Southwest Airlines Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Southwest Airlines - Essay Example red of every individual employee while interacting with colleagues internally as well as their engagements with the external community, which includes but not limited to the business partners. The organizational code of ethics sums up a working culture that binds individuals from different backgrounds into delivering the core mandate of an organization to its clientele. The Southwest Airlines is one of the companies that has provided a structured, coded guidelines of conduct to its workforce as a way of ensuring that it offers quality services to the satisfaction of its customers, with eyes set on the ultimate prize of cultivating a mass of loyal customers (Kelly, 2008). With a slogan that that reads â€Å"Doing the right thing,† Southwest Airlines has tailored its code of ethics towards ensuring that honesty, integrity, and personal responsibility prevails in all of its services rendered by its employees and/or its co-partners. The binding codes of conduct and behavior guarantees above board engagements with customers and government officials with explicit conformity with the laws the land and those of international trade/business governing its operations (â€Å"Code of Ethics†). The code of ethics also clearly states the controls that regulate how individual employees are expected to respond to the different situations encountered while on duty. A law abiding company, Southwest Airlines recognizes the supremacy of the law, and as such gives it outright weight in situations where its code of ethics incidentally conflicts with the latter (â€Å"Code of Ethics†). In its endeavors to comply with Laws, Rules, and Regulations govern ing its operations, Southwest Airlines overtly prohibits insider trading, particularly the use of non-public information [valuable company information/asset] in gaining personal benefit either directly or indirectly. The company thus expects a high degree of responsibility from its employees in protecting information that relates to the

Why might employees be crucial to competitive success Essay

Why might employees be crucial to competitive success - Essay Example In general, competitive success of an organization has an increasing impact on individuals and the community. The problem under analysis has been widely discussed in the literature. Such gurus of management as M. Porter (1985), Tomer (1987), Storey (1989), Arthur (1994), Huselid (1995), Pfeffer (1996), Huselid and Becker (1996), Pickus and Spratt (1 997), Ichniowski, et al (1997), Patterson et al (1998), Guest (2000) etc. analysed the impact of employees performance on competitive success of a firm and interdependence between HR strategies and successful business performance. They explain why employees are crucial to competitive success and what strategies a company should implement to achieve competitive success. M. Porter, in his book "Competitive Advantage" singles out the main criteria for success. Cost leadership, high quality and innovation are the main elements of competitive success (Porter, 1985). Cost leadership advantage is based on a firm's position as the industry's low-cost producer, in broadly defined markets or across a wide mix of products. For a company managing for high quality means more than just fine-tuning production controls. High quality is used as a weapon and companies are wanting to produce products that meet customers requirement. The idea is to get products to a market with fewer defects. A high degree of rivalry usually compromises the potential profitability of an industry and typically results in innovation which stimulates consumer demand for the products of the industry. Without an adequate supply of staff and employees commitment to work, it will be difficult to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. M. Armstrong agrees with Porter saying that: "unique talents among employees, including superior performance, productivity, flexibility, innovation and the ability to deliver high levels of personal customer service, are ways in which people provide a critical ingredient in developing an organization's competitive position". (Armstrong, 2001, p. 110) Decision about the future strategy of the organization are made by people and strategies are implemented by people. The success or failure of a current strategy will depend not only on decisions made in the past but also on how those decisions are being implemented now by people employed by the organization. It is therefore important to questions about who, how and why people are doing what they are doing and what they should do to achieve competitive success. Employees' skills, knowledge, and abilities are among the most distinctive and renewable resources on which a company can draw, their strategic management is more important than ever. Increasingly, organizations are recognized that their success depends on what people know, that is, their knowledge and skills. According to this Porter's theory (1985) any organization can gain competitive advantage by developing resources, which add unique value, which can't be adopted by another company. Human capital adds value to the company and it cannot be imitated. Employees are crucial for competitive success because human capital becomes" a philosophy that appeals to managements who are striving to increase competitive advantage and appreciate that to do this they must invest in human resources as well