Germania Case Study: Role Of Finance & Employees In Aviation Industry

Question

Task: 1. Select a topic for your research project and discuss it with the module tutor(s)
2. Ensure that the module tutor(s) supervisor agree(s) that your topic is appropriate for a Level 5 research project
3. Prepare your research project using the template provided and make sure that you follow the specifications for the assignment task
4. All references are to be in Harvard citation format
• Abstract
• Aims, objectives and rationale
• Literature review
• Methods
• Results and discussion
• References

Answer

Abstract
The aim of this Germania case study is to identify the role of finance and employees in the aviation industry. The employees of any organization play an important role in determining the profitability of the organization as the employees are the ones who directly deal with the consumption of the company. A motivated employee is more committed towards the work and the job, thus, leads to higher productivity which in turn increases the profitability of the company. The company's growth and profitability are directly dependent upon the level of customer satisfaction. Also, the finances of the company play a crucial role in determining the growth and profitability of an organization. The research on Germania case study would help me in understanding my qualities for the jobs available in the market and industry in future.

Introduction
Employees play an important role in framing the success of any company. An aviation industry deals in selling their seats to the customers and hence, herein Germania case study, the role of the employee to serve the customer needs so that they attain maximum satisfaction from their services is especially important. As the globalization has increased, the competition for companies has also increased as they now have exposure to not only their own country but the other countries across the globe. Every company has its financial and non-financial goals and in order to meet them, employee motivation is a major factor (Assaf, Al Qudah and Bashayreh, 2016).

This research would focus on the role of finance and employees in the aviation industry in germenia. Also, the research on Germania case study would discuss the research methods which would be helpful in conducting the research.

Aims, Objective and Rationale
Aims
To identify the role of finance and employees in the aviation industry: Germania case study.

Aim expresses the intension of the research and tries to summarize it in one sentence. It should be done in a way that when the aim is achieved it is known. The aim should be specific to the research. The aim of any research is to generate data that can add to human knowledge and which can be tested and measured. Every research should have an aim as it shows the path to the research. The aim is a target that needs to be fulfilled at the end of the research. There can be only one aim in a single research on Germania case study.

Objectives

• To determine the impact of employee motivation in the aviation industry.
• To articulate the importance of finance on services of aviation.
• To evaluate the relationship between employees and service.

Objectives are specific research actions planned to carry out. It describes in-depth what the research on Germania case study is trying to achieve. It is aimed to give direction to the study. It is a kind of declarative statement about what the research is trying to achieve. It accurately describes various parts of research and what is their aim. A researcher should know about all the developments in the field before forming an objective. After that gaps in knowledge should be found that need to be addressed. Research objectives of the Germania case study should be clear and concise. The objectives must be able to summarize what is needed to be achieved by the research. Objectives must be logical, relevant, and observable. Objectives can be of two types – general and specific. General OBJECTIVES ARE BROAD goals to be achieved. Whereas specific objectives are short term and narrow in focus.

Rationale for Germania case study
The aviation industry is related to all the activities surrounding flying, operating, and maintaining an aircraft. It amounts to around 3.6% of the world's Gross Domestic Product which amounts to $2.7 trillion. Aviation is an important component of business worldwide as over a third of all trade by value is sent by air. It is a key driver of global economic development and provides millions of jobs around the world. The aviation industry provides 65.5 million jobs around the world. This includes both direct and indirect employment. Finance is a driving factor in the aviation industry as this industry incurs huge costs for its operations. The airline is hugely funded to survive in the competitive market and maintain the quality of the service.

Problem which the research would identify
As this industry requires an army of human resource huge finances are required to pay their salaries. This industry is estimated to grow significantly in the coming years. It is forecast that the aviation industry will support 98.8 million jobs by 2036 and will be a $5.7 trillion sector. This makes it important to study about employee motivation in this industry as only a motivated employee will be able to contribute significantly and provide the best services. Many airlines are incurring losses and also facing a lack of finance to operate efficiently. Many players are needed in the market to fulfil the huge demand and failing airlines will not be able to do it. That is why this is necessary to study the importance of finance in the aviation industry.

