1)http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/business/global/16air.html?_r=1&ref=business
2) This article outlines the situation of Japan Airlines (JAL) after losing $1 Billion USD in April-June 2009. It also discusses, possible strategic objectives the company plans to take, as well as potential takeover from rival airline companies. Delta Airlines and American Airlines are planning to bid for a takeover of JAL. This would be a high-risk takeover, as the company recently suffered a drastic financial loss. Japan Airlines also hopes to turn to other external sources of finance in the forms of share capital from Air France-KLM and Korean Airlines. Internally, JAL will reduce its costs of production by reducing 6800 jobs over the course of the next 3 years.
3) 2.1 Human Resource Planning
-Dismissal and Redundancy
1.7 Growth and Evolution
-External Growth
3.1 Sources of Finance
-External Finance
1.3 Organizational Objectives
-Strategic Objectives
4) 1.3 Organizational Objectives
What is an objective? They are short term, specific goals that companies plans to achieve.
This article mainly focuses on the Tactical Objectives of the JAL Business. These are objectives that are aimed to be accomplish over a short-term. In this case, JAL's main tactical objective is survival.
JAL plans to cut 6800 jobs over the next 3 years. This will help lower the costs of production, and eliminate and redundancies of positions in the organizations. This will ultimately help Japan Airlines maximize sales and profits, which will assist their effort in surviving in the market.
Another part of JAL's plan to survive was to change the product they are selling to the customers. JAL hopes to reform flight routes, so that less popular routes can be reduced, and they can lower the supply for a low demand product. This will help reduce JAL's costs, and ultimately their losses in this harsh economic climate.
My dear classmates, what are your thoughts about Japan Airlines and their current situation? Please leave your valued opinions below. Thanks :D
Hi, Calvin. Cool article.
回覆刪除First off, I'd like to mention that the formatting of your blog is somewhat flawed, as the entire article cannot be viewed, this is the case for me at least. And it's in Chinese. Fortunately, being the diligent business student that I am, I have figured out a method to read your response, and will now post my (and I quote) "valued opinions".
My main impression of your response is that you basically centralize your opinion on the fact that the key objective of JAL is survival. This is true, but to supplement your response, survival refers to the process "to continue to function or prosper" (Survive). This can allow us to relate back to chapter 1.1, under the section on page 11 entitled "Business Functions" (what a coincidence!). Under this section, there are many subheadings such as Production (Operations), Marketing, Finance, and Human Resources (Personnel). Since you've already touched on the finance, production, and human resources components of the article, attention now should be drawn to marketing. Hence, my question is this: since JAL is planning to focus mainly on popular routes (tying in to the product and place, two of the 4 P's of marketing!), what changes to price and promotion can JAL make in terms of reaching their final goal of being able to survive?
As you mentioned in your response, the operational costs of JAL will decrease due to the cutting of certain flight paths that are less active and popular than others, and hence, the overall profit will be increased. Since this is the case, and so many personnel are to be laid off, I think prices could be lowered to attract more customers. This brings in the necessity to mention economies of scale, the "lower average costs of production as a firm operates on a larger scale due to an improvement in productive efficiency" (Hoang, 112). This would clearly be the case if prices were lowered, as the selection of more popular channels is an example of an "improvement in productive efficiency", and lowering prices to bring in more customers is an example of operating on a larger scale. In this method, JAL can gain a larger customer base while still retaining maximum profits through economies of scale, and hence it would be a very key step in the survival of JAL. A variation on this that includes the promotion aspect would be to offer an exclusive membership program or special offer period over an extended period of time (perhaps a year for example) where prices are lowered as stated earlier. This may prove to be an even better method to increase customer base and retain larger profits, as the customers that use JAL during the promotion period may return to use the service again even after the period is over, hence allowing JAL to bring in even more profit from the same customers. This would give JAL a steady, secure source of income, and hence would be a key method of survival.
Thanks for the post! Hope you fix that formatting so that all the other "dear classmates" can see the article :)
Works Cited:
Hoang, Paul. Business and Management. Victoria: IBID, 2007. Print.
"Survive." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Web. 16 Sept. 2009. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/survives
Edit: Thanks for fixing the blog layout!
回覆刪除Hi Calvin. I enjoyed the article and your post. Keep in mind the hierarchy and relationship between objectives, strategies, and tactics. Survival is a common objective. The article outlines several strategies and even more short-term tactics to achieve this objective.
回覆刪除Mr. Opfer