hampered change from occurring. Devoid of finances invested, there could be small or no room for making improvement; thus, Southwest Airliners had to consider distributing funds purposely for allowing the desired changes to occur. Changes in organization can members of the organization to quire the needed competencies as well as skills so as to manage the new changes. For that reason, new resources as well as training must be offered to workers. Regrettably, Southwest Airlines highlighted the changes they desired to make, but failed to highlight the training programs they would put into action with such new changes. In this case, Southwest should have implemented training on novel systems prior to the enforcement of the changes. For example, the airliner desired to implement new check in system, and also planned on installing more features like security watch lists access as well as reducing the check-in and ticketing time. Therefore, prior to implementing these changes, Southwest should have trained their agents how to run the new system ahead of its espousal. In so doing, it could have been easier to identify any bugs in the system as well as improve efficiency. According to Dawson (2010, p.17), it takes time for the implemented changes to be effective, and repeatedly change may be unsuccessful because of management speeding up to implement a different change or management being unsuccessful in predicting workers’ poor performance, low satisfaction or productivity. Whatsoever the case, aviation organization management must be cautious in investing their time, money and training to put into practice a thriving organizational change. Today, Southwest Airlines have succeeded to successively record profits every year whereas its competitors have been unsuccessful in this. This connotes that Southwest Airlines is an aviation organization that discerns how to successfully put into practice change in their organization. 6.0 Human factors practitioners as change agents According to Bao and Ding (2014, p.294), the organizational role in human factors has recently turned out to be vital as it is currently apparent that in case of any accident, people are no longer to be blamed alone but also the system. To avoid ill-fated accidents as well as future improvement, Southwest Airlines had to cautiously study the organizational factors. It is important to recognise that akin to health, safety has two faces (positive and negative). Near misses and accidents are the negative side manifestations, and they show the vulnerability of the organisation. The positive face is associated with the intrinsic resistance of the system to accident-generating events related to day after day activities. Basically, the responsibility of the human factors practitioner is to aid the aviation organisation to increase its resistance to events that produce accidents. Importantly, the a human factors practitioner role is to make change possible in the whole organisation, groups as well as individuals so as to facilitate the organisation to succeed in developing resistance to hazards (Graeber, 2013). To achieve this, Southwest Airlines will have to build up the change agent skills including the skills of a consultant. Successful change agents work at the crossroads of different attributes of life in the organisation; that is between the organisation and the individual, between the group and the individual, between the organisation and the group as well as also between the organisation and its surroundings. Human error is mentioned as the key contributory factor in nearly all aviation accidents, as well as the 15 to 20 percent involving maintenance error. Basically, errors may be defined as active malfunctions that directly result in the accident, as well as latent malfunctions whose existence rouses the active malfunction (Drury, 2000, p.1). To reduce error, Southwest Airlines have to develop human factors tools in assisting in comprehending why the errors crop up and develop recommendations for tactical improvements. To prevent human or maintenance errors in the future, Southwest Airlines must identify the causal factors and use tools such as Procedural Event Analysis Tool (PEAT) or Maintenance Error Decision Aid (MEDA) to eliminate them. In this case, PEAT is an analytic tool developed to assist the airline industry successfully handles the risks related to procedural deviations performed by the flight crew (Graeber, 2013). PEAT presumes that member of flight crew did not follow the procedure for a number of reasons or an error was made unintentional. Rooted in this supposition, the flight crew is interviewed by a skilled investigator so as to gather comprehensive information concerning the procedural deviation as well as the causal factors related to it. This comprehensive information is afterward amassed in the database for additional analysis. PEAT is arguably the foremost aviation industry tool to concentrate on procedurally associated accident investigations in a structured as well as consistent manner in order to develop effective remedies. The other tool (MEDA), started as an effort for gathering data concerning maintenance errors, and with time it became a project to offer maintenance organizations like Boeing with a process that is standardized for examining causal factors to errors as well as developing feasible remedial actions. MEDA is designed for helping airlines change from faulting maintenance workforce for creating errors to tactically assessing and gaining knowledge of causal causes (Graeber, 2013). These tools are essential for Southwest Airlines during the change process, since it will not just help it overcome human and maintenance errors, but also help in improving service delivery to the customers; thus, increasing profitability. 