Answer

Organization Change Processes

Business organizations need to embrace technology, diversity and inclusion, loyalty program and digital marketing to remain competitive in an ever-changing market. Proper planning, coordination, and implementation skills are necessary to effect changes in any organization. Almost 50 percent of the proposed efforts end up unsuccessful, highlighting the need for a proper plan, coordination, and implementation skills for managers to effect the changes (Black et al. 2020). The concept of the change management process and models dates back to the early middle 20^th century and only become well known to the business environment in the 1990s, and formal organization processes began in the 2000s.  

Therefore, organizations’ change process can be understood as broader actions that a business undertakes to either change or adjust reasonable components of its performance. It may involve the company culture, infrastructure, internal processes, and corporate hierarchy. The process entails a sequence of activities and steps that management employs to allow for transition and enable the project to meet the intended goal (Black et al., 2020). A significant change management process entails steps that include identifying what will be improved, presentation of a solid business case to the stakeholder, planning for change, communication, provision of resources and use of data for evaluation, monitoring and management resistance, dependencies, and budgeting risks, and celebrating success.

Middle East continent is renowned for its black gold business. Almost two-thirds of the world’s oil production is done in the Middle East, making it a destination for different air flights; hence the presence of well-developed flight companies in the Middle East, for example, Emirates, Qatar Airline, Etihad, Middle East Airline and Saudi among many others. Middle East Airline-Air Liban S.A.L (MEA) is a Lebanon’s airline. It was founded on 31^st May 1945 by Fawzi EL-Hoss and Saeb Salam with technological and operational support from British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) (Nah, et al. 2016). MEA began operating in January 1946, involving three flights connecting Beirut and Nicosia and latter followed by flights to Syria, Iraq, and Egypt (Nah, et al. 2016). It is a member of the Arab Air Carriers Organization (AACO), the Sky Team airline alliance, and the International Air Transport Association (IATA). They signed association deals to operate as a commercial flight airline, operating in both cargo and passengers. 

The current name of MEA was adopted in November 1065 following the complete merging of the airline with Air Liban. It has a fleet size of 21, with 33 destinations, headquarters being Beirut-Lebanon and having employees of about 1,858 at the location (Nah, et al. 2016). The company’s mission statement is to enhance customers’ satisfaction and safety, specifically by meeting and exceeding their needs as well as expectations through quality service delivery. In relation to the passenger, ramp, VIP, baggage, cargo, lounges, and postal services as clearly set in service level agreement and ground holding contracts, and relevant international best practice (Nah, et al. 2016). The Vision of MEA is to maintain its leading position in delivering reliable quantity ground handling services of the highest international levels cost-effective and with the possibility of expanding their services to other airports in a future time. The company values entail a quality management system, development, and staff training, focusing on safety and security. The flight company has lately adopted a strategy intending to drop all the long flight routes and instead consolidate its fleet around the short and medium-range airbus samples as part of its plans to accumulate profit.

Challenges

The flight market is a very perishable business venture that requires a lot of financial investment to perform effectively. Like any other airline company, Middle East Airline- Air Liban S.A.L faces many challenges that hinder their performance. Air Liban has continuously suffered from the continued civil unrest within the continent where several countries such as Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan have recorded repeated terrorist attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) jihadist terror group (Bull & Ollivant, 2018). The terror attacks have seen frequent flight and ticket cancellation inconveniences the MEA customers, hence poor relations with the passengers. The unrest has significant financial implications on the company’s performance, therefore sustaining their flights and labor force.

Maintaining the supply chain has been a significant threat to the Air Liban S.A.L Company for a number of years, negatively impacting their performance in the competitive flight market. The company has recorded delays in flights, deliveries of supplies, low aviation services, and passengers’ overcrowding, more so on the local flights tarnishing the company’s image (Hammoud et al. 2017). To a greater extent, this has negatively impacted the company’s performance as the company operates cargo flights hence less revenue collection.

The stiff competition in the international market has posed a more significant challenge to the MEA Company. It has been prompted by the high innovation capacities employed by the competing Middle East flight companies such as the Fly emirates, Qatar airline, Etihad company that have seen massive investment in technology to boost their flight performance levels (Hammoud et al. 2017). The passengers’ demand has continuously evolved, forcing the flight companies to adopt new technologies and processes and due to the EMA Company’s conservative nature, making it a challenge to compete with other flight companies within the region effectively.

