1. Introduction
When the President of South West Airlines challenges the President of a rival company to an arm wrestling contest over the use of a corporate slogan or when the acquisition of an airline leads to a ‘wedding’ between two airlines in Gracelands, Las Vegas one knows that the strategy of engagement that South West Airlines uses is unorthodox but has been highly successful. South West Airlines for nearly forty years and has been cited by authors such as Porter (1981) as demonstrating an excellence in operations management. It was founded in 1971 and has grown from being a small regional service, from its inception, to providing a service to many millions in 2004. Back in 1995 South West Airlines created its own website and it is not until the following year that ‘ticketless’ travel is implemented. In 2006 South West Airlines created its own blog which is designed for staff as well as the general public. Naturally, as information-based technology has progressed through the years, the appearance and content within the original website and blog is not easily compared.
The purpose of this group assignment is to critically analyse whether or not the South West Airlines blog is an appropriate and effective form of communication, both internally and externally. It is the opinion of the group that before one is able to critically analyse the blog one must be able to understand the history, and in some cases the culture, of the organisation in question. This case study will examine the reasons behind the creation of the blog. Primarily, what were the critical factors behind the decision to implement this blog? Secondly, what were the desired targeted competences? Thirdly, what is the vision behind South West Airlines and finally, once the previous three factors are critically analysed, what were, and indeed are, the metrics by which one is able to determine whether or not the blog has been successful. Naturally, this will lead to some unanswered questions that will form the conclusion.
The Term Paper on South West Groups Group Family
Executive Summary This report details an evaluation of the tourism market place in the South West of England looking at changes in the market and the factors (PESTE Political, Economic, Socio-cultural, Technological and Ecological) affecting the tourism industry. A segmentation analysis was carried out looking to identify target customer groups for Tintagel Castle, Cornwall. The principal groups ...
2. Business Challenges
Weiss et al (2005) maintains that the primary concern of South West Airlines was in providing an excellent customer service. Where other organisations seemingly paid lip service to the concept of customer service, Weiss et al (2005) asserts that South West Airlines has historically made original and searching business decisions that can be argued have helped to improve tremendously its market share from the day the first South West Airlines flight departed. South West Airlines has always had different corporate behaviour to that of its immediate competitors (as detailed in the previous section), but could this creation of a corporate blog be another example of the uniqueness South West Airlines offers? There are three main business challenges that South West Airlines faces in its adoption of a corporate blog and these are customer services, ‘turn around’ time and maintaining uniqueness.
The primary concern for South West Airlines is that of providing a good customer service. The then-President of South West Airlines, Coleen Barrett, saw the corporate blog as being an extension of the customer services that South West Airlines provides. It is also noted that Coleen Barratt was also an occasional user of and reader of blogs as well. Barratt argues that the blog has been extensively used by South West Airlines, as an entity, because many of the Senior Management Team are an essential part of it. It is argued by South West Airlines that the creation (and usage of the blog by customers) has led to a line of communication hitherto unavailable to the company. It is debatable as to how effective this communication is. Liu et al (1997) states that most corporate home pages are primarily used to promote the advertising agenda of the host organisation.
The Business plan on Customer Service Essay
Excellence in customer service is the objective of all organisations wishing to be successful. However, there is often a gap between customer expectations and management perceptions of customer expectations. Organisations often fail to get close to their customers and correctly read their expectations. Customers expect certain things when they walk into a business, and those with the highest level ...
Another concern for South West Airlines is being able to successfully justify to employees the benefits and advantages. As already said, the then-President of South West Airlines read the blog and the senior management team, in general, use it. The question remains do employees feel they can freely participate in a blog or do they feel a compulsion to follow the position of the employer? This question of autonomy or control is a common problem faced by businesses through the ages. The fact that it is a new form of communication is almost irrelevant to the problem. Barnard (1968) argues the point that an employee must surrender some of their autonomy if they are to fully participate with the aims of the organisation. In this case the aim of the company is to make effective use of the blog.
