Saudi Arabian Airlines the Airline

Saudi Arabian Airlines

The airline seems to be riddled with problems most of which the writers of the article attribute to the HR department, but it seems to me the problems are reducible to certain factors that figure throughout the industry.

The prime problems seems to be that the airline is constructed on relationship rather than merit and so you have people being employed and paid according to their connections with the royal family and with other powerful individuals rather than based on their particular deservance. Similar issues run throughout the company.

Working as a top-down company and with divisions closely associated with and in touch with each other, the company's interests are their own rather than reflective of the client making them supercilious, judgmental, and condescending to both underlings and customers. Customers' complaints may therefore be arbitrarily overlooked and their interests secondary to that of the airline (and reducibly the managers and chief employers themselves). The six topmost offices are the Internal Audit; DG Office; Public Affairs; Royal services; General Secretary of Board; and Chief Privatization Officer. Positions stream down from there.

Although the company recently articulated its objectives as endeavoring to become a 4-star company, internal, apparently insoluble, problems will inevitably impede it from becoming so. The writers of this article attribute most of these problems to the HR division.

In the HR Division, positions are attained and maintained on the basis of connections rather than merit. Many of the employees are academically, professionally and technically unsuitable for their positions. Services and procedures are corrupt, unwieldy, and officious as well as perpetrated unwillingly and condescendingly. Relationships between higher officials and their echelons are condescending and oftentimes unjust. Work morale is, consequently, low and staff turnover high. Naturally, effect streams out in all directions impacting both internal and external performance and results of the workplace. Problems include the following: Their website is poor; an overly large workforce (held due to connections rather than need) torpedoes procedures; for the same reason too many vice presidents (29) represent the company; there are too few aircraft with flight scheduling unable to meet passenger's demands even thoguh their passenger list has declined; customer response time is too long; and the economic operations of the company misused and misappropriated. Compounded to that is the fact that they follow a mix of regulations that allows them to arbitrarily select that which most suits them; plans for privatization have been frozen since 1999; and unsolved conflict regarding retirement policies had led to increased employee frustration towards the company.

In short, internal and external conflicts based on the overriding situation of employees chosen and regained by virtue of name rather than merit has led to decline of the organization and evidences itself in a persisting and enduring climate of internal and external conflict and ineffectiveness.

Constructing a Dispute Systems Design for Saudi Arabian airlines

The Ury et al. (1993) model presents six principles may enable us to partially address the situation:

1. Focus on interests

Both the company and their customers have their specific interests. A good way of arriving at negotiable solutions is structuring a win-win decision that leaves both sides satisfied. The process itself should be fluid and flexible, with the eye on the goal, and the goal primarily being focused on attempting to understand the perspective of the other. In this case it is harder to promote such a situation since retention of jobs depends on external non-meritorious decisions. In other words, in a situation where job retention hinges on deservence, the employee may wish to improve and upgrade his performance for fear of losing his job. Here it may be difficult to work towards meeting the client's interests when the employee knows that he will hold his job regardless. It is this particular certainty that underlies all internal and external injustices and follies ranging from demeanor to job perpetration to treatment of lay-employees. Knowing that one is accountable to none and that one possesses one's job regardless of performance and academic merit makes this a tricky situation. Ultimately, if the monarchy can be brought to recognize the disservice that such a method of hiring is doing to the country, only then can an equitable win-win situation be introduced and implemented.

2. Insert 'loop-backs' to negotiation

The airline may have certain ideas for working towards relations that will promote customer satisfactions as well as decreasing employee frustration. These ideas, for certain reasons, may fail. The airline should then have other proposals in their pipeline such as the possibility of introducing mediation or ADR for conflict-resolution situation between parties. Facilitated intervention may be another choice where a facilitator attempts to improve the communication between the two (or more) parties. Factual intervention may also help where impartial fact finders are called into the picture to gather the relevant facts in order to arbitrate the dispute. Advisory intervention is a higher-cost choice where the airline empowers one or more neutral people to issue an advisory judgment which parties, although not expected to take, are advised to listen to closely. Highest still is binding intervention or binding decision, where a neutral panel listens to the conflict before rendering a binding judgment.

3. Provide low-cost rights and power backups

What you have here may well be a battle of power-contests between two parties both of whom have power. The airline in general and the HR division in particular is in a certain position of power by virtue of the fact that they owe their positions to the royal court. The customers, on the other hand, are the ones who choose whether or not the airline may continue to exist. Possibly, allocating more overt power to the customers such as the ability to protest, to take their claims to higher realms (such as to Royalty itself), or to freely voice their protests on a public forum (such as the media) may diffuse some of this conflictual situation. Arbitration and mediation are other opportunities that permit low-cost venting of frustration.

The company can act likewise with its employees particularly those who are disgruntled with lumbering retirement polices and bitter with their officious and condescending as well as unjust treatment. By structuring an organ of availability for complaints, some of the hostility and acrimony in the internal environment may be diffused.

4. Introduce consultation beforehand and feedback following

The essential key here is listening. The airline executives are recommended to meet with both customers, on the one hand, and with officials from the HR department on the other to honestly and openly discuss the issues and to carefully listen not only to words but also to feelings, emotions and thinking processes behind words. They are recommended to listen empathically and non-judgmentally, attempting to understand the conflict from the other's perspective.

5. Arrange procedures in a low to high-cost sequence

All cases that deal with conflicts such as dispute resolutions systems commence in an incremental manner beginning at a low-cost level and attempting to be as least adversarial as possible. In this case, too, the airline would first try to solve the problem in a low, inconspicuous manner, perhaps by first approaching officials of the royal courts and carefully demonstrating that problems of declension of airline are related to particular hiring procedures. If this doesn't help, the airline may then be compelled to turn to other solutions that may need to involve more costly and aggravating procedures. On the whole, however, the least costly and aggravating the methods employed the more effective the results. Similar techniques can be used in their approach with the customers.