Abasyn Journal of Social Sciences – Vol (10), Issue (2), 2017.

Knowledge Management Dilemma at Airbus

Najam Akber Anjum

Assistant Professor, School of Management, Institute of Business
Administration, Karachi

Abstract
In today's knowledge-based economies, exploitation of the existing knowledge
in an organization and resulting creation of new knowledge has become vital.
This journey of Knowledge Management (KM), however, doesn't come without
impediments and hardships. The presented study focuses on one such situation
arising in Airbus, the world's leading aircraft manufacturer. This
qualitative research reveals that the implementation of KM practices in large
organizations can be a challenge in management of change. Although, Airbus
developed a very expensive and specially developed ICT-based platform for
knowledge sharing and exploitation, its use could not reach the desired levels.
This study analyzes this situation in light of the culture, structure, and economic
condition of Airbus and presents some recommendations for a smooth
implementation of the KM system. Written in the form of a case study, this
paper is designed to be used in an undergraduate level course to discuss issues of
change management and knowledge management implementation in large
organizations.
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Airbus, KM Practices

This case study reports the change management issues, the Filton
plant of Airbus in Bristol faced, during the implementation of its newly
built Knowledge Management (KM) system. The study was conducted in
August 2007. This was the time when the company was going through
crises due to the delivery delays of its latest innovation, the giant A380
passenger aircraft. This case analyzes the implications of this crisis and
other cultural issues contributing towards creating some resistance
against the KM system implementation in the Filton plant of Airbus in
Bristol.
Knowledge Management at Airbus
Knowledge Management (KM) efforts in Airbus started in 1996
when MOKA (Methodology of Knowledge Acquisition) was launched
with the intention of acquiring useful engineering knowledge. Later,
KBE (Knowledge Based Engineering) started in 2001. KM in those days
was an integral part of the KBE department. In 2004, efforts of the KM
staff won the confidence of the top management and as a part of a
reformation program called Route 6, budget was allocated to form a
separate KM department. The KM tools RISE and Yellow Pages were
launched in the beginning. RISE (Reuse, Improve and Share Experience)
is a ‘Lessons Learnt’ database and Yellow Pages contain contacts of all
Airbus employees throughout Europe with their brief introductions and
expertise.

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The role of a KM department at Airbus is that of a facilitator.
The operational centers of the organization like Engineering, R&D and
Finance are considered to be the owners of their knowledge. The KM
department helps them elaborate their knowledge strategy and diagnose
their knowledge needs. The KM department also ensures the efficient use
of the available tools of knowledge sharing and dissemination and
provides innovation management methods. Figure 1 shows the flow of
activities performed to diagnose the M needs of an operational center and
prescribe a solution. This entire process at Airbus is called the
Knowledge Management Overall Diagnosis (KMOD).
Identify Assess and
knowledge prioritize
areas knowledge
areas
Choose
Project solutions and
scoping action plan
Identify &
Kick-off prioritize KM
meeting initiatives
Practices
Assessment

Lead management Staff

KMOD actors
Local domain managers EDDE KMOD team

Domain experts Validation

by

Figure 1: The KMOD Process

Source: Airbus S.A.S (2005)