Literature Review
How will you determine the impact of employee motivation in the aviation industry in this Germania case study?
Today, an employee plays an especially important role in meeting the needs and wants of the customer and maximizes the customer satisfaction. Both personal factors and workplace environment mentioned in the Germania case study has an equal impact on the employees' motivation. When a company provides a two-way communication to the employees, the level of motivation in the employee increases, and it also helps the company to understand the views and the thoughts of the employees in a better sense. The employee motivation is causally related to the customer satisfaction, the better they perform and the better is the level of satisfaction attained by the customer. Many companies tend to ignore the employee motivation when they make customer satisfaction survey. An employee is considered as an internal customer of the company. An employees' satisfaction leads to the customer's satisfaction (Agbor, 2011).

To attain higher employee productivity, it is discussed in the Germania case study that an organization should increase the motivation of employees by paying them good salaries, regular increments, bonuses, and growth opportunities. By increasing the employee's motivation, an organization can increase the employee productivity which leads to improved services provided by them. Employee services play an important role in framing the brand image of the company (Barkhuizen, et. al., 2014).

To articulate the importance of finance on services of aviation
A business always strives to grow towards its goals of increasing cash flow, revenue, sales, and profit margin. Finances play an important role in making big business decisions. The livelihood of a business depends upon its profit. One of the major investments that a company makes is in the labour. When a company explored in the Germania case study hires its labour and invests them in terms of the payment and the payrolls that it makes to them, a company expects returns from that investment (Beck, Lu and Yang, 2015). The role played by the finance in a business is to make sure that the money is available at the right time and in the right place. Finances refer to the study of proper fund management and asset allocation (Platis, Reklitis and Zimeras, 2015).

The two main reasons why the finances are important to a business are as follows:

1. Time value of money: money in the future has less value than the money today. The futuristic value of money is always less than the present value of the money. Money's worth in present is higher than the money's worth in the future.
2. Risk: making an investment never ensures a return from it. There is always a risk of bankruptcy.

Corporate finances refer to the decision taken by any business with reference to the money. Monetary decisions in any business are referred to as the corporate finance decisions. The primary and the ultimate goal of the corporate finances are to increase and maximize the wealth of the shareholders. The role of the finances to make sure the availability of the money at the right time and the right place to come in the utilization of the business. It is to make sure that not only enough money is available with the business to pay off its expenses and its bills at the right time but also it helps in the futuristic growth of the company (Han, Bonn and Cho, 2016).

To evaluate the relationship between employees and service within this Germania case study
Employee relationship refers to the relationship between the employee and the employer of any business organization. It means providing fair and goal treatment to the employees of the company so as to maintain the loyalty of the employees towards their work and the organization (Mian and Sufi, 2018). As noted herein Germania case study, it is important to maintain good employee relations to ensure their loyalty and their commitment to their work. An employee plays an important role in determining the success of the business organization. Employees are considered as internal customers of the company. Their performance is causally related to the consumer satisfaction level. A motivated employee tends to indulge in his work with greater productivity and is more committed to the work and the organization (DUNN and Clark, 2019).

The concept of employee relationships explored in the Germania case study are basically the strategies of the human resources management to bring out the best from their employees. This is necessarily required to maintain a competitive edge in the industry by a business. The human resource deals with the issues related to the employee through the employee relationship plans such as pay, benefits, a safe work environment, etc. It refers to the exchange of laborers' productivity with the production of goods and services of the company (Westerlund, Leila and Schmidt, 2019). The better the coordination and collaboration between the employer and the employee, the better is the overall productivity of the organization and better is the quality of the goods and services provided by the business organization because a motivated employee is more committed towards the work and the job. An organization should motivate its employees to maintain a good customer relationship and should provide them with good incentives to maintain the same. A business tends to lose out its customers if the employees of that business are not able to continuously meet the needs of the customers (Han, et. al., 2016).

