Profile of a Successful Company – Southwest Airline – Principles of Management

Mission and vision

Southwest Airlines is dedicated to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit. The company is also committed to providing their staff with an equal opportunity for learning and personal growth, and a conducive and stable work environment (West, 2005). Innovation and creativity are encouraged for improving the company’s effectiveness.  Above all, employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer(West, 2005).

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Strategic management plan

Southwest Airlines has an upside-down pyramid organization. The top management supports the front line, professionals. Southwest Airlines is guided by the company-wide policy regarding principles, values, and ethics. Explains Herb Kelleher’s unconventional leadership style, in which controlling decisions are made by everybody in the organization, not just the top executives (West, 2005). The company doesn’t have much focus on a structure; instead staff are reinvigorated to think freely without limitations.

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Organizational culture

Southwest Airline’s culture is focused on the relationship as the central drive of culture, strategy, leadership, and coordination. The company’s main organizational competency is its capability to shape and sustain employee connections characterized by shared knowledge, mutual respect, and shared goals. “We at Southwest Airlines foster and embrace a fun, individuality, creativity, and empowerment. We love our employees. We trust our employees” (West, 2005).

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Decision Making

Staff are reinvigorated to be accountable and are given authority to make freely decisions. Management committees are also responsible for critical decision making. Employee strongly contributes to all procedures and policies. All decisions are assessed against the company’s commitment to integrity and honesty and the Golden Rule Behaviors Lauer, (2010)

The Principle of Ethics

Southwest Airlines follows the company-wide policy as regards principles of ethics and values in the workstation. Ethics and values are fundamental success factors for any company if the employees and managers are in it for the long haulLauer, (2010). The Southwest Airline team is guided by strong ethics and values and employees believes the organization should create time slots every six months for retraining on values and ethics. It’s this belief that has guided several successful decisions relating to promotion, results, and hiring hence the best customer service and better flight deals to customers, particularly loyal customers (West, 2005).

Human Resources

The Company has a competent human resource department with a family oriented approach to recruiting. The department maintains a supply of employees with good interpersonal skills, fun-loving attitude, and outgoing personalities hence enables Southwest Airlines to have a high labor productivity and low employee turnover (West, 2005).

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Southwest’s new staff preparation is geared toward fostering functional expertise, as well as relational competence. New staff learn about the general work process and understand how their job relates to one another and where they fit in. Those employees unable to catch onto Southwest’s perspective are let go. According to The West (2005), Southwest put every possible support in place to help trainees succeed and then work with those who are truly sincere and put forth the effort (West, 2005).

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