Southwest Airlines and Koch Industries are both known for their distinctive organizational cultures, and both have been highly successful and profitable companies. Southwest Airlines is known as a “fun” place to work where socialization and humor in the workplace are strongly encouraged. Koch Industries, on the other hand, has a culture defined by the principles of “market-based management” where performance and revenue growth is emphasized.
Do some background reading on the cultures behind Southwest Airlines and Koch Industries. While doing your research, keep strongly in mind the characteristics of organizational cultures discussed in the background materials such as team-oriented, people-oriented, outcome-oriented, etc. Here are some articles to get you started on your research that will give you some background about the cultures at these two organizations:
Klein, D. (2011). Creating cultures that lead to success: Lincoln Electric, Southwest Airlines, and SAS Institute. Organizational Dynamics 41(1), 35-39 [Available in Science Direct. Note: you only have to read the middle portion of the article concerning Southwest Airlines and not the whole article]
Bird, A. (Mar. 13, 2011). Southwest: Corporate culture combines work, play. The Post and Courier.[ProQuest]
Whatley, H. (2013). Principles and dimensions of market-based management. Independent Journal of Management & Production, 4(1), 126-135. [ProQuest]
Dissecting the Kochtopus. (Jun. 7, 2014). The Economist, 411, 76. [ProQuest]
When you are finished with your research, write a 4- to 5-page paper addressing the following issues:
- Describe the organizational culture of Southwest Airlines the best you can using the characteristics of organizational culture discussed in the background materials. These include: but are not limited to detail-oriented, team-oriented, innovative, aggressive, outcome-oriented, and people-oriented. Be specific as you can regarding which characteristics of organizational culture that you read about in the background materials apply to Southwest and which ones do not.
- Describe the organizational culture of Koch Industries using the criteria as in Question 1 above.
- Now suppose Koch Industries decided to purchase Southwest Airlines. Compare and contrast the two cultures, and explain what kind of challenges you think they would face in merging the two cultures. Also, explain what steps you think would need to be taken in order to prevent culture clashes between the two organizations.