3. Targeted Competences
As already alluded in the previous section, there has been a plan by South West Airlines to use the blog as a general part of their customer service operations. If a blog is to be used effectively in South West Airlines the organisation may wish to follow the following criteria: Good customer relationships and effective work practices.
3.1Good customer relationships
South West Airlines has always prided itself on its interaction with its customer base. From using unorthodox advertising procedures and operations management it has increased over the last forty years. Weiss et al (2005) describes the extent to which customer service plays a role in the operation of the organisation; it is their focus. Can a good customer relationship exist within the confines of a blog? The then-President of South West Airlines believed this to be the case. The potential problem for a company employing the use of a blog is that it could open a ‘pandora’s box’ of hitherto unknown problems. Whilst researching this project, the group was amazed, given the usage of South West Airlines in Business Management classes, about the sheer number of disgruntled customers there are (http://hyku.com/blog/archives/001089.html).
The Business plan on South West Airlines Case Study
Executive Summary Thousands of people travel by air; Southwest Airlines provides low-fare air transportation service among 58 cities in the United States. Although the industry suffered a major blow from the terrorist attack of September 11th, the company is still holding strong; while other airline companies are in debt. The information was majority gathered and analyzed from the internet; ...
3.2Effective work practices
If a corporate blog is to affect the working practices of a company then it needs to have the confidence of the workforce. Finch (1999) poses the interesting question about how a customer services-led blog can lead to a rapid and effective response. It is also debatable as to which type of blog does South West Airlines have. Is it a top down or bottom up blog? Is the creation of the blog being driven from the executives or from the workforce itself? Certainly there are examples of companies that have used bottom up blogs in order to facilitate the development of a company. However, there are many pitfalls that need to be addressed. For example, if one has a bottom up blog this infers that there is a lot of autonomy with the general workforce. However, this type of autonomy can lead to potentials problems as highlighted by Langfred (2004).
4. Vision
South West Airlines has adapted quickly to the Internet and started using e-tickets before their other competitors. Using new and effective forms of technology have been at the forefront of the operations of South West Airlines since its creation. South West Airlines has a reputation of using unorthodox strategies. South West Airlines has tried to rein in costs in every conceivable way and using a blog to communicate those ideals to the workforce is just another idea. The question as to whether the blog is a true blog, i.e. it is an honest piece of work written from the heart, is open to debate as a reasonable person would assume that as the blog is currently a senior management strategy one would not write a critical article for fear of repercussions. Indeed the example of an air stewardess in 2004 undoubtedly provided warnings to potential internal detractors of the dangers of writing something inappropriate in a blog; although in this case what was actually written was innocuous.
It is admirable that South West Airlines feels adventurous in choosing to be the first (as of writing this paper) airline to have a blog. South West Airlines has used other forms of media to show the image of South West Airlines to the greater public. There was a US version of the Airline television programme which detailed the inner workings of the airline although it was cancelled after one series. With specific regard to blogs there have been demonstrable examples of effective and free use of blogs within organisations (albeit not in the service sector).
The Term Paper on Analysis of Unilever’s Risks and Risk Management Strategies
With the rapid development of modern economy, companies are always exposed to risks which are penetrating to all walks of life and not only exist in the products market, but also exist in financial market (Ballou, 2005). It is undoubtedly that risks jeopardize the company’s development in that they may increase the cost of a company’s operation and make it harder for a company to make a crucial ...
IBM and McDonalds appear to have a bottom up internal blog whereby workers are ‘encouraged’ to express their feelings. Naturally, the reasoning behind this is to prevent unfavourable information from being released into the public domain.
5. Metrics
The success of any given action can be determined by how it is implemented. Carnall (2007) argues that the success of any organisational strategy is determined by the planning, judging of the scenario and the execution of the strategy. In the case of South West Airlines a judgement of how successful the strategy can be determined by how well used it is. A point that has already been made is how free do people feel to make their own, honest opinions known? If the information on the blog is merely confirms everything that the company is already saying then it is difficult to see how valuable the blog is.