The KMOD process is run by the Engineering KM team

(EDDE). It includes the identification, assessment and prioritization of
knowledge areas running parallel to the assessment of suitable practices
for a particular department or operational center. The steps of
identification and assessment of knowledge areas and suitable KM
practices are performed under the supervision of a domain expert. A
domain expert is a person having expert level knowledge in the related
discipline. The lead management and the local domain managers are also
considered to be the critical players in pursuing these practices once
started, and are therefore an essential part of the entire process. Each step
either ensures the presence of the respective representatives from the lead
management or gets the decisions validated by them. Once the
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knowledge needs of the department or operational center are determined,
the knowledge solution is devised, the action plan is prepared and the
KM initiatives are prioritized. The result of this process is a knowledge
map showing the criticality levels of different knowledge areas and an
action plan suggesting different actions to effectively fulfil the
knowledge need of the operational center. With the help of this process
in different departments the KM force at Airbus is facilitating the
management of relevant knowledge through a series of different KM
tools. A brief description of these tools is given below in order to help
understand the work dynamics needed to overcome the resistance against
their implementation.
1- ExTra
ExTra stands for Expertise Transfer and is a program aimed at
obtaining, codifying, and making available for use the knowledge of
employees before they leave the company. Some of the actions taken
through ExTra are:
• Writing lessons learnt
• Structuring an overlapping period
• Contributing to a Book of Knowledge (BoK)
• Conducting a training module
• Organizing conferences
• Setting-up a series of meetings
• Managing a forum including FAQ
By using these methods, Airbus aims to preserve and make the
most of the experience and knowledge of the employees leaving the
company.
2- Yellow Pages
Yellow pages accessible through the intranet portal of Airbus
enable a user to find the contact details, current roles, past experience
and other relevant information about a colleague. The yellow pages at
Airbus are praiseworthy for their comprehensiveness but with an
unsupportive culture and lack of user feedback and measuring standards,
whether improvement is needed and what improvements to make are
difficult to determine.
3- Communities of Practice (Professional Networks)
Communities of Practice are groups of people having common
interests. These communities are commonly known as professional
networks at Airbus and are differentiated according to their size, i.e., the
number of contributing members. The usefulness of these networks is
measured by the frequency of meetings and contacts between the
members. In this context, three scenarios are defined (Airbus S.A.S,
2005):

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SCENARIO S: 8 experts meet once a month for a two-hour lunch to
keep in contact,
SCENARIO M: 50 material engineers from F, D, UK and E meet twice a
year to exchange the latest findings. In between, they share emails and
interesting documents in eRoom,
SCENARIO XXL: 3000 CATIA V5 (a product development software
tool) users communicate in a lively web space on the Airbus web portal
with newsletters, forums, FAQ, Yellow Pages, work spaces and web
events to help each other.
These networks are supported by the KM team in terms of consultation,
coaching and training for the people in building their own CoP and
taking it along its life cycle. It is believed in Airbus that the KM team
does not itself form a CoP, rather it encourages its formation and
facilitates its growth and smooth working.
4- RISE: Reuse Improve and Share Experience
RISE is a ‘lessons learnt (LL)’, ‘best practices’ and ‘design
rationale’ data base accessible through the Airbus intranet portal. RISE
offers a set of solutions for sharing and reusing lessons learnt. Airbus
believes (Airbus S.A.S, 2005) that a proper use of RISE could avoid at
least 5% of rework modifications.
5- KCP: Knowledge Capturing and Publishing
KCP helps Airbus employees keep up to date on best practices in
doing a certain task in various parts of the organization. Employees are
encouraged to continuously update and upgrade the best practice
database commonly known as a Knowledge Book.
6- Business Search
Business search is a knowledge management platform which
provides a single sign-on (SSO) one click access to the numerous
internal and external sources of diverse data. The size of Airbus and its
transnational nature of work have caused its knowledge repositories to be
of various different types and architecture. Business search combines all
of them through a single search engine. It translates the syntax of the
business search into the syntax required by the database it is linking to
and vice versa. Business search reduces the searching time considerably
and makes all of the knowledge available throughout Airbus facilities
around Europe.
Effectiveness of KM Tools and Resistance to Change
The knowledge management system at Airbus has been designed
to draw benefit from and return benefit to the intellectual capital it
possesses in the form of the huge workforce and its decades long
innovative history. It has developed and used most of the tools and
techniques available in the research literature or in practice in other
organizations. Its intranet portal contains enormous information
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databases that are available to its employees in the form of applications
like RISE and KCP repositories. Experience and expertise of its
employees are fully exposed to each other in the presence of yellow
pages. The Airbus transnational KM team EDDE and local individual
KM departments are fully equipped to help its employees form and
successfully run communities of practice for the creation and
exploitation of knowledge. The drainage of useful knowledge caused by
retirement and resignation has been minimized through the expertise
transfer program called ExTra. The European aircraft industry is, hence,
aware of the need for creation, dissemination and exploitation of the
organizational knowledge and is fully equipped with the necessary tools
in order to continuously innovate on its own knowledge to remain in the
market. Airbus has immense knowledge management capability, but are
the enablers all in place and do the employees have the will to make use
of this capability is a question, however, that needs to be answered.
Despite the presence of all these computer databases and portals,
their use was not found up to the satisfactory level. The response from
the interviewees, when asked about the culture and KM implementation,
clearly showed a discomfort about the resistance from the employees
against the use and implementation of the KM tools made available by
them. There appeared to be both internal and external factors
contributing towards the resistance against using the KM tools.
Following could be a few of them.
The Structural Dynamics
Airbus has a typical matrix structure, with several layers of
management, in which every individual is controlled by two managers.
One is the functional manager and the other is the operational manager,
with specific programs in between. The operational side controls all the
program management activities, and possesses all the resources, while
the functional side facilitates the determination of and compliance with
the strategy. Responsibilities are not equally divided between these two
sides in terms of managing the individual and the proportion of
management control over individuals is also prone to variation,
depending on the stage of the project or the program. However, the
annual performance report is usually completed by the functional
manager. The functional manager is also considered to be more
supportive and helpful in pursuing the KM activities, but since the
budget resides with the operational managers, decisions are usually taken
by them. These functional and operational positions of managers are not
confined within a national boundary. There are cases where the
functional manager is based in Toulouse while the operational manager
is in Bristol. This was particularly true for the coordinator taking care of
the KM activities related to Airbus A380.

