Ethics of Singapore Airlines - Research Paper Example

Ethics of Singapore Airlines Abstract This paper attempts to explore whether Singapore Airlines, one of the most successful global airlines in the world, can be labelled as “ethical” and “socially responsible.” During the past few decades, the airline has made great strides for reducing its fuel consumption and carbon emissions and to protect the environment through Harpan initiative and others. The company has also made generous donations to various arts, sporting and educational activities. However, when compared with the social responsibility activities of other airlines considering their profitability, it appears that Singapore Airlines has been lagging behind. It appears that Singapore Airlines has been accused of some unethical practices. In 2010, the company pleaded guilty for a price fixing charge in front of the US Department of Justice and received a fine of 48 million US dollars. Airline’s portrayal of “Singaporean Girl” and recruitment practices are sexist and discriminatory. Furthermore, their promotion campaign asking customers to “fly with Singaporean Girl” contributes towards objectifying women and portrays the traditional stereotype of Asian women as submissive to males. Absence of whistle blowing practices and training also caused the company to suffer a scandal that involved an employee depriving the company of 35 million Singaporean dollars over a period of 13 years. Introduction It was on May 1, 1947 that Malayan Airways Limited (MAL) was incorporated, which would later undergo division into two separate entities of Singapore Airlines and Malaysian Airlines System. Singapore Airlines came into being in 1972, when political tensions and disagreements forced its parent company to divide the operations. More importantly, during the subsequent years, the airline quickly expanded its flights, networks, locations and routes. It emerged as one of the leading players in the global airline industry providing the best service quality to its customers. The Singaporean Girl became a symbol of care, concern, customer service, sophistication, excellent service quality allowing the airline to win a series of excellent cabin crew and service quality awards (Daft et al., 2010). This paper, however, is an attempt to explore whether Singaporean Airline is an ethical and socially responsible or not. In the process, the paper would present various examples and cases that would assist in making meaningful conclusions. Discussion Social Responsibility In order to save Harapan Rainforest, Indonesia, Singapore Airlines, in the fall of 2010, donated 3 million US dollars to the Harapan Rainforest initiative, which is looking after the restoration and conservation of the rainforest. These funds would be utilised towards creating a workforce which could prevent illegal logging of this low land rain forest, prevent damage from any fires and contribute to the animal species conservation programs. According to Singapore Airlines, these funds are just another manifestation of the fact that the company strongly believes in the restoration of forests since forests are the world’s chief carbon stores, in the absence of which climate change and global warming would become a graver issue than ever (Singaporean Airlines, 2012b). In an attempt to become a more ethical corporate citizen, Singapore Airlines has supported the arts community especially in Singapore and other parts of the world, through various generous donations. Some of these donations have gone to reputable arts societies of Singapore such as Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Dance Theatre, Singapore Lyric Opera, and Singapore Chinese Orchestra. Furthermore, Singapore Airlines also takes great pride in the fact that it has served as the leading sponsor of various high profile exhibitions at the National Museum of Singapore (Heracleous et al., 2006). The airline also received much credit for its research and development activities, which after a series of experimenting allowed the airlines to innovate a new method of taking off which saves more than 300 kg of fuel per flight, which is capable of emitting over 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide. Not only does this method not compromise the safety of operations, but it also remains in the strict limitations of noise limitations set on the Heathrow Airport. However, due to the technical reasons, these fuel efficient flights have only been restricted to the Heathrow Airport of London; the airline expects to expand the same to almost all flights (Singaporean Airlines, 2012b). Singapore Airlines also understands that its fleet is somewhat contributing to the overall carbon emissions in the world and in order to control the same, plans have already been put into place. Abiding by the guidelines set by the International Air Transport Association, the airline has placed three set of goals for future. First, during the period of 2009-2020, the airline would aim at achieving 1.5 percent average annual fuel efficiency so that a cap could be placed on the carbon emissions. Second, considering the fact that the airline would have hit a point of diminishing returns on the efficiency frontier, the airline would aim at keeping the carbon emission at the same level for 2020-2030. Third, the airline would then aim at achieving a reduction of more than 50 percent in the carbon emissions predicting that alternative energy sources and new technologies would assist in the same (Singaporean Airlines, 2012a). In 2010, the Finance Asia magazine rated the company as the “best company” in terms of its corporate social responsibility. Furthermore, in its industry, which is the global airline industry, according to the report from 2011, the airline has been ranked at the fifth place in terms of social responsibility. Furthermore, the airline has put programs in place, which allow its employees and workers to have paid vacations so that they could volunteer for social service programs. In addition, Singapore Airlines has also subsidised or waived off the entire fee for social workers, such as in the case when in 2008, social workers were travelling from Australia to Dhaka in order to prevent hearing loss in the textile factory workers in Bangladesh (Heracleous et al., 2006). Furthermore, in an attempt to give back to the local community, the efforts of Singapore Airlines also includes sponsoring sporting events that could help in further establishing its image as the hub of sports and entertainment in the region. The company has been providing sponsorship of over 3 million Singaporean Dollars to the annual horse racing events (Singaporean Airlines, 2012a). Based on the abovementioned activities and programs, one can infer that Singapore Airlines is somewhat socially responsible but when compared with other airlines in the global airline industry, it appears that Singapore Airlines is lagging behind. More importantly, statistics indicate that the company, except for once in 2009, has never posted a