Case Analysis - Southwest Airlines

My key takeaway after reading this case is every company has their own beliefs, values and culture and mergers can be quite challenging when the companies have different/opposing values, beliefs and/or culture. When a company merges or has been acquired by another, their cultures will need to merge as well. One of the layers of culture that is discussed in case include the espoused and enacted values of the companies. Organizational values of Southwest and AirTran are discussed in the case which include the work processes of their employees and customer expectations.

        One similarity that I found in the case is that both companies used the word “fun” in their values. Southwest and AirTran provide a fun environment for their employees and want their customers to have pleasant experience also. Southwest focuses to give their employees a fun work environment which will allow them to interact and make connections with the customers whereas Air-Tran includes other values like safety in their value statement in addition to fun. They want their employees to have fun but there are other important things that they should pay attentions to as well. So, Southwest believes in giving its employees and customers a good time during the flights while AirTran emphases on providing a pleasant experience for their customers while maintaining a professional environment. Also, Southwest has very different approach in terms of training its employees. The training requires fun and challenging activities to mingle the new hires into their fun-loving culture.

        Southwest and AirTran Airlines have opposing views on ticket distributions through online travel agencies. Southwest sells its tickets online or via telephone whereas AirTran uses other systems like Expedia and Orbitz. They also use different online reservation systems that could create many problems for the customers after the mergers. Upon the completion of merger, managing two different reservation systems as the same time could be very challenging for the company. The information gathered from two systems could cause problems for decision makers and there could be possible conflicts amongst the top managers who use different reservation systems which will disrupt the organizational structure. So, my recommendation would be to choose one online reservation system based on their majority customer preferences. If Southwest decides to choose one reservation system over the other, it could create frustration and confusion among the customers who preferred the other system. However, to solve that, the company needs to ensure that all managers and employees are trained properly and can work with each other to solve any issues that might arise while processing reservations. They should also monitor the system for any interferences.

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