The arguments and counter-arguments regarding Aer Lingus’s decision to abandon Shannon continue unabated. But one claim is particularly intriguing: that ‘it’s a commercial decision’. In one sense this argument doesn’t really tell us a whole lot – or as Homer Simpson might opine: ‘Well, d’uh’. But in another sense it is an aggressively political argument for, at root, those who trot this line out are actually telling us to ‘shut-up and sit down’. It goes something like this:
A company makes a decision to take a particular course of action. To interfere with that decision is to distort the efficient operation of ‘the market’. Even to question it is to reveal one’s profound ignorance and incorrigible disrespect of ‘the market’. There is only one way for a ‘company’ to make decisions – and that is on commercial grounds. And once a commercial decision is taken, well that’s that.
Let’s do some deconstructing. First, the company – Aer Lingus – as a ‘company’ did not make the decision to abandon Shannon. The shareholders did not make the decision. Even the Board of Directors did not make the decision. Mr. Dermot Mannion informs us that it was a handful of employees who made the decision – ‘an executive management decision.’ So secret was this decision that not even the owners and directors were involved. My Marxist friends are going to have re-write their arguments: modern capitalism doesn’t just alienate the workers from the means of production, it seems to alienate the owners and directors as well (so should the neo-liberals, if they were being honest: for now companies apparently are not beholden to their shareholders, only their management).
To question a ‘commercial decision’ is, in effect, to question the natural order. This is not an economic or even a commercial argument; it is ultimately a religious one. How many people were lit up in the Auto-de-Fes because they were profoundly ignorant and incorrigibly disrespectful of the natural order as enunciated by the ecclesiastical class? Not only must the argument of ‘commercial decision’ be taken on faith, this faith must be distilled for us by a priestly class of commentators and analysts. Of course we don’t burn the stupid and messers anymore. We subject them to lectures from Irish Times’ editorials.
The evangelicals of commercial decision-making tend to ignore how the real world works. First, it assumes decision-makers have access to all the relevant information– symmetry of information as it is called in the neo-liberal bible. However, this is, by sheer dint of volume, impossible. Information is always and everywhere asymmetrical to a greater or lesser degree. Commercial decisions are, therefore, both relatively informed and uninformed at the same time. Given that the makers of ‘commercial decisions’ are limited in their knowledge of the future only makes the whole exercise a bit of a gamble as this extremely short list of commercial follies indicates:
- The Premier smokeless cigarette that needed special instructions on how to light
- New Coke and its lesser known disaster, OK Cola
- Crystal Pepsi
- The Sony Betamax
- The iconic Edsel
- Pets.com – famous for its sock puppets
My favourite is Atari’s video game ‘E.T.’, nominally based on the movie, but actually based on players finding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in time for E.T. to be raptured before the Apocalypse. It sold 12 copies with the remainder of the output being buried in a landfill in New Mexico.
What formed the basis for all these product launches? ‘Commercial decisions’. And most of these companies had more experts, more analysts, more market researchers than Aer Lingus will ever have.
The second laughable assumption is that those who make ‘commercial decisions’ are all a bunch of Vulcans – highly logical, emotionally-challenged beings who can assess the odds of a successful away mission to the fifth decimal point. The reality is thankfully different. People approach decisions with pre-conceived notions, a bit of arrogance, a little wistful thinking, and sometimes a tad hung-over. Business organisation theorists cite two examples (among a multitude) of real-life business people’s behaviour:
- Decision involvement inertia: managers stay committed to a particular course of action, despite the overwhelming negative repercussions, because they don’t want to ‘lose face’.
- Decision involvement distortion: managers distort new ‘market’ information so as to fit in with his/her initial decision.
Remember that when you hear the stories circulating about how Aer Lingus management are determined to ditch Shannon come hell or high water because they always resented being there due to the ‘commercial decisions’ of its former single shareholder; how they want to aggressively announce their newly found ‘commercial autonomy’ with authority regardless of the commercial or social consequences; how they want to shred collective labour agreements and toss them to the Northern winds. These are human, not Vulcan reactions.
So, limited information and subjective lines of reasoning: the fact is that Aer Lingus didn’t just make a ‘commercial decision’ for themselves, they made it for a number of other businesses in the region. Indeed, they imposed it ruthlessly. This imposition is such that we are witnessing an interesting alliance coming together – multi-nationals, B&B owners, trade unionists, Ryanair, public agencies – all with their own ‘commercial interests’ (I won’t bother mentioning that many of these interests supported the privatisation of Aer Lingus; that I-told-you-so argument is for another day).
Ultimately, we suffer from economic analysis that likens a business to some farm in the Australian outback, tending its flock and shooting its rabbits, hundreds of miles away from its nearest neighbour. The reality is that businesses share the same apartment, exist next door to, upstairs and downstairs from, each other – sharing the basement laundry room and the roof-top garden. That they also share this location with employees, consumers, people generally only shows how complex and inter-dependent we all are in complex market societies.
This ‘tending flock, shooting rabbits’ analysis leads to some bizarre statements. As always, Stephen Collins churns out one of the best:
‘. . . it would be very hard to justify Government interference even though it is still a major shareholder in the company.’
So, now, even ‘major shareholders’ shouldn’t interfere with the decisions of the company they own and live with in the same room.
Others will will outline the pros and cons of various strategies that shareholders and stakeholders can employ to reverse the Aer Lingus decisions (those strategies are ‘commercial decisions’ too). But the Left and the trade union movement now have an open-goal opportunity. Labour could lead the charge, initiate demands for the recall of the Dail, and table a motion calling for Government to create an alliance with other Aer Lingus shareholders to prevent the abandonment of Shannon (which is not the same as nixing the Belfast move). This could energise its ‘Western’ presence which in most areas is practically non-existent while at the same time show up Fine Gael’s hypocritical crocodile tears (they supported privatisation, they support ‘commercial decisions’). It would also pin those Fianna Fail TDs and Ministers to the collar – put your vote where your mouth is.
Labour and the Left could work with trade unions that have shown a far sighted approach to building alliances as SIPTU’s Joe Cunningham spelt out:
‘The chances of me standing up and defending Michael O’Leary are nil. But on this occasion let me be clear. If at the end of the day as a result of an emergency general meeting we can get this decision reversed, well then whosoever supports it, so be it, we are quite happy with that.’
This is where the Left should be now: In support of regional policy, economic growth, infrastructural development, and companies with all their stakeholders. At the end of the day, to say that something is a ‘commercial decision’ begs the question – is it a ‘good commercial decision’ or a ‘bad commercial decision’.
And, if in the process we can teach people the simple fact of modern life – that one person’s (or business’s) ceiling is another person’s floor – then it will have been a good day’s work.
Notes on the Front 
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