Analyzing Organizational Structure and Design of Emirates Airlines

This report analyzes the organizational structure and design of Emirates Airlines, along with the concept of human resource development and how it contributes to the design of the organization. It concludes with recommendations to improve the human resource practices of the Emirates Airlines.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Human Resource Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Executive Summary:
The main purpose of the report is to analyse about the one of the most famous Emirates
Airlines and their organizational structure. The report further analyses the concept of
organizational design and elaborates two approaches to show how Emirates could ensure
the HR function contributes to the design of the organization. In the next segment, the report
illustrates the concept of human resource development and how those approaches would
adopt HR developments that were responsive to the changing external and internal
environment of the workplace. Having analysed the company, based on the above
mentioned analysis, the report concludes with the recommendation to improve the human
resource practices of the Emirates Airlines.

2HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................ 3
Organizational structure.........................................................................................................3
Organizational Design............................................................................................................ 5
The two approaches to show how the organisation could ensure the HR function contributes
to the design of the organisation:...........................................................................................6
Analysis of emerging HR development...................................................................................7
Conclusion and Recommendations:.......................................................................................9
Reference............................................................................................................................. 10

3HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Emirates, an airline provides commercial passenger service and a subsidiary group
of The Emirates Group is based on Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is considered to be the
largest airline in Middle-East and listed as one of the top international airlines which operates
more than 3,600 flights per week from the Dubai International Airport to more than 80
countries across the globe (Marchington 2016). The major goal of this organization is to
provide a world class flight experience with individual pride and organizational spirit. It also
provides continuous flights to six continents from Dubai to New York, Houston, San
Francisco and Los Angeles. This airline is the fourth largest international passenger carried
and second largest freight tonne kilometres flown across the world. In 1985, they few their
first two fights were Boeing 737 and Airbus 300 B4which were initiating from Mumbai and
Karachi (Mantur 2016). Apart from the commercial passenger services they have a diverse
portfolio business including engineering, catering and tour operating system. With more than
50,000 active employees they offer health benefits, comprehensive health paid maternity
and sick leave. The airlines is said to have lower emissions than the other airlines
(Jgbm.org, 2017). The airlines’ cargo division uses a hub-and-spoke network of operations.
In fact, they help passengers to stay in touch with those on the ground through telephones
and can also send text messages or use their own mobile phones (Roh et al. 2017). They
also offer connoisseur meals made from fresh ingredients whether the passengers are flying
in first class, business class or economy class (Mantur 2016). Along with that they also
provide a list of selected wines every night.
Organizational structure
Organizational structure refers to a system that designed to portray how various job
roles and responsibilities are assigned, controlled and coordinated. It also determines how
information flows from level to level. It affects how employees communicate among
themselves to achieve the company goals (Roh et al. 2017). Organizational structure may
differ from company to company. Some of the common organizational structures have been
discussed in the following section.
The Hierarchy: More or less every organization has a form of a hierarchy in its organizational
structure. This hierarchical structure is linear in nature. Top level managements filter
information to employees without their consent to improve work processes (Roh et al. 2017).
This type is good for maintaining authority, however, it does not allow free thinking, work
efficiency or collaboration.

4HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Flat Structure: This type of structure is opposite to hierarchy. In fact, this structure is very
common in every start-ups and newly established company and small to mid size business
(Marchington 2016). However, most of the organization start with flat structure often ends up
taking the hierarchical structure (Mantur 2016).
The flatarchy structure: This type of structure is the combination of flat and hierarchical
structure. This structure is very common particularly when a company is manufacturing a
products and services (Pereira-Moliner 2016). It helps to effectively address market without
restructuring the organization’s personnel.
Functional Structure: This type of structure coordinates business for a specific purpose. Most
of the organization that uses this purpose has a separate department for a specific function.
Some of them include marketing, human resource and accounting department that is
present in almost every organization (Pereira-Moliner 2016). The main goal for the structure
is to solely concentrate on specific department or skills. Just like, accounting department
recruits the person who is an expert in accounting, rather than any marketing or human
resource candidates. Apart from that, there are several other organizational structure such
as flatter structure and holacratic structure that has been used by several organizations
(Mantur 2016).
The organizational structure within Emirates Airlines has been discussed in the following
section.
Being a statutory organization, Emirates airlines submits their annual report of its activities. It
enjoys its functional autonomy and their management constitutes of Chairman and
Managing Director who also works as a board of director as well (Marchington 2016). All
their strategic policies are decided from the headquarter and expected through branch and
offices. The following chart shows as per the hierarchical organizational structure
(Gatewood, Feild and Barrick 2015).

5HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Some important functions include:
Operations: This department deals with flight operations and navigational problems and also
training and licensing of air crew.
Engineering: This department deals with repair, maintenance and overhaul of aircrafts. It
also provides simple instrument for the aircraft.
Commercial: This department deals with revenue, promotion, and publicity, advertising and
public relation (Bamberger, Biron and Meshoulam 2014).
Personnel: This department is responsible for recruitment, training, and maintain of record of
staff.
Tourism: This is a separate department which use to promote tourism growth.
Organizational Design
Organizational design is a process which helps to determine the dysfunctional side
of a work flow, work procedures, structure and systems and develop new strategy to
implement this (Pereira-Moliner 2016). Organization design helps to stimulate both the
organizational and people aspect of the business. Through the organizational design one
can achieve excellent customer services, an increased profitability, lowered operation costs,
improved efficiency and obtain a clear strategy for obtaining a business. There are several
types of organizational designs exist in the real world. Some of them have been discussed in
the following section:
Traditional Designs:
Simple Structure: This type of structure is defined with low departmentalization and limited
formalization (Gatewood, Feild and Barrick 2015). This type of structure is quite common in
small start-ups and mid size business. However, when start-ups grown up and expanded
then they gradually come out of this type of structure.
Functional Structure: This type of structure defines as the designs that constitutes speciality
product together. This structure can be applied to the whole organization.
Divisional Structure: This type of structure made up of semi-autonomous units. A manager
oversees the division and particularly responsible for the success or failure of the
organization (Bamberger, Biron and Meshoulam 2014).
Contemporary design:

6HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Team Structure: This structure is made up of teams and the team works towards the
organizational goals. In this structure, since there is no hierarchy or the chain of command,
team can work the way they want to and thus they find out the most efficient way to execute
their task.
Matrix Structure: This structure is assigned by the specialists from different department to
perform on one or more tasks in order to complete the project successfully (Pereira-Moliner
2016).
The two approaches to show how the organisation could ensure the HR function
contributes to the design of the organisation:
In the front line jobs in any service organizations where it is expected that employees
need to work quick and efficiently at their operational management task, and it is also helpful
in dealing with the customer. So, it is a big challenge for any organizations to get appropriate
management in terms of recruitment, selection, training and retention of employees.
Although Emirate Airlines is extremely challenging in terms of their catastrophic business
cycle, difficulty of differentiation and excess capacity, still has achieved their strategic
success and competitive advantage (Purce 2014). When it comes to the Emirate’ HR
strategy, along with the leadership and specific job responsibility, this organization delivers
its business strategy in the most cost effective way (Bamberger, Biron and Meshoulam
2014). Some of their strategies have been discussed in the following section.
Emirates’ strict selection and recruitment process and their training, retraining policy:
Emirates adopts strict selection process. Even all the cabin crew applicants are asked to
meet several criteria starting form screening, eligibility and physical aspects (Gatewood,
Feild and Barrick 2015). After meeting all these baseline criteria, they undergo three
consecutive rounds of interview, homogenous checking, water confidence examination
psychometric tests and many others. From around more than 20,000 applicants, 500-600
applicants are chosen as the cabin crew. After their initial training in the probation period for
the first six months, approximately 75% employees are confirmed for the next 5 year
contract with the Emirates, around 20% cabin crew have the change to extend their
probation period and rest 5-6% are asked to leave the organization (Ashkenas 2015).
Despite the strict and stringent operation in their recruitment process, many highly qualified
people shows interest to join Emirates because of their social status charisma associated
with the Emirates airlines. In fact, many graduates can gain the opportunity to move to some
lucrative business opportunities after gaining the experience from the Emirates. Even though
a proper employee training is considered to be the key element of a company’s success,

7HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Emirates gives the highest importance on this segment. Newly hired cabin crew are asked to
undergo a 4-months training courses, and flight crew also asked to go through a 29-months
of online training courses before their promotion to become the first officer (Nickson 2013).
High performance service delivery teams followed by organizational team structure and
motivating staffs via rewards and appraisal: Effective teams are an essential feature to
service excellence. From this perspective, Emirates create enough team spirit among their
cabin crew by divisional structure. In fact, all the cabin crew members are formed into
different groups so that they can stay together as much as possible in order to better
understand each other about their personalities (Ashkenas 2015).
Reward and recognition are one of the key elements that every organizations use in
order to appreciate employees, recognize them as well as reiterate both the positive and
negative practices (Foss, Lyngsie and Zahra 2013). Emirates employs various forms of
rewards including symbolic actions, performance-based actions, individual contributions and
many others.
Through organizational design the HR management helps to determine the
dysfunctional side of a work flow, work procedures, structure and systems and develop new
strategy to implement these (Knowles, Holton and Swanson 2014). Organization design in
this context helps to stimulate both the organizational and people aspect of the business.
Through the organizational design one can achieve excellent customer services, an
increased profitability, lowered operation costs, improved efficiency and obtain a clear
strategy for obtaining a business (Purce 2014).
Analysis of emerging HR development
Human resource development professionals provide several programs to train and
develop personnel through the improvement of skills and capabilities that are required to
perform the job (Knowles, Holton and Swanson 2014). Through offering several programs in
order to promote professional career growth, and enable to improve efficiency and
productivity. Human resource development incorporates such opportunities as employee
training, career advancement, performance management, among many others. The focus of
human resource management is on developing a superior workforce so that the companies
and employees both can achieve their work goals. The basic aims and objective of HR
development includes planning development programs on the basis of performance gaps to
achieve short and long terms career goals. It also helps the organizations to adhere to local,
state and federal regulations (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). The effective human resource

8HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
development ensures organizational effectiveness, performance supports, and formal
education to boost the productivity (Ashkenas 2015). The HR personnel evaluate the
employee needs, design training courses, analyse the effectiveness business impact. In fact,
several HR development programs help new employees to obtain the relevant tools that help
them to become successful on their job. This adds presentation on the company history,
their organizational and strategic objectives, job-related policies and procedures (Purce
2014).
Human resource development can be formal such as classroom training, college
course, organizational planned change initiatives. Formal training can add value to the
workplace. It can be informal through employee coaching and internal training by internal
staff or any consultant. This is useful as the employees become more experienced through
these programs (Foss, Lyngsie and Zahra 2013). An HR development personnel helps
managers to execute the long-term plans through determining skills of the existing staff;
these performance helps to eliminate the performance gaps an designs programs to
eliminate the issues. One option is to offer internal training either with internal staff or a paid
facilitator or consultant.
Organizational environment consists of internal and external factors. Environment
must be scanned for the development and forecasts of the factors that dominates
environmental success. All the factors drives the organizational successes are referred to
the internal and external environment (Knowles, Holton and Swanson 2014).
The internal environment refers to the events, factors and conditions inside the
organizations. The company’s mission, culture, leadership factors are associated with
internal environment of an organization. In this context of the Emirates, the internal
environment has an influence in organizational activities, decisions, attitudes and
behaviours. There are several internal and external factors that affect the recruitment
process. In fact, Emirates needs to analyse all the internal and external factors that helps the
effective environment (Foss, Lyngsie and Zahra 2013). Emirates can avoid hiring new
employees by focusing on the existing employees. They can also reach to their local
communities to meet the recruiting needs. If the local consultancy changes, they find it more
difficult to recruit the qualified candidates (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). In that case,
Emirates faces the decision of relocating employees to new locations to access new talent
pools. Moreover, Emirates is competing for qualified candidates to assure their future
growth. Therefore, it is an essential factor for them to analyse what the competition is and to
develop competitive package to lure the talent. On the contrary, external environment is the
factors occur outside the company or beyond the company’s control including customer

9HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
competition, socio-political conditions, organizational culture and many others (Armstrong
and Taylor 2014). In this context, although the external environment happens to occur
outside the organizations it has significant impact on Emirates’ internal operations and long-
term sustainability (Marchington 2016). Managers monitor and adapt external environment,
make changes that can lead to different outcomes.
Conclusion and Recommendations:
Every organization has the power through its people. Therefore, proper strategies
are needed to assure the productivity and company success. So, HR professionals must
play an important role for the right HR management strategy to support the right
organizational direction and help in the ability to identify those areas that are needed to
focus and that in turn drive success. Few recommendations are needed for the Emirates that
will help to identify those areas.
Strategic vision: Strategic vision provides an indication where the company is heading.
Therefore, HR personnel should review the company’s vision in order determine the HR
activity that can support vision. This vision is applicable on the basis of external and internal
factors and whether the changes in the marketplace might be suggesting the vision or not.
Demographic consideration: HR personnel should consider the demographic of the
workforce in order to determine the gaps between the current skills and experience.
Therefore, Emirates’ HR strategy should focus on fulfilling the gaps through strategic
recruitment and training efforts.

10HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Reference
Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management
practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Ashkenas, R., Ulrich, D., Jick, T. and Kerr, S., 2015. The boundaryless organization:
Breaking the chains of organizational structure. John Wiley & Sons.
Bamberger, P.A., Biron, M. and Meshoulam, I., 2014. Human resource strategy:
Formulation, implementation, and impact. Routledge.
Eaton, J., 2017. Globalization and human resource management in the airline industry.
Routledge.
Foss, N.J., Lyngsie, J. and Zahra, S.A., 2013. The role of external knowledge sources and
organizational design in the process of opportunity exploitation. Strategic Management
Journal, 34(12), pp.1453-1471.
Gatewood, R., Feild, H.S. and Barrick, M., 2015. Human resource selection. Nelson
Education.
Jgbm.org. 2017. Cite a Website - Cite This For Me. [online] Available at:
http://www.jgbm.org/page/1%20John%20Patton.pdf [Accessed 30 Nov. 2017].
Knowles, M.S., Holton III, E.F. and Swanson, R.A., 2014. The adult learner: The definitive
classic in adult education and human resource development. Routledge.
Mantur, N., 2016. The Emirates: Airline Company or a global lifestyle brand? (Doctoral
dissertation).
Marchington, M., Wilkinson, A., Donnelly, R. and Kynighou, A., 2016. Human resource
management at work. Kogan Page Publishers.
Nickson, D., 2013. Human resource management for hospitality, tourism and events.
Routledge.
Pereira-Moliner, J., Pereira-Moliner, J., Pertusa-Ortega, E.M., Pertusa-Ortega, E.M., Tarí,
J.J., Tarí, J.J., López-Gamero, M.D., López-Gamero, M.D., Molina-Azorín, J.F. and Molina-
Azorín, J.F., 2016. Organizational design, quality management and competitive advantage in
hotels. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 28(4), pp.762-784.

11HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Purce, J., 2014. The impact of corporate strategy on human resource management. New
Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals), 67.
Roh, J., Roh, J., Turkulainen, V., Turkulainen, V., Whipple, J.M., Whipple, J.M., Swink, M.
and Swink, M., 2017. Organizational design change in multinational supply chain
organizations. The International Journal of Logistics Management, 28(4), pp.1078-1098.