Shapes of Tourism Employment

13Hybrid Companies, Inclined to Reasoned Human Resource Management

13.1. A hybridization of models

The world of regular airlines has become much more complex with the liberalization of the sky and the exit of States in the management of former national airlines that have become majors, when they have not literally disappeared (Pan Am, Sabena, Swissair, etc.). The vast reorganizations of the sector have often been driven by the threat of bankruptcy [HAR 05], justifying drastic decisions (Southwest Airlines, Aer Lingus) that have led to radical changes in the business model [WAL 06].

The invention of low cost by a regional operator in search of balance and its large-scale imitation [LAW 02] by new aggressive players prompted regular airlines, which had minimized its scale, to face up to it by developing their own subsidiaries at low cost (by creating or buying them out) and/or to counter the phenomenon by reorganizing their medium-haul network.

The companies we are interested in here were not necessarily born low-cost, they have become so or have partially converted to it through economic survival, sometimes quickly constrained and forced by competitive pressure, but never excluding the social dimension from the equation of the model, also founded on the commitment of human resources and the development of a culture based on the human factor [BAM 09]. This fundamental difference introduces a major break between the different types of airlines, known as hybrid airlines, and ultra-low-cost ...