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The Cultural Dynamics
The setup of administrative and design offices at the Filton plant
of Airbus indicate a very open and cooperative culture. The offices have
an open layout with partitioned half-walled cubicles for different groups
in a big hall instead of separate rooms. Most of the KM members sit in
the same partition with the head of the KM team sharing the space with
them. The communication within and out of these cubicles around the
hall is open and informal and regular queries about different formal and
informal matters continuously get exchanged. The interviews revealed
that the KM department team members had clearly-defined
responsibilities and no one member completely knew about the expertise
of their colleagues which indicated a focus on individual specializations.
In the beginning, the KM team decides to target only engineering
department and the finance & administration for the implementation of
KM practices. The finance and administration department is viewed by
the KM team as having a culture of cooperation, sharing and flexibility.
They are perceived to welcome new ideas which can help them improve
their work. The culture of engineering on the other hand is viewed as
somewhat rigid and inflexible. Although the engineering people are more
open to new ideas, their mindsets are the most difficult to change as they
question everything before accepting these new ideas as part of their
work. This attribute of the engineering department is believed to be due
to the emphasis on safety needs in their workplace. To ensure the safety
of the aircraft, no change in the established design and manufacturing
practices is made unless fully tested and authenticated and this
psychology extends to their ground level working style.
With regard to the implementation and working of the KM tools,
the KM team believes that although the top management supports these
efforts, middle management does not appear committed to the KM
system and does not believe in the usefulness of these tools. On the shop
floor, the workers are observed to be bound by strict production
schedules. Due to the limited time availability, feedback from the
knowledge users is sparse and hence the measurement of performance,
benefits and shortcomings of the tools and improvements required is very
difficult. Furthermore, no component of the incentive system was found
to be directed towards motivating the workers for using the KM system.
The Economical Dynamics
As already pointed out, at the time of the study, Airbus was
going through a tough period due to delays in order deliveries of A380
aircrafts. These crises triggered the process of downsizing and
outsourcing most of the manufacturing tasks. With this anticipated
reduction in manpower, a program named as Power 8, and the expected
takeover of the management of the manufacturing part of the company
by a large manufacturing competitor, retention of the organizational
knowledge acquired even more importance and became an essential part

