Ryanair Case Study: Organizational Behavior Analysis

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ORGATIONAL
BEHAVIOUR
RYANAIR

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................3
TASK 1........................................................................................................................5
A) RYANAIR’S ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AND THE NATURE OF
POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR OF ITS MANAGEMENT..........................5
B) HOW THE CULTURE YOU IDENTIFIED IN (A) HAVE AFFECTED THE
FEELINGS AND BEHAVIOUR OF STAFF AND ULTIMATELY PERFORMANCE
OF RYANAIR...........................................................................................................8
TASK 2........................................................................................................................9
A) EVALUATION OF HOW CONTENT AND PROCESS THEORIES OF
MOTIVATION COULD BE USED TO ENABLE INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM
PERFORMANCE AND HELP RYANAIR TO SUCCEED........................................9
TASK 3......................................................................................................................12
A) IDENTIFICATION AND EXPLANATION OF THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF
TEAMS WHICH OPERATE WITHIN RYANAIR AND WHY THIS RANGE OF
TEAMS IS IMPORTANT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ORGANISATION.............12
B) ANALYSIS OF WHAT WOULD MAKE THE TEAMS AT RYANAIR MORE
EFFECTIVE BY APPLYING TEAM THEORIES....................................................14
C) HOW THE USE OF PATH-GOAL THEORY COULD IMPROVE TEAM
PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTIVITY IN RYANAIR.........................................16
D) BARRIERS TO IMPLEMENTING A NEW ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE
IN RYANAIR..........................................................................................................19
CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................... 20
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................21
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INTRODUCTION
This report is going to cover the keen study of the organizational behavior of an Irish
airline company "Ryanair". The latter sections also have the study of the impact of
the organizational culture of Ryanair on its employees and its staff with proper
evidence and the incident happened to the company. This report has also used
different models and approaches to determine and find out what is the internal
culture of Ryanair. Ryanair has different types of teams working on specific parts of
the company which are discussed below and the study of how motivation affects the
team members of these teams is also done. The last sections of this report have
identification for the barriers that can stop the organizational culture of the company
and some recommendations.
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INTRODUCTION TO RYANAIR
Ryanair is Europe's number one airline company. It is an Irish company which was
founded in 1984. It transports on an average of 139 million customers yearly. This
airline service has its service establishment in 32 countries and it connects 222
destinations in these countries. The airline is known for its fairly low prices. Ryanair
provides low-cost fares by decreasing the service quality of the airlines and the
facilities i.e. this airline service reduced comfort with money. But that doesn't mean
that the airline is very poor and is of no sense. Ryanair has more than 13000 highly
skilled employees which made it win the title of number one On-Time Performance
award. Also, the company holds a safety record for 33 years (Ryanair, 2019).
Figure 1 – Ryanair
Source – Ryanair Home
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TASK 1
Title – Organisational Culture, Politics and Power
A) RYANAIR’S ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AND THE NATURE OF
POWER AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR OF ITS MANAGEMENT
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
Every organization has different and unique work ethics and the environment. This
unique environment of the organization can be referred to as its culture. In
organizations, such an environment has an invisible but powerful force that impacts
the members of that organization which is called the culture of that organization. In
other terms, an Organizational Culture is an environment or a system created within
the organization by shared assumptions, values, and beliefs which govern how
members will behave in that organization (Schein, 2010). This decides how the
member dress, act, their external behavior, work styles, etc.
CULTURE WITHIN RYANAIR
Handy’s Model can easily identify Ryanair’s Organizational Culture using. According
to this model any organization follows four types of cultures:
Figure 2 - Handy's Model
Source – Handy’s Image
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 Power Culture – Power culture is established when a few individuals having
power tries to take all the decisions and do not give importance to the act and
the behavior of employees but judge them on the basis of the work they do
(Russo, et al. 2013).
Ryanair has used this culture for establishing rules within the organization and
maintaining its policies.
 Task Culture – The task culture is formed when the company's members
work as a team to solve a problem and or any project. This culture can give
creative ideas if the team with the right mix can be created (Russo, et al.
2013).
Ryanair has this culture and is used to get out of different problems and help
the company to keep going on. Due to the strong impact of power culture the
company has affected staff negatively.
 Role Culture – A company with role culture has predefined roles for the
members at different positions with some rules to follow. Such companies
have a strong organizational structure and they often take fewer risks (Russo,
et al. 2013).
Ryanair does not follow this culture because the company has faced a lot of
critical times and taken risks for minimizing the price rates for the fares and
taken a lot of risks.
 Person Culture – In such a culture, the company is just a bunch of
individuals where the individuals are more precious to the company. People in
such culture just work together for the organization (Russo, et al. 2013).
Ryanair does not have such culture too because the highly skilled individual of
the company works according to the rules of the company and in a team to
keep making the growth.
POWER
The power within an organization can be thought of as the ability to make decisions
and control the individuals of the organizations. In other words, power can be
thought of as a degree of control an individual has over the situations and the people
within the company and can alter them by his/her decisions (Fairfield, 2011).
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POWER WITHIN RYANAIR
According to French and Raven’s power types, there are five types of power:
Figure 3 - FR Power Model
Source – FR Power
The types of power evident in Ryanair are Referent Power and the Expert Power.
The company has highly skilled leaders and also powerful leaders who act as a role
model for the employees and encourages them to follow these leaders (Wood,
2014).
POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR
This can be thought of as the unofficial, informal and silent activities that are used
sometimes to influence the company and have a positive impact on it, achieve
targets quickly and also to prevent the negative circumstances that the company is
going through (PB, 2019). Ryanair has a political behavior within the organization but
the company had to face any negative impacts of this and have to reinvent the wheel
many times.
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B) HOW THE CULTURE YOU IDENTIFIED IN (A) HAVE AFFECTED THE
FEELINGS AND BEHAVIOUR OF STAFF AND ULTIMATELY
PERFORMANCE OF RYANAIR
The company's culture strongly affects its staff and its employees. This not only
affects the staff but the performance of their employees also. A good culture will
motivate the employee to work hard for achieving the company's goals. In the same
way, a negative and bad organizational culture can affect the employees and their
performance in a negative way.
HOW RYANAIR’S CULTURE AFFECTED ITS STAFF
As we see through the above theories that the Ryanair follows strong Power Culture
and Task Culture. This has affected the staff in a negative way. The company has
implied many strict rules and low salary negotiations to maintain its low-cost policy.
As a result of this, the staff members conducted strikes many times. An example of
this is the incident happened on happened at the end of December when the Spain
crew members announced to conduct a strike on 8th, 10th, and 13th of January 2019
(RS, 2019). The staff members were obsessed with the political culture and the
limited growth within the company. Instead of supporting the employees Ryanair was
making powerful decisions that were diminishing the employee’s abilities and forcing
them to work on the low wages and with no special benefits. The conduct of strike
made Ryanair cancel many flights and which caused the company a great loss (RS,
2019).
The political and the power culture within Ryanair destroyed its inner ethics and
made the employees work for less than they actually get to be paid. The leaders of
the company were trying to conduct low-cost fares with high-quality services but the
company needs a lot of investment to reach their goal. For establishing this strategy
the company reduced the employee’s facilities and benefits instead of raising its cost
for fares. This made the internal culture of the Ryanair to shift towards Political
Culture and Power Culture and in turn, affected the staff in a negative way and the
strikes were the result of this (RS, 2019).
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9

