تاثیر اداره شرکت بر عملکرد خطوط هوایی: دیدگاه های بهره وری بازاریابی و تولید

This study explores the relationship between operating performance and corporate governance in 30 airline companies operating in the US. First, this study applies a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to evaluate the production efficiency and marketing efficiency of the airlines. Our findings indicate that, in general, there is not as much dispersion in the relative productive efficiencies of the airlines as there is in their marketing efficiencies. The low-cost airlines, on average, are more efficient carriers than the full-service ones, but less efficient marketers. Secondly, truncated regression is used to explore whether the characteristics of corporate governance affect airline performance. The results demonstrate that corporate governance influences firm performance significantly. Finally, we address the managerial decision-making matrix and make suggestions to help airline managers improve performance

Since the United Stated Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, the air transport market has seen significant changes. This Open Skies policy allowed low-cost carriers (LCCs) to enter the air transport market. LCCs use a simple type of aircraft, secondary airports and simplified routes to reduce their operating costs, which can provide lower fares to the customers. The rapid expansion of LCCs has caused traditional airlines to confront fierce competition. Rising labor costs and volatile fuel prices impact all airlines. Competition in the airline industry is at an all-time high, challenging providers to reduce costs while improving quality. In this environment, the ability to attract new customers while retaining existing ones through superior customer service is not only a key competitive differentiator, but a necessity. Obstacles met in the search for flight information can diminish customers’ perception of an airline’s capability, decrease the opportunity for future revenue, and open the door for other carriers to win their business. In today’s highly competitive markets, airlines are deploying a range of innovations in customer service and support to improve operating performance. The focus has moved from attempts to characterize performance in terms of a simple indicator, e.g., revenues, to a multi-dimensional systems perspective. The DEA is a linear programming based technique that conerts multiple output and input measures into a single comprehensive measure of performance. This is attained by the construction of an empirical-based production or resource conversion frontier, and by the identification of peer groups. The philosophy behind DEA is predicated on the fact that a frontier transformation function empirically captures the underlying process defining firms’ production activities. The application of DEA is strongly supported in the multitude of empirical analysis methods in different fields of profit (Seiford, 1997; Zhu, 2003; Gattoufi et al., 2004; Cooper et al., 2006). Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has also been widely applied in evaluating airline performance (Sengupta, 1999, Barbot et al., 2008 and Barros and Peypoch, 2009). The traditional DEA model is based on one-stage activities, which neglect intermediate measures or linking activities (Fare and Whittaker, 1995, Chen and Zhu, 2004 and Tone and Tsutsui, 2009). This study establishes a two-stage DEA model to overcome shortcomings of the traditional one-stage DEA. While the production efficiency indicates the relative efficiency of a firm in the production process, the marketing efficiency reflects the relative performance of a firm in the marketing process. This study evaluates the relative efficiency of airlines in the US, in response to the changing nature of the airline market. Corporate governance is a multi-faceted subject. An important theme of corporate governance is the nature and extent of accountability of particular individuals in the organization and mechanisms that try to reduce or eliminate the principal-agent problem. A related, but separate, thread of discussions focuses on the impact of a corporate governance system on economic efficiency, with a strong emphasis on shareholders’ welfare; this aspect is particularly present in contemporary public debates and developments in regulatory policy (see regulation and policy regulation). Since the failures of well-known companies such as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and Merck, academics and practitioners have shown increasing interest in corporate governance. Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions affecting the way a corporation (or company) is directed, administered or controlled. Corporate governance also includes the relationships among the many stakeholders involved and the goals for which the corporation is governed. In contemporary business corporations, the main external stakeholder groups are shareholders, debt holders, trade creditors, suppliers, customers and communities affected by the corporations’ activities. Internal stakeholders are the boards of directors, executives and other employees. Chiang and Lin, 2007, Bennedsen et al., 2008 and Carline et al., 2009 and Sueyoshi et al. (2010) demonstrated that corporate governance is correlated with organizational performance. Gompers et al. (2003) illustrated that good governance positively affects a firm’s performance. Several governance factors may affect the performance of airlines. To explore the impact of exogenous factors on corporate performance, Simar and Wilson (2007) verified that truncated regression was more appropriate than Tobit regression. This study adopts bootstrapped DEA scores with truncated regression to analyze the relationship between corporate governance and airline performance. The significant difference between the present study and the studies mentioned above is that the former adopts a two-stage DEA to explore airline performance and addresses production efficiency and marketing efficiency to better understand the intermediate measures or linking activities. Additionally, this study utilizes a managerial decision-making matrix to help airline managers improve corporate efficiency or strategies rapidly. Finally, this study uses truncated regression to analyze the relationship between corporate governance and performance and guide managers toward competitiveness in the airline industry. The important contributions of this study include: (1) developing an innovative two-stage production process that includes production efficiency and marketing efficiency to assess the operating performance of airlines; (2) implementing truncated regression (Simar and Wilson, 2007) to investigate whether or not corporate governance affects airline performance; (3) integrating production efficiency and marketing efficiency to address managerial decision-making. As a result, management could use the managerial decision-making matrix to set up improvable strategies. The remainder of this study is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses a literature review; Section 3 describes research design, including two-stage DEA methodology, truncated regression, collection of the sample data and the criteria for variables to evaluate performance; Section 4 presents empirical data and analyzes the results; and Section 5 presents the conclusion.

While transport industries have become increasingly important in the global economy, issues in the aviation industry are especially important for a large, free market economy like the United States, because they can influence both global economic development, and international politics. Although the efficiency of the aviation industry has been widely discussed in previous literature, and the DEA technique is frequently used to evaluate efficiency, there are still some important points not previously explored. As a research topic, the issue of corporate governance in the aviation industry has rarely been investigated. From the perspective of research methods, the problem with the traditional DEA model is the concept of a one-stage process, which neglects intermediate measures or linking activities. The concept of a two-stage process has been applied infrequently at best in previous studies of the aviation industry. Therefore, this paper aims to establish a two-stage DEA to measure efficiency, to discuss corporate governance and to evaluate the benchmarks of the airlines from a more complete viewpoint. The results of this study can provide United States airlines insights into resource allocation and competitive advantage, and help them improve strategic decision-making, specifically regarding operational styles, under fierce competition in the aviation industry. The findings can briefly be described as follows. First, the 30 airlines researched had an average production efficiency of 63% and an average marketing efficiency of 33%. This suggests that managers should focus first on improving inefficient allocation of resources in production and then their marketing efficiency. Secondly, low-cost carriers are more efficient, on average, than full-service ones in production. This finding is consistent with the finding by Barbot et al. (2008). On the other hand, full-service carriers are more efficient, on average, than low-cost ones in marketing. Thirdly, we can state that corporate governance influences firm performance. The results of truncated regression on board size, average age of the directors, and percentage of outstanding shares owned by executive officers all show significant, positive relations to performance. The number of committees and CEO duality both present significant negative relations with performance. It means these airlines can modify corporate governance to strengthen their efficiency and competitiveness. Finally, we use the managerial decision-making matrix to find the benchmark airlines to help managers improve corporate performance. Our findings can provide guidelines for coping with corporate governance issues in the aviation industry. A future investigation might use Malmquist productivity change index techniques to examine long-term variance of airline performance. It could avoid the results being affected by external, short-term factors. Such an approach would allow a dynamic view of the multidimensional performance of airlines. It is also hoped that the models and methods implemented in this study can help bring about related research in other industries.