Conclusion

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes is the chief executive officer of AirAsia Group. He bought a failing government-owned  airline, AirAsia, and manage to turn it into a successful airline. His biggest achievement is to sign up open-skies agreements with several countries within region which gave landing rights to AirAsia.

Networked is very important in Tony Fernandes’s effort to establish AirAsia. Network provide information, financial support, motivation, business opportunities and so on to Tony Fernandes. He get motivation from personal network, that is his parent. The characteristic of his mother of being a successful entrepreneur had influenced Tony Fernandes and the incident that he was unable to attend his mother’s funeral due to expensive airline ticket motivate him to establish a low-cost carrier. Tony Fernandes also get a lot of information and intermediary from public network. He get his idea of establishing a low-cost carrier while watching an advertisement in television in London. Tony also make advertisement of AirAsia in Facebook and Twitter. He also introduce online purchase of tickets of AirAsia, which is very convenient to the public. Tony Fernandes also stress on business network. He is very concerned about his employee and regard them as a driving force to bring success to AirAsia. AirAsia X also make a close relationship with Virgin Blue, an Australia airline.

Tony Fernandes is an open risk taker as he had decided to take a great risk while buying AirAsia from DRB-HICOM. Tony bought AirAsia that had a debt worth RM40 million and he also want to turn AirAsia into a low-cost carrier. Tony Fernandes had took a great risk to clear the debt and accomplish his goal by mortgaging his house to support AirAsia. His success in clearing all the debt and turning AirAsia into a low-cost carrier and profitable airline had made AirAsia one of the popular airline in Malaysia.

Being visionary had brought success to Tony Fernandes. Tony Fernandes had formulated an idea of establishing a low-cost carrier, AirAsia. This had proved that Tony Fernandes is a visionary leader, as he predicted airline which provide cheaper transportation will be popular among the public. He also successful in getting landing rights from other nations for AirAsia, showing that he is a leader that capable of planing the future with wisdom.

Tony Fernandes definitely is a leader that would not give up easily when facing a problem. He is a leader that capable to find a solution to the problem. Tony Fernandes had faced a lot of hardship, but he is always try his best to overcome them. Although Tony Fernandes’s football team, Queens Park Rangers was defeated by Manchester City, but he is still work hard to keep Queens Park Rangers stay in the English Premier League. The happening of  air crash in Indonesia AirAsia on 28 December 2014 perhaps is one of the biggest failure in Tony Fernandes’s career. As Tony Fernandes commented after the air crash, “As your group CEO I will be there through these tough times” and “Our priority is looking after the next of kin for all my staff and passengers”(source: Malaysia Kini), showing that Tony Fernandes is trying his best to lead the rescue operation after the air crash. The perseverance and strong spirit shown by Tony Fernandes had made him one of the most successful entrepreneur in the world.

AirAsia Berhad presents a practicality and difficult perspective in the organization. Realism is the structure of allowing and limiting rules and resources that help frame the roles of workers in operation of an organization. In AirAsia Berhad, in effort to cultivate and affirm job enrichment within the responsibilities of the employees, a degree of power is given to them in order to improve the relations of their employees. Nevertheless this power is restricted to how and when is permitted to be used. It is believed that leaders in this organization are alert that this behavior encourages trust, flexibility and creativity enabling employees to integrate the company’s value. An interaction exits between the employees and the organization’s structure. This will result to less autocratic style with more people-oriented leadership style. In AirAsia Berhad, Tony Fernandes has set best examples of the culture and values in order for his employees to adopt the same values. The charismatic leadership style of influencing employees the values and culture of change, culture of rapid response, culture of being honest and straightforward, clarity of communication and teamwork indirectly results in its goals of delivering customer satisfaction as a reflection of its leadership.