TASK 2
Task – Motivating Teams and Individuals
A) EVALUATION OF HOW CONTENT AND PROCESS THEORIES OF
MOTIVATION COULD BE USED TO ENABLE INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM
PERFORMANCE AND HELP RYANAIR TO SUCCEED
MOTIVATION
The word motivation came from the word “motive” which means to drive someone’s
feelings to achieve a goal or a motive (Miner, 2015). In an organizational context,
motivation can be generated from various factors like money, recognition, etc. In
companies like Ryanair motivation is very important and helps in driving the
employee's feelings to achieve the organization's goals. Motivation has different
theories like:
 Content Theory – What are the things that create motivation?
 Process Theory – Why & how these things motivate?
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONTENT AND PROCESS THEORY
The major difference between content and process theories of motivation are:
Sr.
no. Content Theory Process Theory
1. This theory deals with things that
create motivation.
This theory deals with the reasons
behind the things that create
motivation.
2.
This includes theories like
McClelland’s achievement
motivation, Maslow's Hierarchy
Theory, Alderfer’s ERG theory, and
Herzberg’s two-factor theory (Miner,
2015).
This includes theories like Locke’s
goal setting theory, Victor Vroom's
expectancy theory, Adam’s equity
theory and Skinner’s reinforcement
theory (Miner, 2015).
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3.
This theory helps in identifying the
resources and the necessary things
for motivation (Miner, 2015).
This theory helps in analysis of the
things that create motivation (Miner,
2015).
APPLYING MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS TO RYANAIR
Maslow’s theory states that every individual has some basic needs which can be
arranged from low to high. These needs can be:
Figure 4 - Maslow's Pyramid
Source – TV, 2019
Maslow’s Theory makes sure that the employee doesn’t get to the higher need
before its all lower needs are accomplished. This theory can help Ryanair to identify
that in what order they should offer which things as motivation to the employees
(Lester, 2013).
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APPLYING SKINNER’S REINFORCEMENT THEORY TO RYANAIR
This theory states the motivational behavior of employees can be created by the
results of the work they perform i.e. providing positive feedback t the employees
when they perform good work, like praise, rewards, etc. (Skinner, 2014).
Providing negative reinforcement means to fulfill any of the need of the employee
after completion of the task given to him.
Punishment will be given to the employee when he/she has an unwanted behavior
which causes loss to the organization. Ryanair can use this as a motivation for their
employees to get quality work (Skinner, 2014).
IMPACT OF MOTIVATION ON INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM PERFORMANCE
The motivation will definitely help in increasing the performance of the individual
employee in an effective manner. Ryanair’s incentive approaches encourage the
team members to work more elegantly and provide quality work for the growth of the
company. The leaders of the organization use different theories (other than those
mentioned above) to encourage the whole culture and the individual in turn to make
continuous growth (Skinner,2014). The motivation for sure increases the work
performance of the employees and the staff members. As an example the motivation
can be anything; incentives, extra work benefits, occasional gifts, counseling and
goal visualization too can do the job.
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