Measuring social sustainable practices in Middle Eastern airlines: the employees' perspective

Abstract

Measuring social sustainability across any organisation is a complex phenomenon involving many criteria and sub-criteria. To address this level of complexity, a multi criteria decision-making process called the 'analytical hierarchy process (AHP)' has been used in this research. Data have been collected from 15 experts of two full service carriers (FSCs) from the Middle East. The findings of this research showed that ten main criteria and 32 sub-criteria are important measures of social sustainability from the employees' perspective. It has been found that employees' well-being, learning, development and engagement are the most important criteria for infusing social sustainability into the airline industry. However, community and organisational culture have the lowest priority weights. Measuring social sustainability from the employees' perspective is a multifaceted issue. The proposed framework can help policy makers to enhance the social sustainability standards of their employees and to gain a sustainable advantage.