Company Background
Airbus is an aircraft manufacturing subsidiary of EADS, a European aerospace company. Based in Toulouse, France, and with significant activity across Europe, the company produces around half of the world's jet airliners.
Airbus began as a consortium of aerospace manufacturers. Consolidation of European defense and aerospace companies around the turn of the century allowed the establishment of a simplified joint stock company in 2001, owned by EADS (80%) and BAE Systems (20%). After a protracted sales process BAE sold its shareholding to EADS on 13 October 2006.
Analyze Airbus’s internal attributes
Airbus strategic focus is set on size, it was the first company that took the risk of redefining its strategy. The initiative from Airbus to develop the new A380 model was quite a challenge. It was a brave strategic move that required an even more serious implementation. On the other hand, the strategic focus is also affecting the internal attributes of Airbus.
The resource-based view (RBV) is an economic tool used to determine the strategic resources available to a firm. The fundamental principle of the RBV is that the basis for a competitive advantage of a firm lies primarily in the application of the bundle of valuable resources at the firm’s disposal(Wernerfelt, 1984, p172; Rumelt, 1984, p557-558).
The resources of the organisation are those assets that contribute to the generation of value added. As a starting point, it is useful to divide them into three broad categories. (Colllis, D and Montgomery, C 1995)
Tangible resources
Tangible resources are the physical resources of the orginisation that contribte to its value added.
Finance - The sources of income of Airbus were orders from airline companies. Aircraft constr ...