Research Paper on "Motivation at Southwest Motivation Is the Ability"

Research Paper 10 pages (2865 words) Sources: 10

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Motivation at Southwest

Motivation is the ability to influence and persuade individuals or a group of individuals to achieve or accomplish organizational or institutional goals. Nevertheless, the necessary the study of leaders usually fall under the auspices of motivation theories. The leader chosen is Herb Kelleher who is the CEO and co-founder of Southwest Airlines. This company is chosen to present the major auspices of motivation and to highlight how Southwest Airlines has used formal motivational theories to achieve company goals. Kelleher is an identified public figure and has been analyzed in many business arenas.

However, it is noted that his motivational and leadership style has allowed Southwest Airlines to continually be one of the most profitably domestic airlines as measured by profit margins and is always recognized as the number one airlines for customer service satisfaction.

The airline industry is one of the most analyzed and researched areas in industrial and business economics. This focus on the industry is due to the noted opportunities that exist and define competitive advantages. Southwest Airlines is an important player in the overall market and faces many opportunities, due to the necessary industry and competitive advantages available to the firm. Although the overall industry seems to have many areas or processes that are important, it is clear that Southwest Airlines has tremendous opportunities to expand and increase profits. More specifically, there has been tremendous growth in the sector, and this presents an opportunity for Southwest

Leadership, Communication and Motivation -- Examples from Southwes

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t Airlines, Herb Kelleher

Kelleher's leadership style is one closely related to relationship orientation or team management. The team management approach shows that Kelleher's ability is based on the team oriented style and how he motivates his followers to focus on the success of Southwest as a collective group. In essence, his approach is based on good personal relations being the focus of the Motivation style.

Motivation and communication in for a team management approach is very important. More so for Herb Kelleher since Southwest Airlines is in a very competitive and financial unstable industry, (Jaffe 1991).

Southwest has to embrace effective communication and Herb Kelleher encourages this since its corporate culture should be centered on customer satisfaction.

Some of the practices by Southwest ensure that employees will be loyal, as stated by the founder, CEO Herb Keller, who stands by his philosophy of putting employees first. "If they're happy, satisfied, dedicated and energetic, they'll take good care of the customers. When the customers are happy, they come back. And that makes the shareholders happy," (Gordon, 2004, para 2). It is clear that the CEO understands the importance of employee loyalty and the 'spillover' effects it can have on operations and profits. As such this type of trust and effective human resource management is effectively imparted via communication.

Whatever strategic and business strategies are chosen it is essential that the organizational culture is consistent with production/operational trends. In fact the following seven principles are important to the Southwest, so as to help achieve efficient communication and motivation:

Communication channels have to be compatible with the current organization culture and schedule.

There has to be a connection between achievements and rewards should be understood by the staff.

There has to a scheduled time at benchmarks to help with communication and motivating forces so as to acknowledge and communicate desired behavior and performance.

The organization culture should integrate well with the distribution channels, so that it is does not interfere with productive activities.

The communication and motivating process should be kept clean.

Optimizing communication functions implies that the CEO has a relationship with workers that involve providing feedback, evaluation of employee activities, and rewarding efforts geared towards effective communication is also essential. In today's culturally diverse workforce, supervisors and employees have to be sensitive to differences within communication methods. Effective communication implies that the CEO includes these differences within the communication plan development and the overall organizational structure (Gordon, 2004).

It is common knowledge that communication is a necessary prerequisite for effective management and motivation. Southwest Airlines has gained tremendous success, by enforcing effective communication channels between employees and supervisors. Other organizations have failed to realize their strategic objectives because of barriers to communication. Southwest Airlines' CEO uses communication to enforce and bolster his Motivation style by continually leading the company into successful ventures and augmenting sound business practices that are conducted by the organization but imparted by the CEO and his Motivation. Kelleher's team management approach has been integrated within the company's organizational structure which aids the company's success, (Reed, 2007).

The interlinkages between communication and motivation from Kelleher takes the form of engaging in effective communication to ensure that Southwest employees are productive or increase productivity to ensure the Airline's success or to achieve corporate objectives, (Reed, 2007).

