Ryanair Case Study: Organisational Culture and Team Dynamics

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ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................. 3
Task 1......................................................................................................................... 4
Task 2......................................................................................................................... 8
Task 3....................................................................................................................... 12
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 19
Reference List...........................................................................................................20
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Introduction
In this study, the influence of culture, power and politics upon the behaviour of
individuals across a variety of business scenarios will be demonstrated. For the
critical analysis of these influences, a case study will be carried out on Ryanair.
Ryanair is a European airlines company established in the year 1984. Initially it was
not as successful as it became in 1990s by implementing low fares and low cost
approaches (Ryanair.com, 2019). However, the company is now facing several
issues regarding the human resource management. From a published case study on
the company, it is stated that, the employees are not satisfied with the company’s
payment structure or services. Furthermore, Ryanair is not successful at serving the
employee’s job security purposes. A number of motivational theories will be
assessed in this context to address their applicability on the company. Different
types of teams that work under the company will be also explained in order to
analyse their roles critically towards the growth of the organisation.
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Task 1
a) Critically analyse its organisational culture and the nature of power and
political behaviour of its management
Organisational Culture of Ryanair
Organisational culture is a set of assumptions, values, and beliefs that contribute to
psychological and social environment of an organisation. Ryanair‘s can be identified
through Handy’s typology. Four classes of culture followed by organisations include
person, task, role and power. Power culture is found when some employees of the
organisation acquire power. It comprises of some rules and regulations that
everyone is bound to follow. In role culture, every individual is aware of his or her
role. An individual’s position matters a lot in the organisational structure. Task culture
develops, when a group of employees work together to tackle specific problems. A
team with right composition of skills and expertise can be effective for task culture.
Power culture is being followed within Ryanair in which few members show their
power to lead others. The management does not focus on working conditions of
staff. It does not employ staff based on local labour contracts. Passengers of Ryanair
have given poor rating due to its underperforming culture, where individuals with
power do not value other members (Independent.co.uk, 2019).
Deal and Kennedy’s cultural framework demonstrates the fundamentals of
corporate culture that contains six major cultural elements such as values and
beliefs, history, rituals and ceremonies, heroic figures, stories and cultural network
(Wood et al., 2012). History provides the foundation for organisational culture. The
traditions keep employees to adhere with core values that can contribute to overall
performance. Ryanair’s history shows it was not successful in the initial stage. It has
received media coverage for poor customer satisfaction and staffing issues. Values
and beliefs demonstrate what an organisation needs to stand for. Ryanair does not
provide employees with a good working condition. It does not serve passengers with
good cabin environment, seat comfort and quality food. It has remained unsuccessful
in giving customers with valued service. Corporate stories exemplify company
values.
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Raynair;s corporate stories are full of employee call off, poor customer service and
others. These stories will not allow staff members to learn new things and grab better
understanding of business. Heroic figure relates to stories of employees and
managers, who have contributed their best to acquire highest business performance.
Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair is an egotistical or self-centred person, who does
not create good example for employees. These examples show how Ryanair has
failed to maintain a good corporate culture for employees, customers and others.
Nature of power
French and Raven has identified five forms of power that an organisation may
introduce in the workplace. These forms can be coercive, reward, referent, expert,
and legitimate power (Kitchin, 2017). Coercive power means the management forces
its employees to do certain things against their will. It illustrates what happens to
staff members, when they do not adhere with compliance. Threats given to
employees can be demotion, dismissal or termination. Reward power enables
managers to value employees’ performance by appreciation and rewards. Most
popular forms of power include compliments, promotions or others. Legitimate power
is the combination of coercive and reward power. Managers execute punishment
and reward to motivate employees to work. In referent power, leaders act as role
models for employees by focusing on personal acceptance. Expert power is based
on expertise, competencies, knowledge and in-depth information. Leaders using
expert power trust in their power to perform their responsibilities.
Leaders and managers of Ryanair follow coercive power to lead employee. They do
not focus on wellbeing of employees rather than force them to work as per their
guidelines. Work environment of employees is not improved. Some employees do
not have a guarantee for employment stability. If employees do not follow
compliance, they face consequences such as loss of bonus, loss of privileges,
demotion, suspension or termination. Some employees of Ryanair are forced to
perform tasks due to fear of losing job.
Political behaviour of management
he principles demonstrated by Chantal Mouffe can be applied to understand political
behaviour of managers of Ryanair. Managers of Ryanair use power just to achieve
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targeted objectives. They use informal power to force employees behave in certain
ways and accomplish tasks against their wish.
b) How the culture you identified above have affected the feelings and
behaviour of staff and ultimately performance of Ryan air.
The identified culture of the Ryan air has negatively effectively affected the feelings
and behaviours of the staff. This negative development has essentially reduced the
performance of the organization in terms of customer satisfaction. This has
additionally leaded to the decrease in the sales volume of the organization.
Figure 1: Hofsede’s cultural dimensions
(Source: Corporate Finance Institute, 2019)
Based on the above figure, the mentioned culture of normative repression has
resulted in poor working will of the employees. The egalitarian nature of the
management has in recent times resulted in pilot strikes and cabin crew strikes in
September, 2018. The strike was conducted by employees in the operational areas
of Spain, Netherlands, Belgium and others (Brignall, 2018). This development
suggests a poor working culture among the employees due to negative feelings
towards the job profile as well as the management. This would be due to the fact that
Ryan air is more concerned in making profits than in the well being of the employees
associated with them.
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In terms of performance, there have been contradictory reports about the impact of
the same into the finances of the organizations. In the negative aspects and based
on media reports, Ryan air was forced to cancel an average of 400 international
flights due to staff agitation (Ft.com, 2019).
