Strategy Implementation: Southwest Airlines
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Refer to attachment one.
Visit the official company website of Southwest Airlines
Step One. refer to attachment one
Step Two. Research the structure, systems, people, and culture at Southwest Airlines.
-Structure
What is the organization's structure? How decentralized or centralized is it?
What are the lines of authority and communication?
What are the roles of teams, committees, and task forces?
-Systems
How are budgets set?
How is planning done?
What measures are used to evaluate performance?
-People
What are the skills, experience, and knowledge of the firm's employees?
What is their depth and quality?
What are their attitudes about the company and their jobs?
-Culture
What are the company's values and are they widely shared and accepted by employees?
What are the key norms of behavior?
What are some significant symbols?
What is the dominant management style?
How is conflict resolved?
You will not be able to get answers to every single question, but you will need to answer at least one or two for each component.
Step Three. Describe Southwests organizational design, key strategic control systems, primary human resources concerns, and cultural factors, the effect they have had on the implementation of Southwest Airlines strategy.
Step Four. In a 4-5 page paper, critically evaluate the fit â?" or the lack of fit â?" between the company's mission, strategy, and organizational components critical to implementation. Do these components complement the strategy? Why or why not?
Step Five: Consider the Case as a formal business report that you are developing for the Board of Directors and CEO as Southwest Airline's company consultant. This is a professional document. Follow the format below:
Executive summary: a synopsis of the main points, conclusions and recommendations made in the longer report.
Introduction: State the main purpose of the paper (thesis statement), what you hope to accomplish, and how you will go about doing it.
Main Body: The "meat" of the paper. Emphasize analysis, not just description. Delineate separate topics or sections with headings.
Conclusion: Summarize your paper in the light of your thesis statement.
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Please find guidelines and ideas for Strategy Implementation in the attached file.
Running Head: STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION
Strategy Implementation
Executive summary
This report is based on the strategy implementation in Southwest Airlines. It is identified that company uses functional structure in its organization. It allocates proper authority to the employees for performing the task. It is observed that company uses participative management style and effective communication system. It is identified that company uses different symbols like flags, flight etc. that represents its positive behavior towards the employees and the customers. It is observed that company provides equal opportunity of its employees and offers tangible and intangible benefits. Company should use new technology, safety equipments and provide training to its employees to improve its operations.
Introduction
Strategy supports the organization in allocation of resources and improves organization performance in the competitive environment. Organization creates the strategy according to the management level and nature of the task. Southwest Airline is a USA based company that provides airline services. At present time, this company operates in 72 cities and operates more than 3400 flights a day (Southwest Airlines, 2010). Structure, system, people and culture will be covered in this report.
Structure
The organizational structure of Southwest Airlines is functional. In this structure, organization creates different departments like marketing, human resources, finance etc. and according to the functions, organizations allocates them proper role, responsibility and authority for performing the task (Flouris & Oswald,2006). It shows the decentralized system of the organization, because every department has proper authority to take the decision.
In the lines of authority, organization gives proper authority to the department head of their each function by which they can easily take the decision related to the functions, subordinates, technology etc. For developing effective understanding, organization uses face to face communication. Email, letters, fax transmissions, LUV Lines etc are the other important tools that company uses in the communication (Southwest Airlines 25 Years of LUV, n.d).
Self directed team and task force play an important role in the organizational structure and increase the performance of the organization (Bolman & Deal, 2008). The board of director and committee support in the decision making and function's execution. It shows that by using the functional strategy in its structures, organization improves its performance and achieves ...
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