PERFORMATIVE DIMENSIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND HUMAN CAPITAL SUSTAINABILITY IN THE INDIAN AVIATION INDUSTRY

The Indian aviation industry is confronting a persistent shortage of pilots, positioning human capital sustainability as both an operational challenge and a cultural concern. Drawing on a performative understanding of organizational culture—where everyday practices, relationships, and professional identities actively shape institutional functioning—this study explores how human resource practices influence human capital sustainability and organizational performance in Indian aviation organizations. The research examines the roles of career management, compensation, organizational support, training and development, work–life balance, and pilot retention as culturally embedded practices that structure pilots’ professional experiences and commitments. Using a quantitative, cross-sectional design, primary data were collected from 328 commercial pilots employed in public, private, and low-cost airlines across India. Data were obtained through a structured questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS and SmartPLS 4. Reliability and construct validity were established through Cronbach’s alpha and exploratory factor analysis, followed by Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with bootstrapping.The findings indicate that organizational support and pilot retention perform a central cultural role in shaping organizational performance, demonstrating strong and statistically significant positive effects. Career management and training and development show significant but negative relationships with organizational performance, suggesting cultural and structural misalignments between pilot expectations, training regimes, and career progression narratives. Compensation and work–life balance do not significantly predict organizational performance within the proposed model. The structural model explains 83.3% of the variance in organizational performance. By foregrounding pilots’ lived professional experiences, this study contributes to an interdisciplinary understanding of aviation organizations as cultural-performance systems and underscores the importance of nurturing supportive cultures, meaningful career pathways, and retention-oriented practices to sustain human capital and enhance institutional performance.