Week 3: Blog 1

Chapter 5: Practical View of Organizational Culture

In reading about the practical view of organizational culture, I couldn't help but think about Southwest Airlines. Yesterday in my Business 160 class (foundations of management and organizational behavior) my professor lectured on organizational culture, for purposes of mergers and acquisitions, and we spent a good deal of time discussing the culture of Southwest. The company has 8 fundamentals that outline their values, vision, and culture and it reads almost identical to the 8 common characteristics of top-performing companies listed in our text.

Two of Southwest's most unique fundamentals are that they "hire for attitude; train for skill" and "the customer comes second, employees first". Southwest has realized that having employees who embody their values will strengthen their culture which is why they place more importance on someone's character than skill set when looking at prospective employees. This is the same as the "hands-on, value-driven" characteristic outlined in the text, in which Southwest has "strong core values that are widely shared among employees".

Southwest has also figured out that happy employees provide better customer service. When employees are well taken care of by their employer, in essence they have nothing to complain about, then their attitude towards the customer and willingness to go above and beyond for the customer significantly increases. This is directly related to the characteristic of "productivity through people" in which "good customer relations depend on valuing service throughout the organization".

Learning about organizational culture from a business perspective and communication perspective at the same time has allowed me to see the "how" and "why" of these principles simultaneously. Business focuses on the "how" to do these things to be a successful company, where communication focuses on the "why" these things work the way they do. Understanding both not only reinforces each individually but makes for an even stronger organization when brought together.