Prioritization of organizational structure dimensions for risk management: An application on flight training organizations in Turkey

Risks are inevitable part of operations in aviation organizations. These risks cannot be eliminated completely but they can be controlled. There are different approaches to control risks in organizations. Accordingly, there are risk management practices in all aviation organizations. However, organizational factors that may affect risk management are usually ignored while managing risks. One of the most important of these factors is the organizational structure. There are studies explaining risk management and organizational structure seperately in the literature but there is not a study explaining the relationship between these two. The aim of this study is to discover the relationship between risk management and organizational structure. Prioritization of dimensions that determine the organizational structure is aimed for the risk management practices in flight training organizations. Six dimensions are determined with literature review and the quality-safety managers who participated in the research are listed these dimensions according to their importance. Then, the best organization is found for the risk management application according to their organizational structure among seven flight training organizations in Turkey which included in the research. The theoretical base, importance and findings of the study are discussed in the following sections. Keywords: Risk Management, Organizational Structure, Flight Training Organizations, Analytic Hieararchy Process