Competing with CRS-generated information in the airline industry.

For over 20 years, computer reservation systems (CRSs) have been cited as a source of competitive advantage for the airlines that developed them. This paper reviews the developments that have given rise to such advantage, emphasising the use of CRS-generated information as a competitive tool within the airline industry. New evidence is presented suggesting that the control, dissemination and manipulation of CRS data by owning airlines continued to allow them to capitalise on their investment at the expense of competitors during the 1990s.

The role of knowledge facilitators and inhibitors: lessons from airline reservations systems.

Strategic frameworks seeking to explain how an organisation may generate superior performance are numerous. Earlier approaches centred on the competitive position of an organisation within its industry, with subsequent attention focused on an organisation's core competences. More recently, research has concentrated on knowledge and organisational learning. By reference to a study of airline-developed computer reservation systems (CRSs), this article explores the strategic importance of information in creating knowledge to generate superior performance. By examining developments in the use, management and control of information derived from CRSs, evidence is presented to explain how CRS-owning airlines have circumvented regulatory controls and increasingly competition to sustain competitive advantage through the development of their information and knowledge systems. This research demonstrates the need for organisations to develop 'knowledge facilitators' that foster the creation of new knowledge. Equally, managers must develop 'knowledge inhibitors' that help to sustain competitive advantage by limiting the abilities of competitors to create knowledge themselves.

Industrial relations in the privatised coal industry: continuity, change and contradictions.

This study seeks both to describe and account for the patterns of industrial relations which have emerged in the UK coal industry since privatisation in 1994. In doing so, it also aims to address some of the wider questions concerning the relationship between ownership and industrial relations. A series of hypotheses are advanced concerning how changes in ownership might affect industrial relations within the industry, and whether such changes would have positive or negative implications for organised labour. A case study approach is utilised to analyse labour relations developments at a number of collieries, and it is shown that the industrial relations strategies adopted by management within the new coal enterprises have had a determining effect upon the patterns of labour relations within the privati sed industry. This study also demonstrates that the emergent pattern of labour relations in the privatised industry is characterised by both continuity and change. However, whilst continuity with the patterns of labour relations established during the final decade of public ownership is shown to have had negative implications for organised labour within the industry, the changes associated with privatisation are demonstrated to have been a more ambivalent force. Change has, in different contexts, had some positive implications for organised labour, but in the majority of cases, the implications for labour have been negative. Overall, therefore, this study concludes that privatisation has had a significant influence upon industrial relations within the coal industry, and that organised labour has been detrimentally affected by these developments.