Quantitative Techniques in Business

Objectives and Brief Description of the Companies

Running a business is not an easy task to manage appropriately and this statement is nearly impossible to debate. Business requires intelligence, creativity, being rational, sometimes risky, and even friendly (speaking about efficient team work). Meeting all aforementioned these requirements means to obtain a wide range of various skills, appropriate and effective use of which is important to achieve any success in a certain sphere of business. By different occasions of using these skills, a particular experience is formed. Taking this into consideration, it is needless to say that skills and experience are important to the performance of the company. Consequently, a profitability rate of the company depends on these factors. These aspects can be regarded as internal ones, while there are a lot of factors, which do not belong to the company, but still can affect the profitability and quality of the performance of the company. It may be economical instability, inflation, strong level of competition, unpredicted problems with logistics, political situation in the country, and so on.

Therefore, there is a link between experience and skills and external factors. It is obvious that experienced and skilled management is more able to resist any outer influence. In order to identify how two companies of the same sector should plan their strategy, a short survey has been carried out among the employees of both companies. The survey has been held in a form of a questionnaire and has been aimed at distinguishing how strong the employees opinion about importance of skills and experience in coping with external pressure on the company is. The results of the survey will be discussed further, but first it is necessary to give a brief description of the companies under analysis.

The first company is Lufthansa that is a well-known German airline famous for being the biggest airline in Europe. It is regarded as an experienced company in this sphere due to its long history and route network, which has spread all over the world. Actually, Lufthansa is powered by national industry enterprises, so it saves costs on export and customs taxes, and estimates accurate demand. Thus, it is reasonable for the German industry to support this airline. Furthermore, Lufthansa has developed a rational strategy about division of sections inside the company. Lufthansa Cargo, Austrian Airlines, and Germanwings are not the same company, though belonging to Lufthansa, but they perform their business separately from each other. Such a structural approach helps the management to see clearly how each segment of the enterprise works.

In addition, it is necessary to say that the company is a member of the Star Alliance, which includes as well such airlines as Air Canada, Scandinavian Airlines, Thai Airways International, and United Airlines. It is to be regarded as an intention to establish reliable international partnership, which has anyway put Lufthansa on the right side of this field of business. It is needless to say that the company does not accept the challenge to take power over other airlines and set the monopoly because any monopoly sooner or later leads to losses. In such a way, by sacrificing its chances to obtain the monopoly in the sphere, Lufthansa has a sufficient number of partnerships and has kept itself going for many years.