Southwest Airlines
Julie Cortez-Knapp
Management 103
Week 1/May 25, 2013
Instructor Holly Andrews

Southwest Airlines

The corporate culture of Southwest Airlines has changed over the years.
From a culture of hot pants wearing flight attendants; who were liable for any telecom contest with passengers. Emerging to shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect for the national company. In order to relieve workers from the high stress environment; they offer pajama day and rocking chairs for meetings. To prevent layoffs during low passenger flight attendance, Southwest employees were willing to take pay cuts. They increased their turn around gate time to get flights out sooner, from one hour to twenty minutes. They also encourage feedback from employees to improve business. Southwest wants their employees to feel like a team, to have fun/be goofy, to be efficient and have corporate loyalty by loving the corporate culture. Southwest treats their customers like kings and queens and their employees even better.
(http://managers.emeraldinsight.com/quality/articles/pdf/southwest.pdf)

The Current CEO of Southwest airlines is Mr. Gary Kelley. Mr. Kelley could ride first class and be snooty, like most CEO’s, But he likes to get the perspective of the passengers. He is a laid back people person who rides in the back of the cramped plane with the passengers. He likes to get a feel of the company, just like the passenger would. He smiles and interacts with customers. He is the kind of boss that interacts with his employees and attempts to know most of their names on a personal level. He says he’s "just someone who works in the office." Mr. Kelley is an effective leader to Southwest Airlines due to his winning personality and traits of leadership. To me he is the definition of