Failure to realize the benefits of M&As and partnerships may account for massive losses of revenue by the MEA Company. Collaborations and partnerships do compliments the company’s services, technologies levels, products, and customer bases hence improving their performance in the market (Hammoud et al., 2017). MEA’s low M&A decision makings have resulted in an overvaluation of the flights, inability to retain the existing talents, synergies achievement failures, and financial challenge making its performance minimal compared to other competing flight companies.

Lebanon’s un-collected problems ranging from corruption protest and political dysfunction pose a challenge to the MEA performance. The flight company has recorded a decrease in passenger numbers as people refrain from using Lebanon flights (Bull & Ollivant, 2018). Notably, Air Liban S.A.L company’s flawed investment decisions on buying and leasing of air-crafts and under arrangements which by chance are non-profitable, thereby causing sky rocking indebtedness. Also, the historical injustices associated with the company interfere with its prestige value, such as the prevention of women in wheelchairs from boarding Middle East airlines flight plains (Bull & Ollivant, 2018). Such moves in the competitive flight market negatively impact the company’s performance standards hence challenge.

Since the global flight market is very competitive and fast-evolving, Middle East Airline-Air Liban S.A.L Company to maintain its relevancy needs to change their policies, technological standards to meet the global requirements and encourages partnerships and collaborations with other international companies. Technical measures and insecurity in the region are the primary cause of the flight challenges to MEA Company. Therefore, change is inevitable for the effective performance of the Company.

Proposed changes

Flights companies are working tirelessly to enhance their operational efficiency, customer trust, and profit accumulation by fostering processes that are broadly integrated flight crew, ground operations, maintenance, and revenue forecasting. For MEA Flight Company to effect changes on their performance, they need to employ several market penetration strategies as done by other famous flight companies.

Creation of own company, Airline loyalty program, would help reach out to the potential customers and convince them to be the company’s passengers. Programs such as specific free points for flights can work to bridge the company’s performance levels. Customers would prefer to travel with companies giving such incentives hence increasing the customer base population as well as retaining the already existing customers of the company (Imran et al. 2016). Notably, Emerita Company did use Emirates Skywards to attract customers. Customers would accumulate miles whenever they travel to different destinations and, in return, could use them to access the lounges and priority checks hence attracting more flight customers. It is believed to be a viable tool for many world flight companies today.

Middle East Airline- Air Liban S.A.L should begin a robust digital marketing campaign strategy that would involve the use of social media, mobile, and online. Platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Television, Histogram, and palm chats attract a large following; hence advertising MEA flight services on them would yield positive results (Imran et al. 2016). By drawing an intensely targeted audience, the company would achieve the goal of popularizing the company to the world flight market (Imran et al. 2016). Remarkably, social media strategy has been used largely by flight companies such as Qatar, Emirates, and Etihad by having television programs worldwide showing how comfortable and reliable those companies are hence attracting more prospective customers.

            The company should keep its employees in the loop to help improve their performance standards. Sharing the companies’ vision with employees would motivate them and help keep them on the truck as well as investing in the result. Employees’ engagement with companies’ cultures and values enables them to understand their priorities and develop confidence in their abilities to make critical decisions necessary for team operational (Imran et al. 2016). The strategy of valuing the employee’s opinions is viable in trying to popularize a product or an organization; therefore, its use would positively impact MEA performance in the competitive flight field. 

MEA should adopt the strategy of giving more focus to its existing customers. Since the market is competitive, maintaining the usual customers would be cheaper, sustainable, and more manageable than investing in new customers by the MEA flights. The in-flight entertainment experience through offering supper first interment connectivity, quality means, and well-trained flight attendance would enable the company to rise against its competitors and give more comfort to the already existing customers (Vlasenko et al., 2019). Emirates Flight Company has repeatedly used this strategy to maintain its large market base, hence positively impacting MEA Company.

Following flight delays by the MEA customers, the company should respond by taking a critical look at its flight schedules and timing. The programs should be restructured in such a way that they should be exceptional on-time performance (Vlasenko et al., 2019). An airline that schedules its flights to a block time conservatively pays law for aircraft utilization and more for flight crew in exchange to help lessen the impact of disruptions that may result from other flights in the network web hence achieving greater on-time performance.

