Organizational responses to uncertainty in the airline industry: Changes in patterns of communication networks

Abstract

Changing environmental conditions introduce uncertainty into organizational operations, and airlines respond in various ways. Scholars traditionally explore responses to environmental uncertainty by drawing upon theories of communication networks, coordination, organizational resilience, and high reliability organizing. Yet, the research has competing communication predictions, which makes planning and designing organizational responses challenging, as the level and type of uncertainty changes over time. Research also does not address variations in responses across different groups of employees. Using longitudinal network data from the United Airlines operations tower in Newark Airport (USA), this research examines communication for the purpose of relational coordination in a dynamically adaptive organizational network. Results reveal different patterns of organizational communication as different employee groups (frontline, cross-functional boundary spanners, and managers) face varying conditions of uncertainty. This paper concludes with theoretical contributions and practical recommendations for managing complex communication networks to respond to dynamic conditions of uncertainty in the airline operations settings.

Survey assessment of organizational resiliency potential of a group of Seveso organizations in Turkey

“…The participation of new employee groups may represent a net increase in coordination capacity that enables an organization to achieve a flexible and dynamic response as uncertainty increases. 54…”

“…The participation of new employee groups may represent a net increase in coordination capacity that enables an organization to achieve a flexible and dynamic response as uncertainty increases. 54 Networks within the organization are also key for resilience. The presence of relational connections between employees influences the formation of new connections before and during a crisis period.…”

Organizational control rationales in knowledge‐intensive organizations: An integrative review of emerging trends

“…To do so, they place their emphasis on communication, collaboration, and empowerment by means of integrating collective understanding and the encultured knowledge—this category of knowledge is defined as “the process of achieving shared understandings” (Blackler, , p. 1,024). Organizations characterized by adhocracy or innovation‐mediated production such as high reliability organizations (Rubinstein, Martin‐Rios, Erhardt, Gittell, & George, ); creative industries (Martin‐Rios & Parga, , ; Morris, Farrell, & Reed, ); and multidisciplinary, temporary and virtual teams (Erhardt, Gibbs, Martin‐Rios, & Sherblom, ) represent examples of communication‐intensive organizations.…”

Innovación en gestión de recursos humanos: la relevancia de las redes inter-organizativas de intercambio de conocimiento

“…Dentro de la investigación organizacional de la red social (Granovetter, 1979;Kilduff y Brass, 2010;Rubinstein et al, 2016), los investigadores han examinado el papel de las redes para sugerir que el establecimiento y la participación en relaciones inter-organizacionales ofrecen beneficios a las empresas en forma de circulación de conocimiento (Martin-Rios y Erhardt, 2017;Martin-Rios y Septiem, 2013). Recientemente, dentro de la literatura de gestión empresarial, los investigadores han expresado su interés en las redes de intercambio de conocimiento como una prioridad para aquellas empresas cuyo objetivo es participar en los flujos de conocimiento (Parmigiani y Rivera-Santos, 2011).…”