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of the business strategy of Airbus. The ExTra program is an example of a
knowledge retention initiative taken by Airbus. ExTra stands for
Expertise Transfer, a program dealing with the capturing of knowledge
of the employees leaving the job or retiring. Due to the job insecurities of
workers and financial issues, this program became a big challenge for the
KM department.
Teaching Note
Case Synopsis
The case presents a scenario where the leading aircraft
manufacturing company of the World, Airbus, is facing issues in
implementing its newly built Knowledge Management system. The KM
system developed by Airbus contains all the latest tools that could help in
making the full use of existing knowledge of its employees. These tools
focus not only on the Information and Communications Technology
(ICT) based techniques but the social practices as well. Due to some
internal and external factors, however, the use of these tools is not up to
the required level. Some of these factors are highlighted in the case and a
room for discussion is left on the role of these factors in creating the
resistance to change. This case narrates a classical set of circumstances
that normally occurs when a change in organizational practices is
attempted. The issues faced by Airbus as observed in this study can be
related to managing change for improving or implementing knowledge
management practices in large organizations.

Research Methodology
A case study approach was used for this research. This included
observational visits and semi-structured interviews from the members of
the knowledge management department. Some attributes defined by Yin
(2003a & 2003b), as given below, can be used to elaborate the nature of
a case study.
 The unit of analysis i.e. the main target of analysis for data
collection and discussion,
 Source of evidence i.e. the method used to collect the data
 The type of case study i.e. single or multiple
 Type of data collected i.e. qualitative or quantitative and
 The presentation of findings i.e. exploratory, descriptive or
explanatory
In this case, the units of analyses were the compatibility of KM
practices with the existing culture of Airbus and the change strategy
being used by Airbus to cope in case of an incompatibility. The source of
evidence was observational visits and semi-structured interviews
conducted with the members of KM department of Airbus. This was a
single case study with qualitative data collection and the findings are
being presented in an exploratory manner.

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As part of the data collection process, semi-structured, face-to-
face, on-site interviews were conducted with eight members of the
knowledge management team including the head of KM department.
These interviews were aimed at understanding the dynamics of
organizational culture of Airbus for a KM system implementation and
important change management issues that come as a result of this effort.
These interviews lasted for an hour each and the answers to the general
questions were substantiated from every second interviewee. A few
brochures were also provided by the KM team, which also became a
source of theoretical information about the KM tools being used in
Airbus. The information available in the brochure was verified by the
subjects during the interviews. A list of interviewees can be found in
Appendix I.
Since the interviews were semi-structured, a questionnaire was
prepared containing some open-ended questions (See Appendix II for the
Questionnaire). These questions enquired and probed into the following
factors:
 the capabilities and effectiveness of the knowledge management
tools and practices used at Airbus,
 the extent of the compatibility of these tools and practices with
the business strategy,
 the reward system
 the suitability of the organizational culture and structure to
knowledge management.

To improve the reliability of the data, the process of

triangulation was used by making the interviews semi-structured,
repeated with eight different subjects from the knowledge management
department. Triangulation is the process of gathering information from
multiple sources or by using multiple data gathering tools (Gray, 2004).
Case Analyses
It is clear from the case description that the KM team at Airbus
is in trouble and facing serious resistance from the potential users and
contributors of the deployed KM system. The resistance to change in this
case is evident from the fact that Airbus has spent millions of pounds in
developing and launching a KM system but employees are not willing to
fully utilize it. The motives for this resistance appear to be embedded in
the organizational structure, culture, and financial position of the
company. This is because these three aspects got highlighted during the
interviews with subjects. Students, therefore, may be asked to analyze
the situation from these perspectives. Following is a detailed analysis
that can be discussed with students after doing a 30 minutes debate on
the possible causes of this resistance.