The importance of strategic communication objectives is based on the fact it feeds operational excellence and ensures that strategic objectives are achieved. Herb Kelleher acts as the strategic driving force that guides the decisions and workers on all levels which has been integrated with his communication objectives by:-

Identifying credible strategic forces that embrace the team management, motivational, and leadership style associated with the Kelleher,

Prioritizing and analyzing risk associated with each Southwest's organizational culture,

Providing multiple communication channels to meet consumers' needs and help workers and managers embrace the Airline's organizational structure.

The use power bases within Kelleher's communication style have been a major part of motivating Southwest's employees. Southwest has gained tremendous success, by enforcing being able to correctly identifying rewards to performance and hence motivating the workforce to support the organizational structure via Kelleher's effective communication process.

Kelleher uses communication as a process of change. Employees use the Kelleher as a model for the organization's direction and development. This is why Kelleher has to be able to scan the external market environment and be able to predict and analyze the future changes within the industry. Employees have confidence in Kelleher's leadership and is motivation since he is viewed as an act as "visionary, a problem solver, and a communicator," (Nelson, 2002, p 1). Figure 1 below outlines these chosen competencies of Kelleher and shows how they are related to the motivating the Southwest Airlines employees.

Motivational Theories and Southwest Airlines

Motivational competencies from Kelleher is based on the fact that the Airline's has sets performance standards and promote these standards as part of the structure associated with the organizational objectives and team management, hence the employees have to be motivated to complete these tasks.

Attribution Theory

Southwest Airlines has used incentives to motivate the workforce. The current practices are similar to the major components of the attribution theory, where strong influences of several factors affect the behavior of the staff at Southwest. These factors like the attribution theory attributed the causes to their behavior into two types -- external and internal factors. The external attribution assigned behavior to an outside factor, they included laws which define the competence of the police, security conditions, security needs, security policy, security aim, and society and its characteristics. The internal factors were the employee assistance programs, the recruitment process that integrated the ideas of current employees in the Human Resource equation, tasks, methods, and development of employers.

Attribution theory within this context of motivation at Southwest Airlines is based on the argument that when employees assign internal factors to their actions or processes, they are more motivated to complete these processes. For example Southwest Airlines, to motivate the employees it made it mandatory that internal factors were more conducive to the work environment, so the methods and means should be more efficient, and then there was the expectation that the workforce would be motivated to complete their jobs. Similarly, there was less emphasis on external factors such as the society, security policy, and security needs; since these will not necessarily lead to a motivated workforce. The underlying hypothesis is that in order for the workers to be motivated, and then it is necessary to assign internal factors to the processes and procedures. Although external factors cannot be ignored, there can still be an earned reward or punishment for intrinsic reasons.

Hertzberg and ERG Theory

Closely related to the attribution theory above are Hertzberg two factor theories. In the current context of the research, this presents an excellent model of motivation for Southwest Airlines. Ideally, the study focused on distinguishing between external and internal factors that affect the workforce. Hertzberg two factor theories will support the hypothesis that a subset of these factors acts as motivators, while the other factors are more so related to satisfaction and dissatisfaction. If the emphasis is to be placed on motivation, then the motivating factors are more of importance. However, for Southwest employees to be motivated, they have to be satisfied. This model is ideal for understanding motivation at the Airline, because it is very hard to isolate the external and internal factors within the organization (which is more along the lines of what the attribution theory… READ MORE

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Quoted Instructions for "Motivation at Southwest Motivation Is the Ability" Assignment:

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Write an eight to ten page paper in APA format. Outline and bibliography is needed as well and does not include the 8-10 pages. The paper must reflect the paper requirements of an actual organization of your choice (including your own employer) and a problem that your selected organization is experiencing. Diagnose the problem using theories, concepts, or models from the textbook and other sources, and recommend a solution (that applies to that model).

Perhaps you work in a perfect organization. :-) As an alternative, you may discuss what makes your organization so perfect, or a change process that has taken place to make it so perfect. You need to define and discuss organizational behavior theories that have been discussed in this course and in the textbook. Other popular theories of organizational behavior that have been discussed in scholarly research, but are not in the textbook, may also be discussed and supported. Also, if you have found any theories that have been refuted in your organization, please discuss those as well with additional support.

