Learning from Alliance Membership: An Empirical Study of Learning from the Failure of Their Alliance Members, Liability and Environmentally Sustainable Airline

Abstract

Through this research, we examined whether airlines vicariously learn more from accidents of alliance members. We set organizational learning as our dependent variable and defined it as a reduction in the subsequent accident rate. Our research also examined the moderating effect of liability (U.S. air carriers) by hypothesizing that U.S. air carriers are more likely to learn from alliance memberships. In sum, the results of our analyses showed that an airline is more likely to learn from alliance members’ failure experiences. Furthermore, findings of the moderating effect of liability (U.S. air carriers) revealed that U.S. air carriers are more likely to learn from alliance memberships. In addition, findings on the moderating effect of environmentally sustainable airlines revealed that an environmentally sustainable airline is more likely to learn from alliance memberships. This research was examined using the accidents database from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of world commercial airlines from 2008 to 2018. We contributed to the previous line of research that explored factors influencing organizational learning and the benefits of forming alliances. The findings of this research could apply to other fields with alliances and accidents.