Impact of national culture on airline operations

Organizations absorb their nations’ culture, norms, and beliefs; and therefore culture has unbeknownst influence on the process of service design and delivery. In this paper, we test the role of a nation’s culture on airline service quality. We use a non-perceptual global, airline dataset where cultural differences are measured by Hofstede’s and the GLOBE project’s national characteristics. As indicators of service quality, we use assessments of an independent evaluation agency. We find that cultures that place high value on future orientation provide higher quality airline services. On the other hand, cultures that are high in individualism and uncertainty avoidance tend to perform poorly. High individualism might impair true concern for passenger welfare, and high uncertainty avoidance means that employees are apprehensive towards the constant changes and fine-tuning necessary in airline services. We also determine that the implications of national culture may vary by passenger segments identified by cabin types.