Case Study Of Southwest Airlines Organizational Behavior

Southwest Airlines
Introduction. Southwest Airlines is one of the U.S. leaders in the air travel industry. The company is famous for a multitude of reasons. The great strategy helps them to be very competitive. The low-cost strategy is quite creative and attracts more and more customers, Southwest has the fastest plane turnarounds and together with it the lowest number of employees. The unique strategy helps to make the company successful and furthermore to keep their clients amazed (Lauer, 2010, p. 1-2).
The current paper aims to explore the features of the organizational behavior of Southwest Airlines. To achieve this goal, the paper is divided into several parts. Each part focuses on important segments of company’s behavior such as its structure,

The Southwest Airlines (SWA) is probably one of the most remarkable examples of a company that determined a very clear and simple key business purpose that supports their ambitions. At the end of the twentieth century, the American businessmen Rollin King and Herb Kelleher started an airline business. The SWA Company developed from a small Texas airline service. The name of the organization was formed around the success of other companies such as Pacific Southwest Company and Air California. The Southwest Airlines started to work at full capacity in 1971. It provided national only air-traveling service to its customer. Already in 1977, the SWA carried 5 million passengers. Going into 2003, the organization became the fourth-largest U.S. airlines. Nowadays it carries 70 million passengers and employs nearly thirty-five thousand people who serve sixty-eight cities in thirty-five states. In 2007, the U.S. national newspaper for the travel industry Travel Weekly called the SWA, “best domestic airlines” (Lauer, 2010, p. 3). Another respected multinational business magazine Fortune ranked the Southwest Airline as, “most admired airline”. The Smart Traveler magazine said that it had, “best airfare prices” (Lauer, 2010, p. 3).
Thus, the SWA turns up to be one of the most successful company. Basing on the rapid start, development and people’s admiration, this company has something to teach other airlines, as well as all other organizations.

The leadership turns up to be a primary key in deciding what behavior it wants the organization to reflect. The Southwest’s leadership strategy follows the theory of administration by Henri Fayol. It values its employees and tries to provide an equal employment opportunity as it is a crucial part of effectively managing people. Therefore, each employee at different level can play the leading role. It also shows the form of leadership style used at the strategic level which builds trust and love between the employees (Southwest Cares, 2008, p. 16). Hence, in this kind of strategy model the management decisions are made by everyone, not only by head executives. This method helps the SWA to investigate what people think about the organization and how can assist to improve