Methods
Research methods are the various procedures, schemes, algorithms, etc. used in research. All the ways used by the researcher to conduct the research are called research methods. These are planned methods with a scientific approach. These are value-neutral and include various experimental studies, numbers, and statistical approaches. Research methods help us to collect data from various sources and find a solution to the problem. It paves the path for the research to be conducted properly. It shows us how to conduct the research on Germania case study. It describes the design of the research and the way to achieve it. It involves various procedures to conduct the research and collect data. In any research data collection is the most important part and various methods are used to collect it (Bell, Bryman and Harley, 2018).

 Research methods can be broadly classified into two categories-

Quantitative research

Qualitative research

Quantitative research initiated in this Germania case study mainly involves numerical data. It infers and resolves problems using numbers. It helps to take views of a large number of people and summarise it in a better way. Numerical data is always beneficial for the search as it shows the true value and exact values. As these data are not based on people's behaviours but numbers it can be measured easily and inferences can be made based on that (Bryman, 2016).

On the other hand, Qualitative data is mainly based on what people say their feelings and emotions, and other non-numeric elements. This data is unquantifiable in nature. Any data is considered qualitative only if it cannot be analysed in mathematical terms. Quantitative data is more reliable than qualitative data (Davis and Kim, 2015).

Apart from these, there are two types of collected data. Primary and secondary data. Primary is data collected for the first time by the researcher. It is not copied by anyone and is original in nature. In the primary research, information is gathered by self-conducted research methods. This research is used mainly to answer specific questions related to the research. Primary research is mainly aimed at gathering information and answering questions not asked before. The nature of primary research on Germania case study is that it is time consuming and involves higher costs too. To concur with various interviews and surveys requires a lot of time and money. Arranging resources for the same is a time taking process and costs more money. It is good to complete the secondary research first so that the gaps in the information available can be identified. This helps in saving time and cost of the research. For gathering primary data interviews and surveys are the best practices. Specific questions can be asked from the desired people in an interview and their responses can be noted in a much more personal manner. Whereas for reaching out to large no. of audiences’ surveys can be conducted and various questioners can be created for the desired audience. The aim of primary research data is to fill the gap of information already available through secondary sources. Secondary data is the data already available from different sources. It is not original data or idea rather it is availed from the information already available. Secondary data is really important to start the research as it gives an overwhelming flow of information to start with. The questions asked in researches are available in books, journals, websites, etc. it needs to refine according to the needs of the research, and data related to the topic should be collected.

Data required to build this Germania case study can be collected offline and online from various sources like published papers, journals, books, online websites, and academic databases, etc. Secondary data is used mainly to identify the gaps in the information available and provide the basis for primary research. It helps to gain research specific information. Secondary data involves various sources of information and the best source to answers questions of research may vary. It is important to obtain data from various sources to make it more relevant and refined. Secondary data is easy to collect and offers a wide amount of information. It is less time consuming than primary research and less costly too (Hennink, Hutter and Bailey, 2020).

In this research on Germania case study, mainly secondary data has been used to collect data. The data has been collected online from various websites. Data collected is to the point and related to the research only. Data collection was done by asking the right questions relating to research. Data received is then filtered and only specific data needed is retained. Collected data is then analysed to find the shortcomings in the information and further data collection is done. The data collected should contribute towards the objective of the research and it must be measurable in different ways. The secondary data collected in order to prepare this Germania case study helped to answer different questions of the research and helped to come to conclusions. Both qualitative and quantitative data were used to complete the search. Research specific data were used from different websites and different surveys and questionnaires were also taken into considerations. Papers published by various aviation organizations and institutions also helped in the completion of this research on Germania case study. Different case studies of airlines and their operations were also studied and evaluated to complete the Germania case study. The information gained from all these sources was used to complete the research. The authenticity of the information was checked before taking it into consideration (Hennink, Hutter and Bailey, 2020).

