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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether characteristics of French organizations can be found in the Airbus Group, ancient European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) Group, and how these characteristics have evolved over time in comparison to German ones.

This article presents an in-depth case study by using a contextual approach, considering influential factors which are likely to influence the evolution of organizations.

The analysis shows that the Airbus Group reflects characteristics of French organizations: the importance of strategy, the principle of honour, centralization of decision and power, the role of the state in the capital and its influence via professional networks of its elite coming from the Grandes Ecoles. These findings confirm a relative continuity of national peculiarities over time. The recent evolution of the company also highlights the German influence, notably in terms of shares and management positions.

The case study demonstrates that the Airbus Group has become a multinational company where contextual elements and organizational structures regulate intercultural relationships of interests, influence and power.

Five contextual factors are proposed, which allow to understand and structure the peculiarities of French organizations, in comparison to German ones as well as power distribution within the Airbus Group.

Boeing Company has been the world's leading producer of large commercial airplanes for several decades. However, in the late 1990s, Europe‐based Airbus Industrie competed with Boeing aggressively and captured almost fifty percent of the over‐100‐seat airplane market. This paper examines the battle between Boeing and Airbus, including a concise report on Airbus' launch of its A380 superjumbo project. The paper also contains the authors' recommendations to Boeing and the U.S. government.

At this year's Farnborough Air Show Airbus Industrie exhibited on its stand one‐twentieth scale models of its entire aircraft family — the A300–600, A310, A320, A321, A330 and A340.

This paper aims to address the questions of different outsourcing strategies between Airbus and Boeing and point out the theoretical limits of the resource-based view (RBV) approach that must be broadened with a finance perspective. Owing to the complexity of systems, the aircraft industry is nowadays structured around a well-organised value chain of product development and manufacturing. However, according to the RBV, capabilities attached to some systems and components are strategic resources and must be kept in house to maintain competitive advantage. In commercial aircraft avionics, critical systems such as flight controls fall directly under this rule, due to substantial risks of passenger safety they deal with.

This study is based on two comparative studies concerning the A330/340 and A350 programmes at Airbus and their equivalents at Boeing, the B777 and the B787. The data are both primary (financial and patent data) and secondary (semi-structured interviews and documentation.

The main result highlights the limits of the RBV model to understand why Airbus has chosen to re-internalise the development and production of flight control systems contrary to Boeing. For both, cost reduction is the main objective of outsourcing, but European firms are more careful with critical resources. The financialisation of aircraft manufacturers’ strategies is another explanatory factor relevant to understand why Boeing outsources strategic resources such as flight controls.

The authors demonstrate the potential of multiplication of research methods to address a question. Second, they try to bring together different theories in a preliminary effort, which gives them some promising stuffy perspective for future works.

By addressing both the RBV and the financialisation perspectives, the authors provide an interesting view of the COmplex Products and Systems (CoPS) challenges.

The findings of this research must provide key of interpretation for business managers, which may consider the two faces, knowledge management and financial, to explain corporate performance.

Several originalities are relevant in this work. From a methodological point of view, the authors offer a comparison between the two main players of commercial aircraft manufacturing, an oligopolistic industry. Second, the data they choose to rely on are both qualitative and quantitative to strengthen the results. Third, at a micro level, this study is original in its approach of linking outsourcing to financialisation.

Boeing has been a pioneer in the utilization of strategic alliances with the Japanese in the design and production of aircraft. This strategy has been driven by the escalating costs of airframe and engine design and manufacture, and the significant competition of Airbus as well as domestic competitors in the global aircraft market. Boeing's alliances with Japan have worked well with several families of aircraft and appear to have produced a loyal customer; however, there have been sharp criticisms of Boeing for the closeness of its association with Japan. These criticisms have largely been aimed at the danger posed by unintentional and unavoidable transfer of aerospace technology. This paper examines the history of Boeing's Japanese coalitions, the benefits, and the dangers posed by Boeing's continued aerospace partnership with one of America's largest economic foes.

This paper reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

On the face of it, the last decade or so has been pretty kind to Airbus. The European airline manufacturer has regularly outperformed US rival Boeing and has seen its market share almost triple from 1995 levels. The impending arrival of the A380 would provide the icing on the cake. However, a succession of hitches has plagued the project and helped confirm suspicions that not everything in the garden is rosy. But Airbus has stubbornly refuses to acknowledge any difficulties – at least publicly. The company has continued to present a united front even though there is widespread awareness of the conflicts within its ranks. Much of the unease is down to the pan European composition of Airbus, with French, German, Spanish and British companies incorporated within parent organization European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. (EADS). Although the 1999 formation of EADS was supposed to nip such rivalries in the bud, it has effectively only served to aggravate them. The dual French‐German management structure of the parent company has heightened cross‐nation rivalries, while fierce power struggles between French executives has provided another unwelcome distraction.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

This is an impression of the Paris Salon de l'Aeronautique drawn from visits during the first three days: a more detailed report on the exhibits and the flying displays, together with “An Engineer's Impression of the Paris Air Show” will appear in our next issue.

Faced with the fierce competition prevailing in the world's aircraft market, Daimler‐Benz‐Aerospace Airbus GmbH has developed a highly complex, internationally used planning system (APC) for Airbus Industrie in Toulouse, France. This IBM client/server solution was implemented to improve customer satisfaction, reliability and punctuality, while at the same time cutting costs and making use of synergistic effects.

Few industries can match aircraft manufacture and carriers for their volatility – there are so many external factors that can affect the bottom line. The last two years have seen a global economic downturn, the war in Iraq and threats of terrorism taking their toll. The SARS virus was another entirely unpredictable factor that has affected the industry adversely and which helps to account for the fact that air carriers took delivery of about 580 big jets last year, around 270 down on 2001. Such imponderables make the current battle between Airbus and Boeing even more fascinating.