تجاری سازی و فرودگاه عملکرد: مورد اعتبار فرودگاه دوبلین ایرلند   Commercialisation and airport performance: The case of Ireland’s DAA

1. Introduction Despite the increasing trend towards greater private sector participation in the ownership and management of European airports the fact remains that the State retains full or majority shareholdings in the vast majority of European airports.1 Stateowned airports have not, however, been immune to significant change and challenges. Over the last three decades, European airports have faced increased exposure to competitive pressures as a result of the liberalisation of the aviation sector. In many cases governments have shown reluctance to finance investment in airport infrastructure for reasons such as fiscal constraints. The business operations of European airports have therefore transformed considerably in recent years, with many airports moving from being publicly funded infrastructure providers to becoming diversified commercial self-financed businesses. The changes faced by state-owned airports fall under the rubric of New Public Management (NPM) which has influenced governments around the world since the late 1970s. In broad terms NPM is a reform agenda that involves reconfiguring the boundaries of government agencies (Bilodeau et al., 2006). NPM reforms are mainly directed at increasing the market-orientation of government agencies. They encompass a range of organisational changes including radical measures such as (i) privatisation, either in the form of full divestiture or the introduction of hybrid arrangements such as operational concessions and/or the contracting out of certain services to private companies, (ii) the exposure of government agencies to competition (liberalisation), and (iii) the adoption of an increased focus on profits and commercial performance (commercialisation) Whereas NPM measures such as privatisation have been the subject of intense debate and frequent analysis, the question of commercialisation in the context of continued public ownership has received significantly less attention in the academic literature. This provides the primary motivation for this paper, which examines the case of Ireland’s state-owned airports company, the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), which has undergone significant NPMstyle reforms over the last few decades. The main aim of our paper is to first chart the commercialisation process within the DAA over the period 1994e2014. We then assess the impact of the commercialisation process on the performance of the DAA over the same timeframe using both labour and total factor productivity measures as well as basic financial indicators. In order to disentangle the impact of a number of factors affecting performance – including commercialisation, changes in competition and theregulatory environment, and internal organisational structures and governance – we utilise a model of commercialisation that is adapted from the model of organisational status change originally developed by Dunsire et al. (1988, 1991).