Up in the Air: How Airlines Can Improve Performance by Engaging Their Employees

Preface

We hope that this book will make a contribution to practice as well as to scholarship. The book was made possible by the international research network of the Labor and Employment Relations Association’s Airline Industry Council, and in particular by an excellent group of academic colleagues from around the world. We draw on the work of many of them in the book including Michael Barry, Phil Beaumont, Seong-Jae Cho, Geraint Harvey, Laurie Hunter, Byung-Sik Kang, Nancy Brown Johnson, Russell Lansbury, Byoung-Hoon Lee, Robert McKersie, Werner Nienhueser, Sarah Oxenbridge , Judy Pate, Teresa Shuk-Ching Poon, Daphne Taras, Siobhan Tiernan , Peter Turnbull, Joe Wallace, Peter Waring, Lorraine White, Clare Yazbeck , and their colleagues. A series of articles from this network will be published in the International Journal of Human Resource Management in 2009. We are grateful to the practitioners of the Airline Industry Council who have provided data for and feedback on our work including Phillip Comstock , Robert DeLucia, Pat Friend, Jerry Glass, Arthur Luby, Bernhard Rikardsen, Seth Rosen, and Steve Sleigh. We are also grateful to our colleagues in the MIT Global Airline Industry Program including Arnold Barnett , Cynthia Barnhart, Peter Belobaba, John Hansman, James Lee, Amedeo Odoni, Bill Swelbar, and Gerry Tsoukalis who provided data, analysis, insights , and feedback on our ideas. Preface x Preface Several of those mentioned in this preface made helpful comments on the manuscript, as did Peter Cappelli, Stephen Goldberg, Bruce Highfield, Wayne Horvitz, and Terry O’Connell. Jacalyn Martelli provided expert help in keeping track of the innumerable drafts of chapters, assembling them into a single text (several times), formatting charts and tables, and coordinating schedules between several countries. In addition, we thank a range of people who contributed in various ways including Tim Bamber, Colleen Barrett, Jeff Brundage, Mark Burdette, Mike Campbell, Martin Daley, Sharon Ford, Rohan Garnet, Ian Glendon, Al Hemenway, Steve Hill, Julian Howe, Alan Joyce, Thom McDaniel, Ian McLoughlin, Toby Nicol, James Parker, Kate Rainthorpe, Ryan Shields, Steven Sun, Donna Towle, Gerry Turner, Adrian Wilkinson, and Jim Wimberly. We also thank the various other managers, union officials, academics, and others who have shared their views with us. Please forgive us if we have not mentioned your name. There are too many people to name personally and some spoke with us on an anonymous basis. Our research was facilitated by funding from several sources including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the MIT Global Airline Industry Program, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the U.S. Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. For permission to reproduce or reinterpret data or illustrations, we acknowledge Rigas Doganis (figure 3.1), Personnel Today (“British Airways: Examples of Adversarial Employment-Relations Episodes” in chapter 3), and the International Civil Aviation Organisation via Flight Global (many of the tables in chapter 4). We very much appreciate the guidance and professionalism of Cornell University Press, a leading publisher in our field. Those who have helped us include Fran Benson, Mary-Anne Gilbert, John Raymond, Susan Specter, and their colleagues. Our good friend and colleague Magdalena Jacobson, former chair of the National Mediation Board and past president of the Industrial Relations Research Association, lost her battle with cancer as we were completing this book. Maggie was a source of inspiration. She put to work principles of our profession that we hold dear: a dedication to public service; an integrity that earned the trust and respect of labor, management, and academic professionals ; and a determination to make a difference in people’s lives that rubbed Preface xi off on anyone lucky enough to work with her. We hope that soon we will see a return of the caliber and style of leadership she brought to the airline industry and to the national administration of U.S. labor and employment policies. Our greatest debt is to our families, who have given us their generous support, as usual, while we worked on this book. May 2008 UpintheAir ...