Thriving flight companies are mainly characterized by huge flight destinations all over the world. Therefore, MEA should try to improve their relevancy by exploring new market destinations such as Africa, Europe, and Latin America. In doing so, they would have no choice but to adapt to the modern world flight company cultures that involve technological use on large scales.

Plans for changes implementation

Change is inevitable, and for a company to grow, it must accept change. A change management plan is a concept or idea of trying to help the organization’s staff adapt to the new changes. Since changes are never favorable to all, the management plan provides a clear roadmap that outlines the steps an organization would take to execute the intended changes. It involves various stages, including hiring individual persons who thrive on change (Aslam et al., 2018). New blood in the company management board would initiate change with ease since they would show signs of commitment and willingness to perform on their new job compared to trying to create change with an old management team that is likely to show signs of boredom and restlessness on the new task.

Employee involvement is necessary for effective change implementation in a company. Organizational change, either large or small, should be well explained and communicated more so the changes directly affect how the MEA employees would be undertaking their duties (Aslam et al., 2018). Trickling down a new culture and adaptation necessitate support from the company employees; hence their involvement is critical in the operationalization of the intended changes. 

 Structure and systematic change communication are necessary for the implementation of the change management plan. Maintaining transparency during the company changes is essential. It can only be obtained by clearly spelling the intended changes and explaining why it would be of necessity to MEA organization (Aslam et al., 2018). Effective communication skills need to be adopted in exploring the company, staffs the intended changes. Communication enables the company to maintain an open door since changes are able to propagate, allowing team members to bring hiccups to the management’s attention in a relatively timely fashion before things run out of control.

Identification and taking note of the possible barriers to the proposed changes are essential in the change implementation within different companies. Buriers could originate from other employees and departments, inadequate training, supplies needs, or lack of necessary equipment needed by the company (Aslam et al. 2018). The barrier projections would enable the company to plan themselves effectively, such that they would be able to maintain their course of action. 

Measurements/control mechanisms to change management process

Change is always difficult; therefore, the companies and organizations need to access different management process alignment with the employees’ expectations and business needs. The change management process analysis can be done through sampling eLearning feedback from customers (Vlasenko et al., 2019). It would enable the organization to understand their thoughts concerning the current change management processes creating room for further improvement. The responses would help show whether the customers/employees’ opinions did count or not affect their flight choice.

The company employees, such as flight attendance and crew, have the capacity to access first-hand information from the customers since they largely interact with the passengers daily (Vlasenko et al., 2019). Therefore, understanding their view is necessary for the assessment of the change management process. The Company should always try and give a listening ear to their review of the market situations since their inputs would be integral for MEA in maintaining flight market standards.

            Engagement of external farm to help carry out periodic performance audit on the company would help the management understand whether the intended change management process is the effective and yielding result. The external auditors are mostly preferred for such exercise since they are non-partisan to the company and only deliver to their instructions (Vlasenko et al., 2019). They would help give a clear picture of the company’s market performance and recommend improving further if need be.

Setting goals would enable the company to assess its signs of progress in the market. The change management process should be guided by a set of purposes stated by the company at the beginning of the entire campaign. Since it is impossible to gauge or acknowledge whether a change has been successfully implemented, targets are quite necessary for such processes.

Contingency plans for effecting change in organizations

The company should clarify and reevaluate their marketing objectives to enable them access weather they are attaining the intended change management process. Having minded the company goals and desires during the operations process will allow the company to maintain its focus hence positive performance. 

Identification of the possible root causes of the resistance to the company’s changes management plan mainly helps improve the performance levels. Effective resistance management process entails observing and averting the challenges rather than focusing on the symptoms that only manifest themselves when the plan fails (Singh & Ramdeo, 2020). The change management best practices study gives better ground to appreciate the root causes of change resistance in a market set up hence calling for interventions to rectify the situation.

 In conclusion, like any other business venture, the airline industry appears competitive and requires effective management processes to remain relevant in the market sector. Therefore, prospective airline companies that intend to explore the flight market need to have a plan with detailed objectives, visions, and missions to enable them to compete favorably. The research project has helped me understand the change management process right from challenge identification, proposing changes, planning for change implementation, measurement mechanisms, and emergency contingency plans to effect changes.  Operating an airline company is quite perishable and requires massive investment in finance, policy, technology, and human resource to prosper in the field.

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