However, if the information is extremely contradictory then it must only further the divide between the workforce and the senior management team. For the purposes of this assignment, the group signed up for the blog to enable the group to give a more focussed answer. It does appear that there a very few signs of interaction unlike what one would expect to see in a fully, multi-dimensional blog. When one looks at the Targeted Competencies section one can see the effective work practices subsection. If the blog is not really being used apart from those in higher level management who see a blog as the ‘next big thing’ then the blog is guaranteed to perform to expectations without delivering the results upon which the original idea was focussed.
6. Discussion Questions/Conclusion
There are many questions behind why certain organisations and not other adopt the use of blogs. Jones (2005) argues the case why many organisations are reluctant to do this because of lack of clarity between management and staff about the content and can be seen as a contradiction to the free nature surrounding blogs. There have been many cases of people being disciplined or even losing their jobs as a result of blog entries (BBC News, 2004).
The Essay on Management and Better Outsourcing Strategy
•What are you (in the role of Kathy Dalton) going to present at the outsourcing strategy meeting in two weeks and why? Persuading company’s board of directors to keep outsourcing strategy in eBay, and explain how make better outsourcing strategy. •When companies like Dell are reducing outsourcing in some areas, should eBay be considering expanding outsourcing? According to this case study, eBay ...
Other blogs, unrestricted by companies, such as ‘petite anglaise’ have been used to anonymously criticise people who have no chance to rebut claims made (Petite Anglaise (2009)).
Blogs are a new form of a relatively old concept, i.e. Bulletin Boards.
There is, however, a difference in opinion as to what a specific corporate blog should resemble. Should a blog be as open ended with the intention of ‘humanising’ it? This was the attempt made by Macromedia blog (prior to its acquisition by Adobe Inc.) (Stone “2002)) or should a blog appear a top down management strategy that appears to be the case with South West Airlines? This is the question that needs answering. As shown in previous sections of this paper, there are advantages and disadvantages between the top down and bottom up approach to blogging but from the position of an outsider looking in there does appear to be a great difference between what the aims and objectives of the South West Airlines blog is and what it was envisaged to cover.
7. References
Books Journals
* Carnall, C. (2007) Managing Change in Organizations, fifth Edition London: Prentice Hall * Finch, B. J. (1999), Internet discussions as a source for consumer product customer involvement and quality information: an exploratory study, Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp.535-56. * Langfred, C. (2004), Too much of a good thing? Negative effects of high trust and individual autonomy in self-managing teams, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 47, No. 3, pp.385-99. * Liu, C., Arnett, K.P., Capella, L.M. and Beatty, R.C. (1997), Web sites of the Fortune 500 companies: facing customers through home pages, Information & Management, Vol. 31, No. 6, pp.335-45. * Porter, M. E. (1985) Competitive Advantage, New York: Free Press. * Stone, B. (2002), Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content, Indianapolis: New Riders Publishing. * Weiss, E. N. and Friesen, M., (2005) South West Airlines: Singin’ the (Jet) Blues. Virginia: University of Virginia Press. Websites
* BBC News (2004), “Blogger grounded by her airline”, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3955913.stm (accessed May 04, 2009).
The Essay on Southwest Airlines Risk Management
As with any company, Southwest Airlines has risks that have to deal with. For starters, co-founder and visionary leader Kelleher will soon be less involved in the firm’s operations. Mr. Kelleher is responsible for the decision making of Southwest Airlines so it is going to be interesting to say the least when he takes a lesser role in the daily business of Southwest. Perhaps a more important ...
* Petite Anglaise (2009), http://www.petiteanglaise.com/ (accessed May 04,
2009) * South West Airlines ‘blog’ (2009) http://hyku.com/blog/archives/001089.html (accessed May 04, 2009)
