Airline alliances: When competitiveness can be approached with specific social networks

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present global airline alliances from a complementary and original angle to the existing works: “specific social networks”. “Social” as it is an inter‐organisational network through business relations between airline companies and “specific” as these are formal relations of contractual types (joint marketing, code sharing agreements, etc.).

Design/methodology/approach

It is an empirical study, about cooperation agreements between global regular airlines, over a time period of six years from Airline Business Review database. The graph theory is used to measure social network and graphics representation for illustrations.

Findings

The results show that there is a real process of social embeddedness correlated to the airline alliances members' experiences. Their structuring as networks varies in time following a life cycle and their specific morphologies affect their performance.

Practical implications

The paper proposes numerous measures to approach the structure of airline alliances and graphics representations to illustrate networks.

Originality/value

The paper draws a synthesis from the morphology and morphogenesis of airline alliances, proposing thereby some of their structural properties which have an impact on their competitiveness.

Citation

Saglietto, L. (2009), "Airline alliances: When competitiveness can be approached with specific social networks", Competitiveness Review, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 304-322. https://doi.org/10.1108/10595420910977425