Wags Macro

Business 220 X

Nuts! Assignment

December 2, 2007

The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit. Along with these attributes, Southwest Airlines is a business that has achieved a phenomenal track record of success. The book Nuts! takes its readers on the wild ride that is Southwest Airlines and the way they manage through the business elements of organizational efficiency, social responsibility, planning, organizing, leading, motivation, and controlling.

Organizational efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to achieve an organizational goal. It is based on how much raw material, money, and people are necessary for producing a given output volume. Efficiency can be calculated as the amount of resources used to produce a product or service. Southwest Airlines achieves organizational efficiency by being resourceful. Page 42 in the book Nuts! describes the beginning of the first year and how resources were scarce and load factors were very low. This forced the airline to be resourceful by refurbishing abandon equipment and scrounging around for parts and also asking to borrow parts. Even though grounds equipment was less than satisfactory and the work environment was less than perfect, morale was high, people were enthusiastic, the work ethic was strong, and employees were willing to make do with what was available.

Social responsibility is the obligation of organization management to make decisions and take action that will enhance the welfare and interests of society as well as the organization. Chapter 17 in Nuts! tells how Southwest Airlines demonstrated social responsibility. In 1989 when the San Francisco Bay area experienced a terrible earthquake a Southwest employee called the ABC television affiliate in Phoenix and asked newscasters to tell viewers to take blankets, clothes, and canned foods to the Southwest...