Southwest Airlines is a major American airline

Running head: SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
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Abstract: Organizational practices are important to understand the firm’s productivity and
profitability dynamics. Organizational culture, values and operating practices determine how
successful an organization is in the fierce competitive industry. The respective paper is an overall
brief discussion of organizational culture, values and operating practices of Southwest Airlines
of the USA in 2016.

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Overview of the company
Southwest Airlines is a major American airline which has its headquarters in Dallas,
Texas. It is the world’s largest low cost carrier which was established in the year 1967.
Southwest Airlines has the record of carrying the maximum domestic airlines passengers in
America. The company has unique organizational culture, values and operating practices (in the
context of the year 2016) that are enumerated thereafter.
Organizational culture
The organizational culture of Southwest Airlines was very flexible and cosmopolitan in
nature. It supported employee involvement, satisfaction, morale and motivation with a goal of
high performance that can be related to the mission and vision of the company. Southwest
Airlines, which is one of the leading airlines, was proud of their unique and non- rigid
organizational culture as other firms try to imitative their cultural approach. It promoted
employee well- being as it is based on the principle that “employees need to be treated best in
order to get maximum output from them”. The Southwest Airlines had simple culture which is
fueled by innovation and optimism with a special regards for the employees who work
(temporary or permanent) for the company (Büschgens, Bausch & Balkin, 2013). Such
simplicity of organizational culture has made the company a significant example for the rest of
the corporate competitors it has. The corporate culture of Southwest Airlines was formed in such
a way that it supports the company to achieve corporate mission and vision statements of the
company that needs high quality and popularity to ensure profitability. In order to compete with
its fierce competitors in the market, the highly creative and innovative corporate culture of