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Effects of Structure
As mentioned in the main text, Airbus has a matrix
organizational structure. The merits and demerits of this structure on the
intended change may be discussed with the students. For example, it can
be seen that multiple management layers in this structure make it too
vertical and thus might be affecting the quality of communication. In
vertical structures, a message originating from the top management level
can change considerably in meaning by the time it reaches the ground
level. This could be one of the reasons why, in spite of top management
commitment, the KM efforts are not fully implemented in the routine
work. The effects of dual control nature of a matrix structure can also be
discussed with students. For example, in this case, according to one
interviewee, this dual control hierarchy sometimes helped in pursuing a
task because in approaching an individual that line of authority is
followed which offers more support to the cause and the efforts of KM.
The functional manager usually requires a clear picture of long term
benefits and compliance with the business strategy if an initiative is to be
taken. Conversely, the operational manager can be convinced by
showing them how the planned activity can provide the solution to their
day-to-day problems. Hence, depending on the situation either of the
managers can be chosen as the best route to individual workers. This
makes life easier for the KM personnel. On the other hand, in this
structure, it is sometimes very difficult to hold a single person
responsible for a certain task which leads to the difficulty in deciding the
ownership of mistakes. Also in undertaking tasks, difficulties can arise if
there is a conflict of interest between the functional and operational
sides.
Effects of Culture
Analysis of the organizational culture of Airbus can be made
through famous and mostly agreed upon theories like the ‘culture types’
given by Charles Handy or the components of an organizational culture
defined by Edgar Shein.
Handy (1999) describes cultural values as the approach of an
organization towards assigning and practicing authority, the style of
organizing the routine work and the reward and appraisal system.
According to him, cultural values also decide the flexibility and
formalization of processes for getting the job done and whether results
are given importance or proper rules are followed. Four different types of
organizational cultures defined by Handy (1999) are: Power culture, Role
culture, Task culture and Person culture.
The power culture usually exists in small entrepreneurial
organizations, where decisions emanate from a central power source.
Few rules and procedures, emphasis on results, tolerance for various non-
standard means of acquiring the results and a quick reaction to change
are the characteristics of a power culture.