Use Times New Roman 12-point font with standard margins. There must be a minimum of eight FULL pages of text. Create a title page that page header, the title of your paper, your name, institution, centered on the page in separate lines according to APA format. The paper will be graded for timeliness (2 points), APA format (including citations and references) (5 points), writing quality, content (including introduction, background, conclusion) and grammar (6 points), sufficient explanation of applicable theories and concepts, recommendations/conclusions) (6 points), proper application of theories and concepts to the problem (6 points), and the quality of sources (10 sources with 6 sources being from peer-reviewed/scholarly journals) that were used for support for the material in the paper (5 points).

Include concepts and theories of organizational behavior that we have discussed to support your work. Also, include solutions and recommendations.

As you prepare to write your paper,please review the following sources provided for you regarding APA formatting.

1. The APA Manual, 6th edition. If you do not have the APA Manual 6th Edition, please review sources in the folder *****"APA Manual, 6th edition Resources*****" in the Course Material section of the classroom. The folder has an MSWord document and a PowerPoint presentation about the new APA format. This is VERY helpful!!

If you are not proficient with APA, print out these two items for a quick reference as you continue your masters-level work. The APA Manual, 6th edition is a more in-depth reference.

2.Also, a good source, The Owl Purdue website

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01

Common Errors:

1. Please use the *****"Header*****" feature of MSWord to develop a header for your paper. The header should be the same font as the paper, accepted APA font is Times New Roman. The header should include the words Running head: and 2-3 words of the title of the paper which is left aligned and a page number that is right aligned. The header with the words *****"Running head*****" with the 2-3 words from the title and page number should only appear on the title page. On the other pages, the header should only contain the words of the title left aligned with the page numbers right aligned. You will need to insert a section break after the title page to create a different header for the rest of the paper.

2. Format the title page according to APA Format.

3. Double-space the paper.

4. The entire paper is to be left-aligned, as opposed to justified.

5. Use headings in your paper. Please see the APA resources to learn how to use headings in your papers. APA Manual 6th Edition, pages 62 and 63 will give directions for proper format of headings. The word *****"Abstract*****" and *****"References*****" are considered APA labels versus headings and should NOT be boldface print.

6. Use citations correctly. (Author last name, year)(Smith, 2008) If you have quoted or enumerated material you must include a page number (Smith, 2008, p. 45) Use the authors name in the citation as opposed to the article. INCORRECT Example: The Journal of Business Ethics suggests the cow jumped over the moon.....The scholarly journal cannot suggest anything; however, the AUTHOR can suggest....Smith (2008) suggests that the cow jumped over the moon.....

7. Paragraphs are indented 5 spaces.

8. Format the reference page properly with the word References centered on the page no bold print or not all caps. The reference page IS double-spaced like the rest of the paper. Each reference begins left aligned and the second and following lines are indented 5 spaces.

9. Format your references properly. Use the new APA Electronic Reference format that can be found in the APA Manual, 6th edition or the Owl Purdue website. NO BLUE FONT in the URL. To remove the blue font in the URL, place the cursor on the blue font and right click, choose *****"Remove Hyperlink*****" and the font should be black.

10. APA papers are to be written in THIRD person as opposed to first person, which means that there should not be any use of pronouns such as *****"I,*****" we,*****" *****"they,*****" etc.

******* REFERENCES MUST BE PEER REVIEWED AND FROM SCHOLARLY JOURNALS

1. The following reference format applies to a source that HAS a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) number assigned to the document.

Christensin, P. R., & Klyver, K. (2006). Management consultancy in small firms: how does

interaction work? Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 13(3), 299-313. doi: 10.1108/14626000610680217

The following information is found in the Abstract section of Proquest.

Indexing (document details)

Subjects: Studies, Small business, Management consultants, Client relationships

Classification Codes 9130 Experimental/theoretical, 9520 Small business, 8310 Consultants, 2400 Public relations

Author(s): Poul Rind Christensen, Kim Klyver

Document types: Feature

Document features: Charts, References

Publication title: Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development. Bradford: 2006. Vol. 13, Iss. 3; pg. 299

Source type: Periodical

ISSN: 14626004

ProQuest document ID: 1105634081

Text Word Count 6902

DOI: 10.1108/14626000610680217

Document URL: http://proquest.umi.com.ezp*****.apus.edu/pqdweb?did=1105634081&sid=19&Fmt=2&clientId=62546&RQT=309&VName=PQD

*****ƒ2. The following reference format applies to a document that does NOT have a DOI assigned to the document. If there is NO DOI then, the Document URL is used to reference the article.

