WestJet Airlines grew from a startup regional carrier in 1996 serving a global airline with more than 80 destinations and 9,000 workers by 2011 with five Western Canadian cities. In a strategic move to execute code sharing and many other tactical IT programs to improve the competitiveness of WestJet, his executive team and the CEO hired an experienced and highly successful CIO to bring WestJet up to par with other airlines. The new CIO was requested by WestJet to assess its IT competence as element of a corporate drive to get competitive advantage by delivering advanced guest services.
The executive saw IT as the key to WestJet realizing its aspirations and corporate growth, so formulated an ambitious plan to restructure the IT organization. However particular senior IT staff members, some of whom had played a leading part in developing the present systems and had been with the business since the beginning, considered the plan was ill advised and impractical. The executive needed to persuade both senior management and the IT group if WestJet expected to attain its strategic aims, that executing the new IT governance model was critical. Sharaz Khan and authors Malcolm Munro are affiliated with University of Calgary.
PUBLICATION DATE: July 25, 2013 PRODUCT #: W13308-PDF-ENG
WestJet Airlines Information Technology Governance and Corporate Strategy Case Study Solution
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