Ol 215 Snhu Southwest Airlines Case Study

Southern New Hampshire University

Southwest Airlines

Final Project One

Stephen Hinic

Principles of Management

April 7th, 2019

Southwest Airlines

Southwest is a world renown company that provides its customers with a unique service “Commercial Passenger Flight” It prides it self on being a one of the best in this service and giving its customers the best possible experience when flying with them. Southwest Airlines  vision statement are as follows. “To become the worlds most loved, most flown and most profitable airline(Gallo, 2014).” Southwest executes this vision statement through meaningful and thoughtful stories, they want each and every employee to touch the lives of the people that are flying with them on a daily basis by remembering that southwest not only got you to your destination on time and safely but, also brought a smile to your face with its amazing service and attention to detail. This model creates loyal flies which helps boost its business and customers to recommend southwest as the airlines of choice, shareholders want to see returning customers which helps drive growth. The mission statement of southwest is “Dedicated to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit(Gallo, 2014).” Like stated above southwest isn’t just worried about making profits they are also very focused on giving the flyer the best possible experience each and every time they fly. They do this by giving options that other airlines don’t. Such as bags fly free, no change of flight fees, and other in flight perks that other airlines don’t even come close to match.

Southwest Airlines management organization is also one to take a great look at and focus on for other companies to model after. Let’s start from the top first, CEO Gary Kelly and the rest of the executive team is in charge of overall planning and company strategy is at this tier. They look for potential areas to grow and work towards and also areas that might need to take focus off of. They plan and build a strategy so that they are in the best position for overall growth and future success. The middle management team, this tier is positioned and built to organize the company meaning finding the right manning where they need to put the right individuals and focus on current business and what can be done to improve upon that. They look at the numbers and make sure that they are staying in a position of growth. The middle management team reports its findings to the executive teams and also take any direction that is given to them. Last but, not least the lower management structure. They are where the majority of the employees deal with on a daily basis they work closely with customers as well. They build the schedules make sure the customer is happy with its services. Lead mechanics for instance make sure the planes are following scheduled maintenance and are repaired according to federal, and company policy for safe travel. Each and every position within southwest is very important and they all work together to create a very successful, engaging and growing company.

Southwests makes sure that each employees feels that their work is important to making sure they stay in a position of growth. It’s important to give them each individual pride within the organization, this helps  the overall moral of the employee which in turn keeps turnover low.  They do this by giving them a career path with constant training and development to learn technology and functions that are being implemented into the business. They also share the profits of the corporation with each employee so that not only will they obviously get a paycheck but, also have a way to retire in the future. This helps drive individual pride by working to help grow the company because each employee sees the fruits of there labor.

Southwest organizational culture is that every single employee is responsible for promoting and preserving southwests cultures. They are a service based culture, making sure that the customers are taken care of and have a great experience each and every time they fly. They of course appreciate each and every employee and foster a lasting relationship with everyone to increase moral of the individual and allow for growth. Each department of southwest works together to increase internal efficiency and improve the decision making process(Thompson, 2018). The company is organized for efficient making each part able to work independently but also together this helps drive the overall function, providing the very best in customer service.

Southwest management plan is to decrease costs by not increasing its overall operating costs. They do this in many different ways but, one is by focusing on flying the Boeing 737 as its main plane of choice this decrease overall costs because they don’t have to worry about other aircraft maintenance and having qualified individuals for different aircrafts. Another strategy they focus on is point to point flight, meaning they offer a lot of none-stop flights from each destination. This plan allows for low operating costs and low ticket fairs which gives the ability to offer the flyer options such as no change of flight costs. There decision making process is focused around the customers, and employees. They want each employee to treat a customer like they would like to be treated on a daily basis, making sure to connect with the customers on a is a huge benefit for the customers. They also want the employees to stay interactive with the company they do this by allowing certain decisions to be made within the company. For example they brought in employees from within to refurbish the outdated uniforms that the employees were using, this gives pride that the choices they make are brought to life and really matter to the corporation.