Limitations
The limitation of the Germania case study is that very less time was available to collect the data and analyse it because of which only limited data has been collected.

Results and discussions obtained from the above segments of Germania case study
Germania is a Berlin-based airline company. It used to transport more than four million people across the world throughout the year. The two main reasons that the company blamed for it shut down are the increase in the rates of the fuel and also the fluctuations in the currency rates. The company failed to meet its short-term liquidity needs and as a result, the company had to file it for its bankruptcy. The company cancelled all the pre-booked flights of its customers. The company blamed the increasing prices of the kerosene and the fall of the rate of the Euro against the rates of dollars. The company reported in December 2018, that it was facing heavy losses and it made it difficult for the company to run its business and meet the expenses. The company filed its financial woes in the court in January 2019. The company was left with no other options than to file its bankruptcy with the court due to the failure of its financial capabilities. The people who booked the tickets for the flight with the company, Germania had no other options with them and were not provided with any sort of refund from the company due to its financial incapability. The company failed to meet its short-term liquidity requirements and had to shut down the company. The manager of the airlines released an official statement blaming the increase in fuel cost and fluctuations in the rates of the currency as the reason for the failure of the company. The government also raised its hands on the ground of having no concrete plan to support the failing company. The company had around 37 airplanes and mainly following the routes of the Mediterranean and North and East African routes. From the overall analysis done in the Germania case study, it can be stated that the company failed to meet the unforeseen developments required for the need to cash to the company. Unfortunately, the passengers who had booked for the flight tickets with the company were not subject to any kind of replacement from the company due to the financial and the legal capabilities of the company at the time of bankruptcy. However, the other German dominated companies pulled out their plans for the customers to re-book their flight tickets. 

References
Agbor, J.M., 2011. The Relationship between Customer Satisfaction and Service Quality: a study of three Service sectors in Umeå.

Assaf, N., Al Qudah, M. and Bashayreh, A., 2016. Does Transformational Leadership Style effect on Employee Commitment in the Aviation Industry? Germania case study International Journal of Business and Management, 11(12).

Barkhuizen, N., Welby-Cooke, G., Schutte, N. and Stanz, K., 2014. Talent management and leadership reciprocity: The case of the South African aviation industry. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 5(9), pp.11-11.

Beck, T., Lu, L. and Yang, R., 2015. Finance and growth for microenterprises: evidence from rural China. World Development, 67, pp.38-56.

Bell, E., Bryman, A. and Harley, B., 2018. Business research methods. Oxford university press.

Bryman, A., 2016. Social research methods. Oxford university press.

Davis, G.F. and Kim, S., 2015. Financialization of the Economy. Annual Review of Sociology, 41, pp.203-221.

DUNN, G. and Clark, O., 2019. Europe steady beyond the fringe: while Flybmi and Germania have joined the list of casualties, and Flybe was forced into an urgent sale to ensure it could stay airborne, the winter as a whole was not as harsh for the European airline market as it may have seemed. Airline business (2019).

Han, S.J., Bonn, M.A. and Cho, M., 2016. The relationship between customer incivility, restaurant frontline service employee burnout and turnover intention. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 52, pp.97-106.

Hennink, M., Hutter, I. and Bailey, A., 2020. Qualitative research methods. SAGE Publications Limited.

Mian, A. and Sufi, A., 2018. Finance and business cycles: the credit-driven household demand channel. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 32(3), pp.31-58.

Platis, C., Reklitis, P. and Zimeras, S., 2015. Relation between job satisfaction and job performance in healthcare services. Germania case study Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 175(1), pp.480-487.

Westerlund, D., Leila, H. and Schmidt, P., 2019. Enhancing an airline’s internal marketing to improve service quality and customer loyalty: A qualitative study expanding the Internal Marketing Model based on the case of Germania.