Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making Joseph Westbrook Strayer University BUS 520: Leadership and Organizational Dr. Bess White November 24, 2014 1 Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making 2 Introduction Southwest Airlines Company was incorporated in March of 1967. This company operates Southwest Airlines as well as AirTran Airways, the passenger airlines which provide scheduled air transportation in United States as well as near-international markets. Southwest Airlines principally provides the point-to-point service, instead of the hub-and-spoke service. Southwest Airlines can fly any type of plane provided it’s a Boeing and usually let passengers sit wherever they like, provided they get there first. This company has expanded on its low cost, no reserved seat, no frills approach to air travel all over US in order to serve about 100 destinations in more than 40 states (Lauer, 2010). Currently as the largest carrier of the US domestic passengers, Southwest Airlines still stands to be an inspiration for the scrappy low-fare upstarts globally. Southwest Airlines corporate culture Southwest Airlines has a unique culture referred to as goofiness which is intended to keep the employee’s morale high. The management has enhanced an easy going relaxed corporate style which usually provides the employees with an extensive operational independence. It emphasizes employees as the company’s first customers and the passengers as the second and it has been integral to the company’s success. The company is dedicated to offering a unique as well as fun experience to every customer (Davis, 2003). Normally, the flight attendants are liable to say anything over the telecom and often run humorous contests with the passengers. This culture has evolved over time, from the environment which was different and based on Southwestern part of US, to a culture involving shared goals, knowledge as well as mutual respect for the national company with more than 29000 employees. Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making 3 The culture is all about development, improvement as well as refinement of originality, identity, individuality as well as personality of a particular given people. Creativity is also highly emphasized particularly when it comes to finding relief in the high-stress jobs. In the corporate offices of Southwest Airlines, the employees are usually allowed to even work in their pajama for a day. There are rocking chairs located throughout the corporate offices for the impromptu meetings. The Southwest Airlines’ expectation is that every employee’s job is inclusive of helping the colleagues with their work when deemed necessary. Through providing greater job flexibility, the company believes it improves the labor productivity alongside providing them a competitive advantage. The company is highly committed to its employees and thus seeks to create stable working environment that has equal opportunity both for learning as well as personal growth (Lauer, 2010). The company has various shared goals by the people at the company and usually serves to define its mission. Southwest is specifically a service organization, it is advisable to manage in good and bad times, irrelevance is usually not acceptable, thinking small is required to grow big, it is allowed to be yourself and employees can have fun at work. Attitude is considered for hiring and the company believes in training for acquisition of skills. There are several factors that helped to determine the corporate culture of Southwest Airlines. The company has a basic reputation of motivating its employees with a purpose which is bigger than the normal paycheck. The employees show a great sense of job satisfaction and it only implied that it is a strong emphasis for the company in its operations. Normally, the number of interactions between the customers and the staff is infinite and this means only a strong and clear pro-customer culture will give an organization a fighting chance to get preponderance of the interactions right. Further, the business realities are constantly changing and thus, only a Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making 4 strong culture will help one to respond, capitalize as well as drive forward the changes for the purpose of serving the customers as well as showing the business at the best light. With information from a lot of people, service is quite the principle reason as to why they remain loyal customers to Southwest Airlines (Gittell, 2003). This definitely means that the organization has a culture that motivates employees to provide exemplary services. In addition, the employees do not conduct themselves in a manner that other employees from different companies conduct themselves and this provides a hint to a differentiated culture. Reasons behind Southwest Airlines corporate culture Before the formulation of the corporate culture, the founder as well as management made a realization on the importance of such a culture. Focusing on every individual in the company in a broader sense of more than their work but personally usually requires a lot of information network. It is true that every person has own metrics as well as business intelligence, but usually very few companies will be willing to put that much effort, attention, time and money into communicating to the employees that they actually care (Lauer, 2010). The company thus realized the need to extend its care to employees and showing them how much they are valued by the organization. The company focuses more on building relationships with shared goals. Southwest Airlines is committed to its employees and desires to provide a stable working environment. The company has brought out a fun loving attitude with the notion that the happy employees will make customers happy. Therefore, the unique cultural values of the organization are all about the ‘LUV attitude’, having fun as well as providing good customer services. The company considers its employees to be key assets for the future growth as well as sustenance, Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making 5 through selecting employees with the utmost care for proper alignment of culture, through providing an induction and also training to all the employees among others (Hatch & Schultz, 2008). The company thus strongly believes that when employees have been made happy, they will treat the company’s customers with the utmost care which will in turn make the customers happy. As a result, the happy customers will lead to improved business as well as profits and this will make the shareholders happy and also loyal to Southwest Airlines. Leadership style The most appropriate leader for this company is a servant leader. Normally, servant leaders show deep care for people and usually seek to remove all barriers and obstacles which might hold people back from achieving own full potential. This kind of leader actively plans to serve the subordinates first. It involves leading by integrity, example as well as from behind the rest of the team (Flint, 2012). The leader thus recognizes that both the autocratic or democratic style might lead to employee conflict through increased alienation as well as discordance and thus, this leader creates a beneficial outcome for the entire group. Southwest Airlines running under the servant leadership style could choose either to operate on the needs of individual employees or even operate as collective whereby the group will make the decisions. Southwest Airlines thus can obtain a wide variety of solutions to issues as well as improve that feeling of teamwork within the organization through getting the employees involved in decision making. The company has a culture that emphasizes on shared goals, knowledge and respect which thus is ideal for servant leadership style. Normally, leaders that use this style will gain a great deal of respect as well as trust from the employees. With the strong positive feelings between the employees and management which such a leader will promote, it will definitely Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making translate into a higher sense of employee morale (Flint, 2012). Therefore, as long as the employees are satisfied with their jobs as well as the organization, it is only obvious that Southwest Airlines’ productivity will rise. Therefore, based on some of the values that the company places, this kind of leader would be suitable to just maintain them and maintain the corporate culture. Conclusion With a decline in the demand for Southwest Airlines’ service, it will only mean that either the employees are understaffed or have a reduced morale. The decline would also mean that the customers are no longer happy with the services. It would also mean that probably there is a competition that offers better services than Southwest Airlines. In that case, the change in culture would be to reduce the focus on the employees and focus more on the customers to determine what could be done to get back the customers (Davis, 2003).The employees can also be urged to improve more on the respect to the customers and offer better services. In this case, the customers should come first and not the employees. 6 Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making References Davis, M. J., United States., Transit Cooperative Research Program., Transit Development Corporation., National Research Council (U.S.)., & McGlothin Davis, Inc. (2003). Corporate culture as the driver of transit leadership practices. Washington, D.C: Transportation Research Board. Flint, B. B. (2012). The journey to competitive advantage through servant leadership: Building the company every person dreams of working for and every president has a vision of leading. Bloomington, Ind: West Bow Press. Gittell, J. H. (2003). The Southwest Airlines way: Using the power of relationships to achieve high performance. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hatch, M. J., & Schultz, M. (2008). Taking brand initiative: How companies can align strategy, culture, and identity through corporate branding. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lauer, C. (2010). Southwest Airlines. Santa Barbara, Calif: Greenwood. 7 
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