September 11, 2001 is a day that most people remember as being one of the worst terrorist attacks that hit our nation. In the midst of such a tragedy, businesses everywhere were significantly impacted. The most impacted was the airline industry.
Southwest is known for their customer service. In an industry fraught with awful customer service, Southwest distanced itself from other airlines by putting the customer first, no matter what the situation.
On September 11, 2001, airlines were forced to shut down for days while the rest of the nation recovered from the terrorist attacks. This meant that all airline passengers, flight attendants and pilots were stranded with the planes across the country. Instead of merely sitting and waiting, Southwest employees were encouraged to take passengers bowling or to the movies to pass the time.
Many airlines started cutting jobs in the months following 9/11. The airline industry had been badly damaged, and many airlines were forced to cut their workforce by up to 20%. Instead of following the trend, Southwest made an announcement only three days after 9/11 that Southwest would be keeping all of their employees and starting a $179.8 million profit sharing payment to employees.
Southwest CEO James Parker believed that because Southwest had built their company on sound business principles for the past 30 years, they were able to handle crisis better than other airlines.
James Parker demonstrates many aspects of the contingency model in his leadership style. The first and foremost important factor is that there is a situational influence that determines the leadership methods that are to be implemented. Mr. Parker has Good leader-member relations, is influenced by a degree of task structure and definitely displays tremendous amounts of power in his leadership.
These three factors characterize the type of leadership that should follow the situation at hand. And, due to the given scenario, Parker remains extremely customer and employee focused and demonstrates this focus by implementing programs in favor of the employees and customers.
Ultimately, the company may be less profitable in the short-term, but due to the significant impact Parker’s leadership style has on the company and followers, Southwest Airlines has adopted an infinitely important reputation of customer and employee focus.
What do you all think? Is the contingency theory well represented in this example? What other theories can you justify for Parker and Southwest Airlines?
-Danny Mielneczek
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ReplyDeleteThis is a great, inspiring example of strong leadership where facing significant challenges is treated as an opportunity rather than "beginning of the end". While other airlines pulled out considering the situation to be non-recoverable, Southwest took on a different view and analyzed the situation looking for ways to utilize any assets to innovatively attack the problem. Having a truly strong company means having a structure of employees functioning as one united machine based trust and accountability. To ensure this advantage leaders must provide support, sense of security and empowerment. Parker stayed true to their initial beliefs of prioritizing the satisfaction of customers and employees during the company's most problematic time utilizing supportive situational leadership style and securing the loyalty of those employees. Instead of being afraid of taking the risk of spending possibly last of the company's money (if they were to end as well) he wisely invested it into the initial generators of the company - the workers, and knew that the decision would turn beneficial down the road in more significant ways than it would benefit them not being used. The reputation ensured future's increase of customer and employee loyalty and respect which can be explained by looking at the Leadership Grid in chapter 4, more specifically the Opportunism aspect where combination of the basic five styles of leadership serves as ultimate beneficial advancement. Supportive and directive team management along with innovativeness are great essential tools to be utilized in a time of a crisis such as this.
ReplyDeleteMingaile Orakauskaite
By looking at this post, I can tell that in this situation, the contingency theory is a perfect example of the style of leadership Parker portrays. Southwest Airlines have had strong, ethical, and hilarious leaders since the coming of Herb Kelleher. They have always been known to be the happiest and most well thought of airline employees and after writing a few case studies on this company in MQM 386, I can definitely see the employees being this great towards their passengers. Anyways, coming back to how Parker handled the situation, as stated above, Southwest has always had efficient and loved CEO's. This aids your argument of the contingency theory by describing Parker as having good leader-member relations. Being an officer in the company, he has very strong position power, and given the dire situation that was 9/11, the task structure can be seen as very high. The only argument I can pose to using the contingency theory as an example is in the fault of the theory itself. In a situation like 9/11, the theory states that only low and middle LPC's would be affective in this type of situation. But, after having done research on the people that work for this company, I would argue that Parker is a High LPC, a leader that is described as relationship motivated. One fault in the contingency theory, as you may remember, is that it fails to describe the differences in these LPCs. In the end, I do agree that this theory describes Parker as a leader, however the only fault is the weakness in the theory in matching him to the correct category in the Contingency Model.
ReplyDeleteJonathon Byrd