Organizational Culture at Southwest Airlines and Koch Industries Essay

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Introduction



There are many different pathways to success for companies, and as a result successful organizations can have distinctly different cultures. This paper will examine a couple of different companies – Southwest Airlines and Koch Industries, to examine their different cultures, and how those cultural differences have emerged, and support the overall business objectives of those two organizations.

Culture of Southwest Airlines



The Southwest Airlines culture is one of the more celebrated organizational cultures in business. The company is based around " A warrior spirit, a servant's heart and a fun-loving attitude." A focus on fun-loving is more to the day-to-day, as the servant emphasis, but the warrior heart showcases that employees at Southwest are expected to rise to the challenges that they face, and overcome obstacles in their service (Makovsky, 2013).



These values are even reflected on the company website. For example, this month the Star of the Month is a pilot, and the quote in the feature story is "his love of serving others helped him fit with in the culture from the start" (Southwest.com, 2017) This indicates that servant mindset is a critical component of the culture, and that this extends even to workers like pilots who might not have a lot of direct contact with the customers.



The value of this culture to Southwest is simple. Aa a B2C company, it serves consumers, and thus needs to appeal to the needs of consumers in the course of its business. Southwest therefore need people who will demonstrate an ability to go the extra mile, to always empathize with the customer, and generally to have a great attitude towards their work. The company saw that these would in each in turn be differentiating factors in the airline business. Southwest also knew that if it was going to undercut other airlines, it would need to deliver service at a higher level in order to make customers overlook other service elements that were lacking, when Southwest was compared with other airlines.

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The company works hard at its culture. Southwest has recognized that attracting the right talent is critical to its business. There are a lot of jobs that airlines perform that are basically low-skill jobs, doable by anybody. But Southwest figured out that getting people with a certain service mindset into those position was optimal, but that those people would only be attracted by a team-oriented service-focused culture. As such, Southwest sought to build that culture as a means of attracting the right people over time. Having a sustainable culture was important to the company's founders and continues to be important today, to the point where the CEO is working actively on maintaining the culture (Harder, 2016).



All told, these elements of organizational culture help to differentiate Southwest from other airlines. Even when Southwest started in the 1970s, the other airlines were not focused on culture, or on making their airline a great place to work. Today, that difference is even more obvious. So Southwest wanted to create a different flying experience, one that was pleasant and positive, and thus was differentiated from the other airlines. For Southwest, this works well with its pricing. The company will offer lower prices than other airlines and better service, and that makes Southwest a compelling proposition for many flyers. The result is that Southwest has slowly, gradually, begun to become one of the most successful airlines and market leaders in America.

Koch Industries



Koch Industries has a very different approach….....

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References

Harder, D. (2016) Southwest Airlines: What a meaningful company culture looks like. Business Insider. Retrieved November 25, 2017 from

Leonard, C. (2017). An inside look at how Koch Industries does business. Washington Post. Retrieved November 25, 2017 fromhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/an-inside-look-at-how-koch-industries-does-business/2017/07/01/2db9667a-5699-11e7-b38e-35fd8e0c288f_story.html?utm_term=.ea4fb984c848

Makovsky, K. (2013) Behind the Southwest Airlines culture. Forbes. Retrieved November 25, 2017 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenmakovsky/2013/11/21/behind-the-southwest-airlines-culture/#618f599a3798

Southwest.com (2017). Culture. Southwest.com. Retrieved November 25, 2017 from https://www.southwest.com/html/about-southwest/careers/culture.html

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