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The working of a role culture heavily depends on rules and
procedures and particular individuals have less importance than the
positions they fill. If an individual performs his duty according to the
prescribed rules, the organization will work well. A role culture can be
inflexible to change but is suitable for companies where technical
expertise and depth of specialization are more important than product
innovation and product cost.
In a task culture more emphasis is laid on the results, the skills of
individuals responsible for outcomes and collaborative team working
rather than rules and procedures. The task culture thrives where speed of
reaction, integration, sensitivity and creativity are more important than
depth of specialization. It is the culture most in tune with current
ideologies of change and adaptation, individual freedom and low status
differentials.
The person culture is comprised of persons and personalities.
Every individual has a unique position and the organization exists to
support their individual needs. Barrister’s chambers, architects,
partnerships, social groups and small consultancy firms often have this
person orientation.
In the light of the attributes of Handy’s cultures, it is only the
task culture which seems appropriate for today’s knowledge company
because a task culture reinforces commitment to task achievement and
thus influences the drive for the creation and dissemination of knowledge
in a learning organization. A power culture on the other hand enables
creativity at the top but seriously hampers creativity lower down in the
organization. In a role culture, people work according to the rules
prescribed within functional silos, with little or no attention to innovation
in daily work practices: it does not systematically support knowledge
creation or sharing across functional borders.
Schein (1992) similarly describes three levels of organizational
culture: artefacts, espoused values and basic underlying assumptions.
Artefacts are the visible manifestations of the culture that are easily
noted during, say, an outsider’s first few visits to the organization. They
include the architecture, the tidiness of the place and the behavior and
attire of people. Espoused values are those strong and entrenched beliefs
attached to the thinking and actions of a certain group with previous
history and shared experience. This includes the way decisions are made
and problems are tackled. Underlying assumptions are literally
assumptions which, though invisible, motivate actions and other more
external aspects of the culture. They evolve with years of experience and
strengthening of espoused values. They are deep-felt beliefs, the
violation of which would be considered imprudent and foolish.
These theories, therefore, may be explained to students.
Furthermore, the description of artefacts and working style in the
administration and engineering departments provided in the case can be
used to explain the culture of these departments of Airbus. Additionally
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the effects of this culture can be studied on the change management
effort. Once the understanding of the culture is established, the need for
change in the existing organizational culture can be discussed as
explained next.
Requirement of Cultural Change
The study shows some incompatibility of the behavior of
engineering department with the kind of attitude required for knowledge
sharing and dissemination. One reason for the inflexibility of the
engineering department is the intense but warranted focus on safety
because of the nature of their work. These values are so deeply
entrenched in the culture of the engineering work environment that
people tend to resist any change - big or small - in the established
routines and work practices. KM personnel, therefore, are facing
problems in the implementation of the tools and in encouraging the
engineering workers to utilize the facilities of KM to innovate on their
processes and to exploit existing knowledge. There is, thus, a need of
some efforts to change the culture of engineering departments before the
KM system is fully implemented. One more indicator of the requirement
of cultural change from the structural point of view is the fact that the
middle management is not committed to the cause of KM
implementation and use as much as the top management is. Since,
middle managers are the path to the shop floor level workers, the
implementation of KM in its truest sense has so far not been possible.
At the lower most level, the shop floor workers are also found to
be apathetic about the requirement of use of KM tools. This perceived
lack of commitment is mainly due to the strict production schedule and
partially due to the absence of any incentive system supporting the KM
activities.
There are, therefore, requirements of a change in the
organizational cultural of the areas where the KM system is intended to
be implemented. Another aspect of cultural change that needs to be
considered is the change in behavior of employees due to the
deteriorating financial condition of the company. The delays in the order
delivery of A380 aircrafts a major downsizing activity is looming. This
fear of losing job has a crucial role in making employees more conscious
and careful in sharing their knowledge because it might be this
knowledge due to which they save themselves from getting filtered out
of the company.

Implementation Strategy
The KMOD process illustrated in figure 1 can be critically
analyzed to explore this aspect of the case. The figure clearly illustrates
the involvement of different organizational stakeholders during the
stages of KM system development and implementation. It can be seen
that although people at different managerial position are consulted, the

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lower level employees cannot be seen getting involved anywhere. Lead
managers may be assumed to be representing these workers but an actual
involvement of these workers might have reduced the resistance that is
being faced now by the KM department. The criticality of involvement
of different stakeholders during the implementation, therefore, can be
discussed with the students in detail.
Another apparent limitation of the KMOD process is the absence
of any steps catering for the identification of the key performance
indicators and the development of a procedure for their assessment. The
assessment is necessary because it can help in analyzing the impacts of
the availability or absence of a particular knowledge in a specific
functional area. This might be the reason that there is no process or
metric available to appraise the usefulness of their knowledge
management tools. The Airbus Yellow Pages only measures the number
of hits or number of times a profile is accessed. Similarly, RISE only
assesses the usefulness of the documents by measuring their use. These
measures are not entirely useless and can help in improving the
capabilities of the tool but they cannot fulfil the bigger business needs of
assessing the outcomes of this investment on the business performance or
the performance improvement of its employees and functional centers. It
is quite possible that if Airbus had included the steps of the identification
of the key performance indicators and the impact of knowledge on them,
the development of metrics might have been easier.
Conclusively it can be said the Airbus is facing implementing issue
due to the following problems:
1. The lack of awareness of the employees of the usefulness of the
KM system,
2. Unavailability of extra time for KM activities,
3. Lack of motivation to be a part of the KM practices,
4. Lack of involvement of employees during the requirements
identification and design phase of KM tools
5. Fear of losing power and importance if the possessed knowledge
is given away.

What could be done to tackle the implementation issues?

