Metaphorum 2026 · Emerging Methods and Tools, and Contemporary Practice

Charting the Boundaries of Accountability for Enhanced Airport Operational Resilience

Busy commercial airports are very ‘large’ intricate systems where up to several hundred organisations keep ‘stepping onto one another’s toes’, to the detriment of the operational effectiveness, resilience and viability of the whole. Boundaries of accountability are poorly understood. Over three decades of liberalisation of global air transport has created situations of largely decentralised control, where behaviours of least use to the collectivity (passengers included) are incentivised, and effective steersmanship is hindered. Mandated by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority to urgently enhance its on-time performance, a major UK airport operator embarked with the University of Edinburgh on a quest for a new experimental epistemology of airport operational resilience. In particular, we sought one that incentivises effective dynamic interactions across its (eco)system of airport stakeholders. Applying the VSM, we developed and tested a new toolbox of audits (System 3*) to enhance the airport’s capacity to absorb variety. Highlights include (i) cyber-systemic means to find out where the accountability boundaries actually lie and (ii) an implementation of Beer’s indices of performance that, measuring across any one such boundary, highlights promising routes for effective intervention. All the tools employ existing airport data feeds and are now regularly used by the airport operator to facilitate meaningful cross-organisational problem-solving. Validation at two other European airports took place. Following that, we were invited to partake in EUROCONTROL’s current work aimed at harmonizing airport performance measurement across Europe. We conclude the paper by discussing the extent to which our contributions are applicable to non-airport contexts. Speaker: Maurizio Tomasella — University of Edinburgh Business School

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