Hanson, P. G. (2000). The self as an instrument for change. Organization Development

Journal, 18(1), 95-105. Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com.ezp*****.apus.edu/pqdweb?did=871335181&sid=5&Fmt=2&clientId=62546&RQT=309&VName=PQD

The following information is found in the Abstract section of Proquest.

Indexing (document details)

Subjects: Studies, Changes, Consultants, Organizational behavior, Self image

Classification Codes 2500 Organizational behavior/operations research, 9130 Experiment/theoretical treatment, 8310 Consultants

Author(s): Philip G Hanson profile

Document types: Feature

Document features: References, Photographs

Publication title: Organization Development Journal. Chesterland: Spring 2000. Vol. 18, Iss. 1; pg. 95, 11 pgs

Source type: Periodical

ISSN: 08896402

ProQuest document ID: 871335181

Text Word Count 6024

Document URL: http://proquest.umi.com.ezp*****.apus.edu/pqdweb?did=871335181&sid=18&Fmt=2&clientId=62546&RQT=309&VName=PQD

The course that I*****m presently enrolled in: Organizational Behavior

Textbook: Managing Behavior in Organizations (5th Ed), Jerald Greenberg (2010)

Theories that may be used in this paper:(please select theory or model for this research paper)

X & Y Theory Goal Setting Theory

Classical Organizational Theory Expectancy Theory

Organizational Behavior Theory Rational Economic

Kohlberg*****s Theory Administrative Model

Social Identity Theory Image Theory

Personal Identity Theory Great Person Theory

Kelley*****s Theory of Causal Attribution LPC Contingency Theory

Affective Events Theory Situational Leadership Theory

Path Goal Theory:

Two Factor Theory of Job Satisfaction

Value Theory

Equity Theory

******* PLEASE INCLUDE THEORY OR THEORIES OF CHOICE WITHIN THE RESEARCH PAPER

******* PLEASE USE GREENBERG (2010) AS A REFERENCE

Title: Organizational Change: Its effect on employees.

Purpose:?????

Hypothesis:?????

Method ?????

Conclusion?????

Abstract

This internal study seeks to investigate how employees are affected by realignment within an organization, using ????? theory, concept, or model(Greenberg, 2010). This literature will show how organizational change can be difficult at times; effecting the emotions of employees, thus having implications on the degree of support and attitudes towards change when various strategies and tactics are utilized.

Sample of 96 respondents; both military and civilian have been selected to participate in a job satisfaction / organizational change survey. The participants of this study consist of 68 active duty military personnel and 28 civilian government employees; all with diverse backgrounds and both groups are affiliated with the same Army Medical Readiness organization.

References (Useful for the paper , others must be peer reviewed/scholarly journals, (e.g., with DOI: and/or URLS)

Choi, T. Y., & Behling, O. C. (1997). Top managers and tqm success: One more look after all these years. Academy of Management Executive, 11(1), 37-47. Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com.ezp*****1.apus.edu/pqdweb?did=11322268&sis=1&Fmt=6&clientld=625426&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Greenberg, J. (2010). Managing behavior in organizations (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River,NJ: Prentice Hall.

Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics: Concept, method and reality in social science;

Social equilibrium and social change. Human Relations, 1(1), 5-41. doi: 10.1177/001872674700100103

Prochaska, J. O., & DiClemente, C. C. (1982). Tran theoretical therapy: Toward a more integrative model of change. Psychotherapy, 19(3), 276-288. doi: 10.1037/h0088437

Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2003). Research methods for business

Students. (3rd edition). London: Prentice Hall.

Trochim, W. (2000). The research methods knowledge base, (2nd Edition). Cincinnati, OH:Atomic Dog Publishing.

Wilson, N. and McLean, S. (1994) Questionnaire design: A practical introduction.

Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim: University of Ulster Press.

ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE CALL FIRST AT 254-371-0630 , THEN EMAIL, THANKS SO MUCH.

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