The Relationships between Entrepreneurial Orientation, Organisation Structure and Ownership in the European Airport Industry

Air transport in Europe is experiencing unprecedented levels of demand. Industry forecasts suggest a doubling of demand by 2020. Airport managers are under increasing pressure to provide innovative infrastructural solutions in order to meet this demand. Proactively supplying capacity to air transport users can involve a degree of risk-taking. Organic organisation structures, as opposed to mechanistic structures, are considered to be sufficiently flexible and dynamic in nature to facilitate such entrepreneurial activities. Moreover, the private sector has long been associated with more entrepreneurial endeavors than the public sector. This paper sets out to establish if European airports have the appropriate organisational characteristics to meet the challenges being posed by the air transport environment. Data was collected from 98 European airports which measured entrepreneurial orientation (composed of three components, viz. innovation, proactiveness and risk-taking), organic organisation structure, and ownership type (public, private and mixed). Results indicate that the sample airports exhibit moderate levels of both entrepreneurial orientation and organic structures. Not unsurprisingly, the three components of entrepreneurial orientation were found to be positively and significantly related to organic organisation structures with risk-taking displaying a higher correlation than its two counterparts. By contrast, risk-taking was not significantly linked to private and mixed ownership types whilst both proactiveness and innovation were. Implications for managerial practice are considered along with a future research agenda.