Influence and Financial Importance of British Airways Stakeholders
This essay will demonstrate the application of communication and stakeholder theory, British Airways will be the brand that this essay will focus on from its background, history, and facts, it will also define its stakeholders and explain deeply on how to prioritise them in terms of their financial performance in the organisation, this essay will also analyse the reasons why it is been prioritised and its justification as well, on top of that this essay will use R. Edward Freeman’s stakeholder theory and also professor Milton Freeman’s shareholder theory to support its argument and standpoint and these two theories would relate to the practical situations of the organisation.
British Airways was founded in April 1974, although the idea first started when two small airlines joined forces and formed Imperial Airways limited, now British Airways is the second largest airline in the UK after EasyJet, British Airways has many different stakeholders including customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, local and international communities, government authorities, and competitors.
First, on top of the list in terms of their financial performance are the shareholders of British Airways which in this case is (IAG) International Airlines Group, which is the parent company of British Airways and owned most of the shares in the company, the reason why they are so important is because of first they are the ones who invested in the company in the first place and could still invest more which could then lead to higher financial performance, for example now during the COVID-19 crisis and the lock down which resulted less travellers, British Airways lost almost £3.8 billion in the first six months of this year in 2020, which they cut over 12,000 jobs, then what happen next was its parent company IAG which happens to be its highest shareholder gave a £2.49 billion emergency funding so that they can get through the pandemic crisis and this shows how financially important shareholders are in the short term and in the long term.
The second on the list in terms of their financial performance are the suppliers and specifically the two biggest suppliers of British Airways which are Boeing and Airbus, they are both very important suppliers and British Airways rely on them and without them British Airways could be in a major trouble which could cause business shutdown in the short term and in the long term because these are the two only major airline manufacturing companies in the world and almost all British Airways aircrafts are made by one of these two companies and they do not just manufacture aircrafts and supply to British Airways but they also give additional ongoing security, mechanical engineering , and software support to British Airways which saves more money and generates more income to British Airways as Boeing and Airbus always develop new technologies which could save more fuel and make journey times shorter, back in 2008 British Airways made one of its Major Aircraft spending which they bought 12 Airbus A-380’s from Airbus and also 24 Boeing-747 aircrafts from Boeing Company each of those aircrafts is expected to generate more income thanks to the suppliers which shows how well they perform financially in British Airways’ business.
The third most highest financial performing stakeholders of British Airways are the customers, those customers are both from locally and internationally, 58% of them were male in the financial year 2016 and the rest 42% were female according to British Airways, the average annual personal income of their customers is little over £56,000 and their average age is 48, the total annual passengers of British Airways in the year 2016 was 45.9 million in which 6.1 million of those were domestic and the rest 39.8 million customers were international passengers from four different continents except Australia which according to British Airways’ annual financial report generated more than £1.7 billion in the year 2016 and that shows how financially important customers are to British Airways’ business.
The fourth most important financial performing stakeholders are the employees of British Airways which include the pilots, flight attendants, aircraft engineers, customer service, managers, aircraft cleaners, and their CEO, the total number of employees that worked for British Airways in the year 2016 was 42, 322 people which were from different countries around the world, these employees were the ones dealing and serving the millions of British Airways customers without them it is almost impossible for British Airways to meet their customer’s demand, pure example could be when in September 2019 British Airways pilots had a two days of strike which resulted the company to lost almost £121 million just within two days of strike by not even all their employees but just their pilots only and that shows how financially important employees are to British Airways.
The fifth most important stakeholders in terms of their financial performance to British Airways are the government authorities which include the UK government, the European union and the rest of other countries that British Airways operates, although the UK government is the main government which has the biggest impact to the company as British Airways is based in the UK and it is also the flag carrier airline of the country, in terms of their financial performance they are very important but they do not perform well all the time but once they decide to perform they could perform much more any other stakeholder on list, for example, during the lockdown of COVID-19 crisis which resulted huge business loses to British Airways the UK government stepped in and gave £300 million funding to cover their staff cost and any other expenses they need as almost all their flights were cancelled and there were no other income to the business and that shows how well governments could perform financially to help businesses such as British Airways which appreciated the government’s support as it really helped them when they were in a financial difficulties.
Number six on the list of stakeholders due to their financial performance are the local and international communities, those communities include people who live in the UK and some around the world, first these stakeholders normally do not perform well financially in British Airways but they could have positive and negative impact that could possibly influence the general financial performance of the company, for example after there were a huge protests organised by the local community and the climate change activists in London city airport in October 2019 against British Airways’ huge amount of carbon emissions to atmosphere has led to British Airways to announce a new measures which could cost millions of pounds to reduce its carbon emissions, those investments could create extra jobs and lift up the company’s reputation which then could result more customers and eventually more income and profits, although it started with protest you could actually see the amount of financial these stakeholders could have.
The last on the list of major British Airways’ stakeholders are their competitors which in this case happens to be EasyJet, Virgin and other, these stakeholders has no direct financial stake in British Airways but same as the above stakeholders of the communities they could have a major financial impact on British Airways depending on the way they act for example back in the early 2000’s British Airways used to be the biggest airline in the UK in terms of both passenger numbers and fleet size and destinations then in early 2004 EasyJet overtook the position by offering a cheaper tickets and probably better customer service and that resulted a negative financial impact to British Airways as most European destinations were overtaken by EasyJet.
The closest theory that could be applied to the British Airways’ stakeholder financial performance could be Dr Edward Freeman’s stakeholder theory which suggests that all the above stakeholders needed to be satisfied otherwise it could affect the short and long term financial performance of the company and that could be avoided by dividing the stakeholders into four different categories, for instance, shareholders and suppliers which has higher power and higher interest needed to be the top priority as they are first the main source of where the business starts as an example, British Airways started their business by first getting investments from shareholders, then the second step was to order aircrafts from suppliers such as Boeing and Airbus so they are the key and the other stakeholders follow.
Also in some ways the other economist called Professor Milton Freeman’s shareholder theory could some how related to this as well, he explained in his theory on how all those stakeholders such as the shareholders, employees, suppliers, customers, government authorities, competitors, and communities are all interdependent on one another, an example for this could be during the pandemic when British Airways almost cancelled all their flights what happened next was thousands of their employees lost their jobs not just for those who were directly working for British Airways but also for those who were working for British Airways’ suppliers such as the food suppliers and so on.
In conclusion, it can be said that all the stakeholders of British Airways are important in their own ways and they all perform or in someway impact directly or indirectly on the financial performance of the company, but at the same time their financial performances and impacts vary in sizes, they are all connected to one another and the overall performance depend on all of them working together in order for British airways to do well financially.