6.1 Implication of future human factors change agent Air traffic control automation technology will in future progressively advance in terms of sophistication as well as complexity. Methods for control and measurement, failure diagnosis as well as detection, weather prediction, display technology, voice and data communication, expert systems, and multi-trajectory optimization will all in the future improve. Such advances in technology will make rational the possibility of innovative changes in the data quality as well as the aids accessible to the controller of air traffic. The new generation of automated tools will help and may perhaps substitute the controller's planning and decision-making activities. Even though such technological developments remain so be notable, there is as well little uncertainty that automation is a long way from doing the entire work of air traffic control, particularly in detecting system failure and offering solution to overcome that failure (Graeber, 2013; Drury, 2000, p.2). Still, the technologies will be partly limited in their abilities, for the reason that the core paradigms of the processes of decision-making will be oversimplified. It will be improbable that the technical elements of any multifaceted system can be created in a way that protects them from failing. In this case, the human factor is viewed as a crucial component in the system for monitoring the automation, to serve as supervisory controller for subordinate subsystems, as well as to be able to intervene in case of the automation failure. Human factors change agents are believed to be more adaptable, flexible, as well as innovative as compared to automation and as a consequence in good position to respond to unpredictable and changing circumstances. Considering that no automation technology can envision all possibilities in a multifaceted setting like aviation industry. For Southwest Airlines, a sound aircraft maintenance as well as inspection system is vital so as to offer the customers with a long-lasting reliable, safe system for air transportation. This as per Graeber (2013) is a multifaceted system with scores of interconnected machine and human factors; however, its key player is the human factor. In future, cooperation amongst human factors practitioners, engineers for data link communications, as well as customers will lead to considerable changes in the interfaces design that controllers as well as flight crews have with the systems supporting their tasks as well as in the operational utilisation of messages in the data link (Drury, 2000, p.3). These changes will improve user knowledge, reduce rates of error, as well as lead to reduced need for training. 7.0 Conclusion In conclusion, it has been argued that failure in following procedures is not rare in accidents and incidents associated with both maintenance procedures and flight operations. Still, the aviation industry is short of insight into the causal factors of these errors. Thus far, the aviation industry has failed to espouse consistent and systematic tool for investigating these incidents. Given that complete safety is not viable practically in aviation industry, the change agent is required to offer the connection between diverse groups, that is to say the organization, the group, the individual, as well as the operating environment to reduce hazards and offer safety. With regard to rapidly changing aviation environment and increasing market competiveness, contemporary aviation organizations such as Southwest Airlines progressively must depend more on their motivated and skilled workforce as compared to relying only on products and pure technologies; thus, it can be achieved through organizational change. 8.0 References Course Readings: AVA80007_part_1_Mods_1-4_2014.pdf AVA80007_part_2_Mods_5-8_2014.pdf AVA80007_part_3_Mods_9-13_2014.pdf Bao, M. & Ding, S., 2014. Individual-related Factors and Management-related Factors in Aviation Maintenance. Procedia Engineering, vol. 80, pp.293-302. Cummings, T.G. & Worley, C.G., 2009. Organizational Development & Change. 9th ed. Ohio: Cengage Learning. Dawson, C., 2010. Leading Culture Change: What Every CEO Needs to Know. St. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Drury, C.G., 2000. Human Factors in Aircraft Maintenance. Buffalo, NY: Department of Industrial Engineering State University of New York. Graeber, C., 2013. Human Factors. [Online] Available at: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_08/human_textonly.html [Accessed 24 October 2014]. Kontzer, T., 2005. Wings Of Change. [Online] Available at: http://www.informationweek.com/wings-of-change/d/d-id/1031367?page_number=1 [Accessed 24 October 2014]. Read More