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What has made Southwest Airlines so successful

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?What are Southwest Airlines Key Success Factors?
?What organizational behavior concepts have they used to make them so successful.
?How has Southwest Airlines used these organizational behavior strategies to become successful:

Decision Making
Motivation
Group Behavior
Communication
Power and Politics
Organizational Structure
Organizational Culture
Human Resources Practices
Change Management

Be sure to provide multiple examples of the main concepts as practiced at Southwest Airlines.

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?What are Southwest Airlines Key Success Factors?

Key success factors concern the product attributes, competencies, competitive capabilities, and market achievements with the greatest direct bearing on company profitability. The reason for Southwest's success is that they do things differently from other large airlines. It sees the potential market for low cost airline. Therefore, it has to try to control their cost as efficient as possible. It uses one type of airplane, which will reduce training and maintenance costs as well as allowing for faster turnarounds. It also chooses airports and routes to avoid congestion and focuses on short-haul flights with an average distance of 425 miles. It has no baggage transfer, serves no meals, and issues no boarding passes. It has developed capabilities and created a host of activities to support its low-cost strategy.

http://www.whartonsp.com/articles/article.asp?p=360437&rl=1
http://www.insead.edu/kim/newspprarticles/FT/FT130599.htm

?What organizational behavior concepts have they used to make them so successful.

Southwest Airlines began its service in 1971. Its organizational behavior concepts, which make them so successful are friendly organizational culture, employee motivation, management-employee relations, organizational training, and strong leadership.

?How has Southwest Airlines used these organizational behavior strategies to become successful:

Decision Making

At Southwest Airlines, decision making can be made at all level because they have a relatively simple set of values. These values help them to move and make decision quickly. For example, if one of their employee proposes a new service that does not fit our values they would say no because it is outside of their core values. For other important issues, their people will sit down and have 7-8 day discussions about meticulously detailed forward plans and come up with the optimal solution. They need to be quick in decision making because by definition, it is an opportunistic business when its capital assets are moving 540 miles per hour (Cohen, Allan, Watkinson, James and Boone, Jenny).

Motivation

Southwest motivates their employees via the company's University of the People. "The airline's corporate university trains 25,000 people per year" (Bruce, 1997, p. 11). Every new employee undergoes a standardized training session. In addition, every year supervisors, managers ...

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