1.0 Introduction
Air Asia Berhad is a big company in ASEAN. Their airline code is AK. Its logo is designed by Start Creative in red and white. Because of the disappearance of flight QZ 8501 in December of 2014, they changed their Facebook logo into grey, as a sign of tragedy.
Figure 1.2: Flight QZ8501. (Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/)
Air Asia Berhad has many aeroplanes which can be used to fly about 88 destinations. (Airasia.com, 2016) Air Asia Berhad is established in 1993 and being purchased by Tony Fernandes’s company in 2001 from DRB-Hicom.
At the beginning, the Air Asia airline started with 2 planes. Year after year, Air Asia Berhad become better and better. It was able to increase the amount of planes and became well-known globally because of its low fares flight with their promise of ‘Now Everyone Can Fly’. With the partnership of Thai(XJ), Indonesia(QZ), Philippines(Z2), Viet Jet Air Asia and others, Air Asia was known as the ‘World Best Low Cost Airline’ and also the ‘World’s Leading Low Cost Airline’. (Airasia.com, 2016)
Air Asia’s today’s achievement achieved by the leadership of Tony Fernandes, and also his management team in the main element of management which included planning, organising, leading and controlling.
2.0 Planning
Planning is a process which used by the managers to identify and select the goals, vision, and mission and leads the workers toward the goals selected with teamwork. The process of planning included analysing, discuss, decision making strategy which help to determine the effectiveness and the efficiency of the organization to get better profit. (2012books.lardbucket.org, 2016)
2.1 Decision Making
Air Asia Berhad is a good example in the process decision making. In the process of decision making, Air Asia Berhad identify the problems, making analysis, collecting and sharing information and data, handing over the job to the workers. (Airasia.com, 2016) They used SWOT analysis to make sure that they can get final choice.
Figure 2.1: Example of Table of Air Asia’s SWOT Analysis. (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/)
2.2 Decision Making Strategy
The main decision making strategy used by Air Asia Berhad is SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis is the identification of strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats.
The strength of Air Asia is Air Asia has a good fame for its brand name. The top management team usually do some advertising or promotions to announce everyone about their latest news. Also, Air Asia is famous for its low cost flight as they promised that ‘Now Everyone Can Fly’. Besides, safety, price of the flight, services, utilization and others are absolutely guaranteed. (Strategy.agileworks.asia, 2008)
Other than the strength, Air Asia also have weakness. For example, Air Asia does not have its own MRO facility. Air Asia’s imperfection online booking system and the delaying of the flight also recently being complaint by the customers. (Business-strategy-competition.knoji.com, 2016) This might affect the brand’s name and the sales of Air Asia.
Therefore, the opportunities of Air Asia is to put effort on the promotions on Malaysia tourism which can help to improve their income and increase the rate of the tourism. Air Asia also have a chance to get more customer globally. (Strategy.agileworks.asia, 2008)
Thus, the chairman of Air Asia worry that they will be facing the threats of the pressure on the cost of airlines if compare to the other competitors because their cost for airlines are lower than the other competitors.
3.0 Organising
In organising, Air Asia’s top management have to distribute the task correctly to the workers, including giving motivations to the workers so that they can finish their task more effectively in order to achieve their goals. (among planning, manager25 and krishna-agrawala, 2009)
Figure 3.1: Example of Air Asia’s Management Team
(Source: http://anotherbrickinwall.blogspot.my)
3.1 Delegations of Responsibilities
As an example, Tony Fernandes, the chairman of Air Asia, cooperates with the other management team in his company in decision making to get the best final result to achieve their goals, get higher profit and reduce the cost. (Airasia.com, 2016) He is responsible to give the motivation to his workers so that all the task can be finished effectively in limited time.
Figure 3.2: Example of Air Asia’s Organizational Structure. (Source: http://www.airasia.com/)
3.2 Organisational Structure
The organisational structure of Air Asia included cooperation of the top management from different department in Air Asia Berhad which lead by Tony Fernandes with the promise of ‘Now Everyone Can Fly’ and also the mission to provide low cost flight, just to make Air Asia easier to control and to work successfully. (Airasia.com, 2016)
3.3 Groups and Teams/Effective Group
For example, since 2001, Tony Fernandes is the Air Asia Group CEO, he bought Air Asia from DRB-Hicom with the mission of providing affordable airlines and the vision of ‘Now Everyone Can Fly’. With the cooperation and the efficiency of partners and workers, he was able to reduce the cost and get higher profit. (Airasia.com, 2016)
4.0 Leading
In the process of leading, the top management must be able to give the clear order to the workers when distributing the task and have to make sure that all the workers understand what they should do and so that they can finish their task more efficiently in order to achieve their goals in time given. (among planning, manager25 and krishna-agrawala, 2009)
Figure 4.1: Picture of Tony Fernandes. (Source: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/)
4.1 Type of Leaders
As a leader in Air Asia, Tony Fernandes believed that working with his workers using ‘walk-around’ management style might help him to improve his knowledge about airlines. Every time after working with his workers, he will learn new things from his workers. Like he said, a leader must have experiences, believe the workers and must clearly know everything going on with the workers and the company to make sure that nothing goes wrong. (Airasia.com, 2016)
4.2 Communication
When Tony Fernandes works with his workers and other airline company, he will always communicates with them friendly and treat them more like friends or family. (Airasia.com, 2016) He also encourage his workers to be brave to speak out their idea or opinion during the meeting so that they have a chance to learn, to improve and to gain more experience.
4.3 Motivation
In Air Asia, Tony Fernandes believes that with the hard work of his workers. To maintain the effectiveness of his workers in doing their task, he give the motivation to his workers with bonuses. Thus, he also communicates with his workers and give them some positive encouragement as a motivation for the workers. (among planning, manager25 and krishna-agrawala, 2009)
5.0 Controlling
The process of controlling is how the manager evaluate the organizations in achieving goals and do the suitable correction to get better result and the manager will guide the workers in their task so that the manager will always perform we in their workers do. (2012books.lardbucket.org, 2016)
5.1 Controlling Organizational Performance and Employee’s Performance
In Air Asia, Tony Fernandes using ‘walk around ‘management strategy when working with his workers to make sure that every task that the workers can be done smoothly without any big problem. (2012books.lardbucket.org, 2016) He also recently communicate with his workers to understand what they are doing and also give them motivation to motivate them to do their work effectively.
6.0 Diverse Workforce
In Air Asia, they are hiring workers from dif
ferent states which also included low-cost carrier (LCC). (Dewan, 2014) All of the workers work in the position which are suitable for them. This help to reduce the cost for hiring workers.
Figure 7.1: Air Asia’s CSR. (Source: http://www.airasia.com/)
7.0 Social Responsibility
The main of cooperate social responsibility (CSR) in Air Asia is to reduce the cost, such as fuels and airlines. They provide the low cost airlines globally as Tony Fernandes said ‘Now Everyone Can Fly’. They also donate the money to help the needy. For example, they doing some donation to the charity or organize some interesting and meaningful activities to help the needy.
8.0 Change and Innovation
The change and innovation which have been done in Air Asia included services, technologies, utilization, business management, business environment and others to improve or making some changes in order to reduce the uncertainties and the cost.
9.0 Conclusion
However it is believed that Air Asia is a good example in reality. From here, I understand that the achievement of Air Asia Berhad can’t do without guidance of Tony Fernandes and the team work by using different management strategy and also with their vision and mission.