Figure 2: Performance of Ryan air
(Source: Investor.ryanair.com, 2019)
However, from the above figure, it is evident that performance of the organization
has shown extensive growth in 2018 as compared to 2017. Despite the 24 hour
strike by major unions across nations and drastic negative public relations due to the
same, growth in terms of non financial aspects had increased. In the current tenure,
the performance in terms of employees has been projected to becoming better. This
would include the development of fair employer post the walkout incident in its first
time history (Paddle Your Own Kanoo. com 2019).
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Task 2
A) Evaluate how content and process theories of motivation could be used to
enable individual and team performance and help Ryan air to succeed.
In the segment of content theories of motivation, the McGregor’s X & Y theory of
motivation coupled with Herzberg’s motivational theory would be taken into
consideration.
Figure 3: McGregor’s X & Y theory of motivation
(Source: iEduNote.com, 2017)
The X&Y theory would enable the organization to reduce the number of strikes by
the staff in the recent years. This would be because of the following approaches:
 Reduction in the control on the staff would enable the organization to develop
interests among the staff to develop the will to perform in the hospitality, travel
and tourism sectors. Additionally, liberating an employee and complimenting
the same on achievement on positive customer feedbacks would ensure
increase of customer satisfaction associated with the airlines.
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 Empowering the employees with relevant duties and providing achievable and
incentive based responsibilities would enable the management to mitigate the
tag of being voted the worst airlines that serves in the UK market. Mitigation of
this tag would ensure development of employee motivation. Additionally, this
could be used by the marketing department to promote the airlines among the
masses.
 Going away with the depressed culture that currently exists in the company.
This would enable the management to attract young and result oriented
talents while having a competitive salary package for the employees.
Figure 4: Herzberg’s motivation theory
(Source: Expert Program Management, 2019)
Based on the above figure, the management could modulate the company policies to
a more employee friendly one. This would be enabling the organization to reduce the
probability of strikes as well as reduce the negative brand image of the airlines.
Similarly, in the segment of motivation, the recognition of the effort by the employees
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would motivate them to perform better. This would increase the customer satisfaction
against the airlines.
The processes that could be involved in this segment would include the reduction in
the policy of demotion and withholding of incentives if an employee disagrees with
the management. The management would project the airlines job as a secured job
based on basic performance criteria. As job security increases motivation to work,
this would result in the development of the extensive working motivation among the
workers. In the long end, this would enable the development of the management to
optimize the public image of the organization and provide authentic results in its
annual report. However, the organization could re evaluate the remuneration
structure of the in a positive aspect that would enable it to succeed.
Process Theories of Motivation: In order to enable individual and team
performance, the process theories of motivation which help Ryanair to succeed are-
1. Equity Theory: According to this theory, each worker of within an organisation got
payment, which is equivalent his or her effort. This motivates the workers to perform
(Lawrence et al., 2015).
The employee policies of Ryanair are very rigid. The employees do not get the
payment for their meals, uniforms, or residential incentives. Moreover, comparing to
other airlines company, it does not provide its employees proper training. Therefore,
there was a lot of complaints from the employee side about the authority.
Now, after applying the equity theory to the Ryanair, it is seen that the inputs from
the employee side is very much larger with compared to the outputs from the
company side. However, the promotional activities of the company for the efficient
employees are considered as motivation for them. In that particular case, the inputs
and outputs almost neutralise each other in terms of payment structures.
2. Expectancy Theory: This is a very practical theory, which deals with the analysis
of per day situations in a business. According to the founder Victor Vroom, the
motivation comes from the expectations, which are possible to come true. This
motivates the people at the workplace.
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Analysing this theory and after applying this to the case study of Ryanair, it can be
concluded that, every employees there expects to be promoted and thus, get
motivated. This expectation makes the theory applicable to this context.
3. Reinforcement Theory: According to this theory, the positivity of an achievement
done by one employee motivates him or her to perform better (Cairns, 2018).
In the implication of this theory at Ryanair, it can be stated that, for the permanent
employees, such that who are working there for a long time, the positivity due to
performance appraisal is the reason behind their motivation. However, for the
temporary or new staffs, this theory is not applicable due to the lack of reality.
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Task 3
a) Identify and explain the different types of teams that operate within Ryanair
(i.e. functional, problem solving, project and virtual teams) and why this range
of teams is important to the success of the organisation.
Functional team: Functional team is the one that performs working towards the
shared objectives. This team is formed for managing the organizational function
effectively. Using Tuckman group development theory can help in the
development of every team effectively. The functional team members are having
different subordinates for managing the internal operations and other relationships in
the organization. In context of Ryanair, it has been found that different functional
areas are present in the organizations, which are working together for managing the
organizational function effectively. In this case, members such as accounting
manager, finance manager and human resource manager can be involved in the
functional team of new subsidiaries for delivering the operating roles systematically.
It can be said that functional members can help in delivering different responsibilities
in order to perform in the same functions of the department.
Problem solving: This team is mainly responsible for helping the subordinates that
are facing any issues in the organization. For an example, in Ryanair subsidiaries,
problem-solving team is developed those who are provided responsibility to solve the
issues associated with the flight take-off and technical issues associated with the
business operations. In this case, the problem-solving team is responsible for
evaluating the suitable option, documentation of agreement, issues faced by the
airline passengers for enhancing the workplace effectiveness. This team proposes
evaluation of possible solutions, which help the management to take appropriate
decisions. Developing the problem solving teams in organizations, the issues related
to cross-cultural communication and conflict management can be solved among the
team members.
Project team: This project team is vital team of organization that helps in delivering
the project on time. As stated by Wise (2016), project team is a team that is
developed for a specific period. Hence, it can be said that this team is formed based
on temporary basis. In Ryanair, it has been observed that project team can be
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