For any reformation or improvement program to succeed in an
organization, the culture and the structure are the two issues of vital
importance. Their compatibility with efforts is essential and the reverse
can easily cause the program to fail. Nielson and Pasternack (2006) give
the concept of a resilient organization. According to this framework, the
four building blocks of the resilient organization namely, Decision
Rights, Information, Motivators and Structure, should all be integrated
into and compatible with the change efforts. The authors put forward the
concept of the organizational DNA. According to them, like the DNA of
living organisms, every living organization can be considered healthy or

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unhealthy based on the condition of the four building blocks of its DNA.
These four building blocks are the decision rights, information,
motivators, and the organizational structure.
 Decision Rights refer to the division of responsibilities among
different departments and levels of the hierarchy. Who decides
what, how many people are involved in the decision process,
where one person’s decision making authority ends and other’s
begins, are the questions which can help in defining the decision
rights of an organization.
 Information points to the system and the established
organizational practices which ensure the availability of
necessary information to the decision making authorities so that
they can make the right decision at the right time. It also refers to
the information and communication system through which the
business strategy, vision and the necessary knowledge can be
made accessible to the employees. The knowledge management
system is a part of this building block.
 Motivators are the incentives, rewards and inspirations provided
by the organizational culture or the leadership which can help in
achieving the organizational goals. This building block can
shape the culture and values of an organization and can steer the
organization in the direction of the vision. The alignment of an
individual’s personal goals with the organizational goals is the
main function of this building block.
 Structure refers not only to the hierarchical structure of the
organization and the placement of key people at critical
positions, but also to the coordinating and reporting practices
actually used. The structure influences and is influenced by the
other three building blocks. If not designed prudently, structure
can block the utilization of expertise and capabilities of the
employees in an organization.

Nielson and Paternack (2006) believe that “the right people –

imbued with the right values, armed with the right information, and
motivated by the right incentives are the driving force behind a wining
organization”. They call such a healthy organization a Resilient
Organization where all of these four building blocks are integrated and
aligned with the business strategy.
Among other attributes of a resilient organization is a drive to
prevent the feeling of complacency. Kotter (1990) likewise stresses the
importance of building a sense of urgency. He produced an eight-step
process of implementing change in organizations. These steps are:
1. Establishing a sense of urgency
By making people visualize and realize the opportunities and failure
possibilities
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2. Form a powerful guiding coalition
By forming a team of the most capable, suitable and empowered and
motivated personnel
3. Create a vision to help direct the change effort
By deciding what to change, how much to change and how to change
4. Communicating the vision
By making people know the expected future through seminars,
conferences or newsletters
5. Empower others to act on the vision,
By facilitating the right actions, by providing the resources needed
and by changing any structural or personnel incompatibilities
6. Plan for and create short-term wins,
By celebrating and rewarding small improvements to gain the
momentum
7. Consolidate improvements and produce still more change,
By utilizing the momentum and further energizing the process
through improved policies and more resources
8. Institutionalize new approaches.
By making the personnel believe in the usefulness of the new
approaches and practices and by standardizing them

Apart from his change model Kotter (1990) also lays out three
processes for leading change in organizations. They are:
1. Establishing direction by communicating the vision
2. Aligning people towards the vision
3. Pushing the workforce towards the target through motivation and
inspirational leadership

Another shorter and much simpler process of change can be seen

in the Dobson’s model. Based upon a survey of UK’s 1000 largest public
and private sector organizations, Dobson (1988) identified a four step
approach to cultural change:

Step 1: Recruit suitable and replace unsuitable employees

Step 2: Promote those who display the required traits to the
position of influence
Step 3: Effectively communicate the new values
Step 4: Align reward and appraisal system with the efforts

