Organisational Culture of Southwest Airlines

This article discusses the organisational culture of Southwest Airlines, focusing on its values, communication strategies, and conflict resolution methods. It explores how the company's mission statement and espoused values align with its enacted values. The article also highlights the importance of altruism and effective communication in the success of Southwest Airlines. Additionally, it discusses the company's approach to conflict resolution and the use of team matrix. Relevant resources and articles on organisational culture of Southwest Airlines can be found on Desklib.

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Organisational Culture
Southwest airline was established in the year 1971 by Rolling king and Herb Kelleher.
The company adopted their mission statements in the year 1980.the primary objective of the
mission statement of the company is there dedication towards the top-notch quality of customer
service that is delivered with warmth, friendliness, company spirit as well as individual pride.
This mission statement speaks in favour of their company Motto also:
“We operate with a warrior spirit, a servant’s hard, and fun loving attitude” (Southwest.com,
2019).
Working in alignment to their mission statement, Southwest airline flies, providing stable
in 1 mint for working as well as an equal opportunity for learning and personal development.
The effectiveness of their service and brand popularity is increased by creativity and innovation
(Schlesinger 2017). The employees are particularly provided with the team concert, caring
attitude is respect with which organisational treats every customer of them.
As highlighted annual reports of the company, southwest associate their espoused values
with the enacted values of the company. This is because the company has been developed by
leaders values, assumptions as well as police regarding people and work. Kelleher, placed in top
management has been playing an instrumental role in developing organisational norms for
Southwest Airlines. the impact of these organisational norms, are evident in the three values of
Southwest Airlines, namely humour, altruism and “luv’. Human is a component of the hiring
criteria for the company where the organisation seeks employees having certain attitude. We
need not be tight and restrictive, but certainly up-beat in their attitude.

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Altruism, as a corporate value of Southwest Airlines starts from the top and goes trickling
downward. Southwest Airlines attaches Great Value and importance with altruism. This is
because they pursue caring and giving to the customers and this is the basis of the development
of the wide customer base of the organisation. Again, as per Warrick (2017), communication is
one of the key factors in Southwest Airlines that is responsible for the success of the company
and the company will also be looking forward to develop a better communication channel in the
future also. Effective communication organisation has provided guidelines that their employees
have been strictly following in their path to success.
For any job, the job description is the eventual description of the responsibilities that the
employees needs to accomplish in their concerned departments. However, the philosophy at
Southwest Airlines is sharing of goals, knowledge as well as mutual respect with a certain
expectation that every employee will include the opportunity of helping their fellow colleagues
at work as a basic necessity of the job role.
Conflict is also an important part of communication and since misconception in group
communication prevails, the company could follow an open door policy. Employees are
encouraged to generate ideas for problem solving in the company. Conflict in the company
challenges their employees to investigate for issues in Greater detail and does they are able to
learn more about the issues and enhance their openness towards new innovations (Holloway
2017). This is why the company utilise team Matrix rather than functional matrix. This is another
example of converting conflict into positive group communication. In conclusion it can be stated
that the founder of Southwest Airlines, Herb. Kelleher has done in combining humour, altruism
and love.

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Reference List
Holloway, S., 2017. Straight and Level: Practical Airline Economics: Practical Airline
Economics. Routledge.
Schlesinger, D., 2017, April. Organizational culture. In 2017 Joint Rail Conference (pp.
V001T06A008-V001T06A008). American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Southwest.com, 2019. About the Company. Available at: https://www.southwest.com/
[Accessed: 20th March 2019]
Warrick, D.D., 2017. What leaders need to know about organizational culture. Business
Horizons, 60(3), pp.395-404.
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