Organizational isomorphism in European Air Navigation Services

In Europe today there are 57 main Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), providing Air Navigation Services (ANS) to airspace users. They operate 75 area control centres (ACCs). The European Commission (EC) with the Council and the European Parliament have been introducing since April 2004, regulations establishing the “Single European Sky” (SES). They liberate and regulate the market of ANS making it gradually part of the “Single Market”. Forced by regulations the currently fragmented airspace of Europe will have to be organized by 2013 in a small number of Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs). Charles Darwin observed2 that organizations under environmental constraints develop characteristics that help them to survive and even thrive. In respect, the European ANSPs are under institutional and regulative pressure to comply with a number of conditions and methods. In our hypothesis this will force the ANSPs to develop isomorphic characteristics and finally revert to collaborative schemes of operations. The paper takes stock of recent developments and performs observations of phenomena that may be preceding the formation of particular organizational isomorphic patterns leading to collaborative operating environments and systems in ANS.