There is an interesting case study taken on Qantas Airline from the book, ‘Managing Organizational Change’, ( Graetz, Rimmer, Lawrence and Smith 2006).

The case is about Geoff Dixon, CEO of Qantas Airline, who is going to implement some changes in Qantas in order to maintain its competitiveness in the global competition. One of the innovative change is to switch to a hub based operation system instead of the wheeled based operation. Geoff Dixon intends to establish a new hub operation for Qantas in London. It would meant a cost savings of $20 million a year through economies reaped from efficient rostering, reduced accommodation and allowance costs.

However not everyone is supportive of such change. The unions are against the move. The Flight Attendants Association indicated that they will fight the move. Unions started to organized meetings around the country, making industrial actions inevitable.

Many people believed that Geoff Dixon would have avoided the reactions from the Unions if he has just used ‘emotional intelligence’ in his approach.

Coming up next... the 8 families of emotions.