year-end loss since its inception in 1972. On the other hand, there is no other airline in the global industry that has not suffered series of losses due to immense competition, rivalry, increased bargaining power and saturating markets in their domestic markets. The fact is that when compared with other airlines, while keeping in mind the profitability, Singapore Airlines appears to be lagging far behind in terms of socially responsible activities. Consider the example of the innovative yet effective program designed by British Airways in collaboration with UNICEF, to sponsor many different ongoing projects, under the umbrella of “Change for Food” in the third world countries (Pangarkar, 2011). The campaign is simple. During every international flight, all the passengers, after telling them about the association of BA with UNICEF and Change for Food program, are asked to donate any leftover foreign currency that they possess from their travels. BA’s crew provides these passengers with envelopes so that they could discreetly make their donations. During the past 15 years of this campaign, BA has been able to generate more than 27 million Euros, which have been used in 58 different developing and underdeveloped countries. More importantly, many other airlines such as Delta Airways, American Airlines, Continental Airlines and others joined hands with UNICEF, following the model of British Airways; however, the list does not include Singapore Airlines. The point here is that one might not be able to question whether Singapore Airlines is socially responsible or not, but what remains open to debate is whether, as compared to other airlines which have not been so profitable as Singapore Airlines ,the company has focused enough on its corporate social responsibility activities (Temporal, 2011). Then again, there is the possibility that the western airlines, in an attempt to gain the maximum leverage out of their corporate social responsibility activities, may be placing greater importance on advertising and promoting their corporate social responsibility activities. On the other hand, Singapore Airlines, being an Asian airline, may be following values that force them to place more importance on engaging in socially responsible activities rather than advertising and promoting them (Pangarkar, 2011). Ethical Behaviour When it comes to ethical behaviour, for the past few decades, Singapore Airlines has received much criticism for its portrayal of “Singaporean Girl” as submissive, meek and obedient young girls that have further contributed to the general tendency of people and customers to objectify women. Many feminist and human rights groups in the West have expressed their concern of the marketing campaign of Singapore Airlines based on promoting “Singaporean Girls” (Chan, 2000). Furthermore, the process of selection and recruitment of flight attendants for Singaporean Airlines appears as highly discriminatory – something that airlines cannot even imagine in the western countries. Many of the promising applicants are rejected only because they do not meet the criteria for hair colour, age, eye color, height, voice, beauty, skin color and other physical characteristics. Moreover, when these “Singaporean Girls” exceed the limit of 27-28 years, they are highly likely to be placed in other operations of the airlines. Although, the recruitment drive has extended to other countries such as India, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea and others, the discriminatory practices still exist (Chan, 2000). Singapore Airlines and its representatives have reacted to the criticism by saying that much of this criticism stems from the failure of the western experts to understand the Asian culture. They believe that “Singaporean Girl” does not promote the submissive stereotype of Asian women, but it has became symbol or brand image in the same way in which Colonel is the brand face for KFC. Therefore, it is impossible for the airlines to change their promotion of Singaporean Girl because after years of campaigning and promotion, customers now associate service quality and customer case with the Singaporean Girl (Temporal, 2011). The ethical training programs conducted by Singapore Airlines have also come into question after Teo Cheng Kiat’s scandal of 2000 when it was revealed that Teo, who was in charge of processing cabin crew’s allowances, stole 35 million Singaporean dollars from the company over a period of 13 years. He would use names of cabin crew who were not on the flight to transfer money into his accounts, thus allowing them to live a high style of a millionaire. Although the company was not entirely at fault, since it was the company that was the victim in this case, it questions the ethical training, whistle blowing measures and internal audit system that the organisation had put into place. The US Department of Justice accused Singapore Airlines of price fixing for which the airline paid a sum of 48 million US dollars in 2010. Singapore Airlines pleaded guilty to the charge that meant that the airline was a part of a cartel in the United States to fix prices during 2002-2006 (Brundage, 2010). Conclusion It appears that Singapore Airlines has taken quite a few steps to associate the element of social responsibility with its brand image; however, the airline is lagging behind when one conducts a comparative analysis of Singapore Airlines with other global airlines. In addition, the fact that Singapore Airlines has remained extremely profitable since its inception further decreases the credibility of its limited actions towards being socially responsible. Nevertheless, discriminatory policies of Singapore Airlines and portrayal of “Singaporean Girl”, price fixing and absence of internal audit systems make it rather troublesome for observers to label the airlines as “ethical.” References Brundage, D. L. (2010). Singapore Airlines guilty in cargo price-fixing. The Journal of Commerce Online. Retrieved on March 16, 2012 from http://www.joc.com/air-expedited/singapore-airlines-cargo-plead-guilty-cartel-probe Chan, D. (2000). The story of Singapore Airlines and the Singapore Girl. Journal of Management Development, 19(6), 456-472. Daft, R. L., Murphy, J., & Willmott, H. (2010). Organization theory and design. Cengage Learning. Heracleous, L., Wirtz, J., & Pangarkar, N. (2006). Flying high in a competitive industry: Cost-effective service excellence at Singapore Airlines. Mc Graw Hill. Pangarkar, N. (2011). High performance companies: Successful strategies from the world's top achievers. John Wiley & Sons. Singaporean Airlines. (2012a). Singapore Airlines and corporate responsibility. Retrieved on March 16, 2012 from http://www.singaporeair.com/en_UK/about-us/sia-history/sia-csr/ Singaporean Airlines. (2012b). Our commitment to the environment. Retrieved on March 16, 2012 from http://www.singaporeair.com/en_UK/about-us/sia-history/sia-environment/ Temporal, P. (2011). Advanced brand management: Managing brands in a changing world. John Wiley and Sons. Read More