Although Nielson and Pasternack’s model is not a step approach

as compared to the recommendations of Dobson and the change process
of Kotter, they have some basic commonalities. Development of a clear
vision, communication of that vision, empowerment of people and
supporting the achievement of the vision through the right kind of
leadership and reward are themes that run through these three change
models. Neilson & Pasternack’s concept of decision rights is similar to
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Dobson’s idea that personnel with the right abilities and attributes should
be placed in positions of influence. Both emphasize the empowerment of
the right people to make decisions. In all of the three cases, the
importance of motivators, especially rewards and leadership, is
highlighted.
The comparison of Airbus with this concept of the resilient
organization highlights some differences between the resilient
organization and the Airbus approach towards managing the change
required to embed the KM program. It is notable however, that although
sharing the same problems in the organizational building blocks, the
attitude of the engineering and finance departments towards the KM
tools and practices are quite different. During the interviews it was felt
that there was a clear difference in the satisfaction level of the
interviewees coordinating the KM activities for the engineering
department and those for the finance departments. These two
departments are presently the main targets for KM practices
implementation at Airbus. Of these two, the engineering department is
quite resistant to change while finance has accepted the KM initiatives
and therefore is now the center of attention for most of the activities. One
reason for the inflexibility of the engineering department, as already
discussed in the findings section, is the intense but warranted focus on
safety because of the nature of their work. These values are so deeply
entrenched in the culture of the engineering work environment that
people tend to resist any change - big or small - in the established
routines and work practices. Highly demanding and busy schedules of
the operational personnel in the engineering department can also be a
reason because the difficulty in taking out time for the KM activities is
the most common excuse made by the engineering personnel.
Conclusions and Learning Points
Following learning points can be obtained from this case:
1. A change implementation effort has to be complemented by
supportive culture, structure, knowledge, and incentive system.
2. All those employees who are intended to become a part of the
planned change should also be involved during its requirements
gathering and designing stages.
3. Expensive IT based knowledge management or other
administrative tools could be only as good as the willingness of
the people who are supposed to use them.
4. A culture of trust and sharing is vital for the success of any
knowledge management program

Appendix I
List of interviewees sorted according to their seniority level in
descending order

S. No. Name Assignment

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1 Florence Sellini Head of Department
2 Joe Cloonan KM Research
3 Darda McDonagh KM of A380
4 Damien Mantoulan RISE*
5 Spenser Wilkinson CoPs**
6 Rafi Oghoubian KM of A350
7 Jayne Coppola Yellow Pages
8 Henry Collet Business Search
* RISE: Reuse, Improve and Share Experience
** CoPs: Communities of Practice

Appendix II
Questionnaire
1- Can you please give me a brief history of the birth and evolution of
knowledge management at Airbus?
2- What is the envisioned role of knowledge management and innovation
in the delivery of business strategy?
3- How has the knowledge management program actually been helping
Airbus in meeting its strategic goals? What has been achieved so far?
4- How would you describe the Airbus culture?
a. What aspects of Airbus culture have helped you to embed the
knowledge management program and related practices in Airbus?
b. What aspects of Airbus culture have blocked your efforts to
implement knowledge management in Airbus?
c. What efforts have been made to change the organizational culture
to enable acceptance of knowledge management and its related
policies and practices?
5- Please give me a clear picture of the organizational structure of Airbus
locally and internationally?
6- What are the reporting and coordinating relationships within the
structure?
7- How has the current structure helped/hindered knowledge management
and innovation?
8- What are the 2007-2008 priorities in the Airbus Knowledge
Management and Innovation Program?
9- How is the success of the program being measured? What hard and
soft measures are being taken? In your view, how useful have these
measures been in reflecting progress?
10- Please describe any HR strategies and programs that directly or
indirectly encourage employees to share and create knowledge for the
benefit of Airbus.
11- Have there been any changes in reward strategy such that knowledge
management and innovation are rewarded (financial or non-financial)?
12- Please give some examples of processes Airbus uses to:
d. Create knowledge
e. Codify knowledge
f. Share knowledge
g. Disseminate information
13- In your view, how well have these processes been working?

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