Lo sviluppo della dimensione non-aviation nelle aziende di gestione aeroportuale: evidenze empiriche dal caso GEASAR S.p.A.

The airport business has been transformed into a dynamic and competitive industry during last decades. In order to reduce their deficits, in fact, airports have been progressively encouraged to enhance their commercial facet and to produce profits.

In many countries legislators have been giving more opportunities to manage airport business in a market oriented perspective and important modifications have been introduced in the national and international regulations.

Moreover, airports have faced a radical transformation, redefining their business boundaries, in order to focus their efforts on activities that lay outside their core business, i.e. on the “non aviation” activities.

By focusing an Italian case study, this paper try to describe the main changes that are taking place in this industry, with particular attention to the increasing relevance of non-aviation activities. Findings show how the definition of the strategy in the airport business is necessarily the result of a learning process related to the ability of managers to renew a system of dominant and now out-of-date ideas as a key to strategic management.