1.0 Introduction
The goal of this essay is to trace the strategic change and directions of the Virgin Atlantic. The Virgin Atlantic is one of the leading private enterprise in the UK. Its growth since inception, has been marked with fluctuating financial performance. In the last ten years however, the growth of the company has been inconsistence with the period between 2012 and 2015 experiencing poor financial performance (Hollinger and Wild, 2015). This led to strategic moves like restructuring and partnerships among others to re-position the company to increase sales and overall profits. The changes made were effective as the company began to register profits once again. To trace the strategic change and directions made by the Virgin Atlantic, …show more content…
Even though the US was the most affected by the recession, the ripple effects of the meltdown were experienced by airlines operating in the North America region – Virgin Atlantic being one of them. The airline suffered in terms of inflation and it became increasingly difficult to save cost. To eliminate redundancy, the airline’s management cut 600 jobs about 6.5% of its staff (Milmo, 2009). The recession decreased the number of air travel dramatically and the Virgin Atlantic had to respond by cutting cost using other measures such as freezing pay and issuing unpaid leave (Milmo, …show more content…
Since it is a large company with a wide geographic operations, it is composed of a divisional structure. Doyle and Bridgewater (2012) note that the airline has “loose organization combined with a high level dialogue and involvement” as well as “strong controls” (p. 64). This type of organisational structure translates to the management style practiced in the company, which is laissez-faire. According to Duncan and DePew (2010), the leader is passive and relies on the strengths of the personnel to meet loosely defined objectives. This means that the staff has full autonomy and no clear sense of direction. This type of organisational structure and leadership style has influenced the Virgin Atlantic negatively in some cases. For instance, the airline’s reservations and ticketing experienced problems that made it difficult for the users to access their flying club loyalty accounts (Caswell, 2016). Although the problem was caused by outage resulting from IT upgrades, the clients experienced delays. This shows that even though the divisions and staff have more freedom to utilize their skills, lack of proficiency by some personnel in some departments can cost the company financially and
The goal of this essay is to trace the strategic change and directions of the Virgin Atlantic. The Virgin Atlantic is one of the leading private enterprise in the UK. Its growth since inception, has been marked with fluctuating financial performance. In the last ten years however, the growth of the company has been inconsistence with the period between 2012 and 2015 experiencing poor financial performance (Hollinger and Wild, 2015). This led to strategic moves like restructuring and partnerships among others to re-position the company to increase sales and overall profits. The changes made were effective as the company began to register profits once again. To trace the strategic change and directions made by the Virgin Atlantic, …show more content…
Even though the US was the most affected by the recession, the ripple effects of the meltdown were experienced by airlines operating in the North America region – Virgin Atlantic being one of them. The airline suffered in terms of inflation and it became increasingly difficult to save cost. To eliminate redundancy, the airline’s management cut 600 jobs about 6.5% of its staff (Milmo, 2009). The recession decreased the number of air travel dramatically and the Virgin Atlantic had to respond by cutting cost using other measures such as freezing pay and issuing unpaid leave (Milmo, …show more content…
Since it is a large company with a wide geographic operations, it is composed of a divisional structure. Doyle and Bridgewater (2012) note that the airline has “loose organization combined with a high level dialogue and involvement” as well as “strong controls” (p. 64). This type of organisational structure translates to the management style practiced in the company, which is laissez-faire. According to Duncan and DePew (2010), the leader is passive and relies on the strengths of the personnel to meet loosely defined objectives. This means that the staff has full autonomy and no clear sense of direction. This type of organisational structure and leadership style has influenced the Virgin Atlantic negatively in some cases. For instance, the airline’s reservations and ticketing experienced problems that made it difficult for the users to access their flying club loyalty accounts (Caswell, 2016). Although the problem was caused by outage resulting from IT upgrades, the clients experienced delays. This shows that even though the divisions and staff have more freedom to utilize their skills, lack of proficiency by some personnel in some departments can cost the company financially and