ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study thesis was to assist air Malawi to develop a more strategic and sus-tainable airline by investigating what other case company Finnair and Air Malawi operations. The study objective is to explore and understand the strategies that Air Malawi and Finnair operate in their business and what has developed and how the airline implement and its sus-tainable practices in terms of economic, social and environmental aspects. There has been a major decline of the national airline industry in Malawi and this thesis seeks to explore and get understanding of airline industry in Malawi and its challenges and what could be devel-oped for the industry to rejuvenate in a sustainable manner. The study will bring about litera-ture review with key concepts in strategy development, sustainability and understanding of the airline industry operations mainly for national airlines.
The thesis was conducted through semi structured interview with Finnair and Air Malawi with focus to the airlines strategies and sustainability practices. The study will narrow the re-search in focusing on case studies on international level with Finnair to explore their strate-gies, operations and sustainable practices implemented to make the industry successful then later the study will focus on Air Malawi operations from current situations and challenges and what can be learned from Finn air in order to develop the industry in a more sustainable manner. The conclusion will bring about the findings of the literature review and how that was implemented in the case study companies in order to give an understanding to the hy-pothesis question in the study.
The research results showed differences and similarities between the case companies and with focus for the main case company to learn from the other company in its operations to develop. The main case study should revise its strategies and measure in order to see if they have been effective with new strategies and how to develop their business model into more sustainable way. There is need to do more research in the area of study by incorporating gov-ernment role in airline development.
Key words: Strategic Development, Sustainability, Airline industry, Finnair, Air Malawi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Introduction
1.1 Research Question and Objective
1.2 Research Structure
2 Literature Review
2.1 Strategic Development
2.1.1 Strategy
2.2 Sustainability
2.2.1 Definition
2.2.2 Environmental Sustainability
2.2.3 Social Sustainability
2.2.4 Economic Sustainability
2.3 Airline Industry
2.3.1 Regulations and Deregulation
2.4 Finnair: Strategic Development and Sustainability
2.4.1 History of Finnair
2.4.2 Finnair Current Operations
2.4.3 Finnair Strategies
2.4.4 Finnair Sustainability
3 Case Study Air Malawi: Strategic Development and Sustainability
3.1.1 Brief Description of Malawi
3.1.2 History of Air Malawi
3.1.3 Air Malawi Current Operations
3.1.4 Air Malawi Strategies
SWOT Analysis
3.1.5 Air Malawi Sustainability
4 Research Methodology
4.1 Interview
4.2 Reliability and Validity
5 Results of Interview
6 Conclusions
List of References
Figures
Tables
Appendices
1 Introduction
Air Transportation as a means of moving passengers and freight has gained an important place worldwide (Sweet 2009, 2). Airline industry in Malawi is the main reliable mode of transporta-tion to the country due to its geographical position being a landlocked country. Air Malawi as national carrier for the country, the airline has undergone major challenges in its operations and since nowadays, airline business practices are more focused in being sustainable for the growth and for future existence. Airline industry in that matter has major issues on how sus-tainable it is due to the carbon emission. Airline industry in less developed countries like Af-rica, the area of sustainability can be critical and difficult to investigate.
Tourism growth in Malawi depends mainly on Airline industry due to its geographical position as a landlocked country. Air Malawi is the only national carrier which cooperates with regional airlines like South Africa, Kenya airways and Ethiopian Airlines. The regional airlines are all part of global alliances and Air Malawi is not, this also makes it a challenge for visibility and development of the airline, strategies used to operate the airline are unknown and sustaina-bility practices are unclear. Air Travel plays vital role but with climate change and environ-mental responsibility. Aviation industry directly attribute to the greenhouse gas emissions (Finnair 2012, 16).
The significant area of the research is to strategically develop a sustainable national airline Air Malawi in order to have increase in tourists’ arrival with easy accessibility to Malawi as well as the economic benefit for the country. The aim would be to discover how to reduce the challenges and develop new strategies that would bring growth to the industry and also employment to the society. Africa is the region most in need of improvement, and aviation safety work on the continent typifies industry efforts on the global stage. Although Africa continues to post the worst safety statistics, 2011 saw a 56% improvement in the region over the previous year (IATA 2012, 23).Air Malawi has major problems with maintenance for its air crafts which has led to cancellation of flights on which the carrier had to charter other air-lines to fly their passengers. The airline is owned by government which is also a challenge to make decisions more efficient and effective.
1.1 Research Question and Objective
Strategic development with focus on sustainability for any organization especially airline in-dustry is vital for success and growth, and this study has been the focus for this study. The study objective is to explore and understand the strategies the airline develops and how it
The research questions are as follows:
O What strategic developments does Air Malawi and Finnair take into account in their
business?
O What sustainable practices is Air Malawi implementing in comparison to Finnair? O What are similarities and difference between Finnair and Air Malawi operations, in
strategic development and sustainability?
The research questions defined the literature approach which brought the outline which will focus on the case companies. The research question one will look into the theory through books and articles to understand definitions and theories in strategy and strategic develop-ment, sustainability and airline industry. Then the research question how will have focus on strategic operations and sustainability practices in airline industry mainly with case study fo-cus Air Malawi and Finnair. Later the last question will be based exploring similarities and dif-ferences between case companies in order to give the researcher concrete understanding of the overall of the thesis study.
1.2 Research Structure
The research study consists of firstly introduction, literature review, case study, Methodolo-gy, results, conclusions and recommendation. The introduction of the topic will give the reader an understand overview of airline industry and what is going on with strategies and sustainability practices. The Literature review helps the author to understand terms and defi-nitions related to the thesis topic which would help the author to have a better view of the study, different books and articles to make comparison for reliability. The study narrowed and focus more on case company on which the author wishes to make comparison with main case study, Air Malawi in order to examine the operations which these companies encounter. Qualitative method helped the author to gather and analyze data to write the study, and methods used were interviews from case companies. The research results will present the findings after analyzing all data corrected from literature review and case study to find simi-larities and differences. Conclusions this involves the final summary of the study and recom-mendations will include thoughts and developments from authors point of view.
2 Literature Review
This study has used literature review in order to enable the reader to have an easy access to a specific topic in the research which mainly focuses on strategic development, sustainability and airline industry by using books and articles which are relevant and valid for the research topic in order to assist author in summarizing the study. The use of literature has helped the...
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Item Type: Project Material | Size: 35 pages | Chapters: 1-5
Format: MS Word | Delivery: Within 30Mins.
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