Business Organizations

You are a new mid-level acquisitions manager for a major airline organized as a corporation. Your boss directs you to select and lead a team of your co-workers in conducting a thorough survey of the market to identify interesting new projects and developments which might enable the airline to rapidly and dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (especially CO2), with a goal of reaching net zero before 2050. At an airline trade show, a representative of a major aerospace company gives your team a confidential presentation on a clever and promising technology that the company is working on, one that could provide the first airline to implement it an opportunity to leap well ahead of competing airlines in GHG emissions and do so at a competitive price. The rep indicates that the project has stalled due to a falloff of investment capital attributed to the state of the global economy, but that if an airline such as your employer were to make the further investment needed by the aerospace company to bring the technology to market (estimated at $2.5 billion US), the airline would receive a discount of 15% below the price offered other airlines along with priority for the purchase of up to the first 2,000 units of the finished product purchased.

At what level would you expect the airline's corporate decision on whether to take advantage of that opportunity? Concisely explain your logic.

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