LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

TASK FORCE COMMITTEE REPORT:

ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS.

Anthony Allgood

10/25/2017

Dr. Cynthia Parmenter

  1. ORGANIZATION DESCRIPTION AND ISSUE TO BE RESOLVED.

United Airlines Inc. is an American airline. The United Airline, commonly referred to as United is based in Chicago, Illinois. The airline was founded in 1926 and was then called Varney Airlines before being renamed to United Airlines. It is the world largest airline in the world based on revenue after the Delta Airlines and American Airlines. The airlines operates in over nine airline hubs; Chicago, Denver, Guam, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, San Francisco, Washington DC and an international hub in Tokyo, Japan. The United Airline’s previous hubs were the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, Miami International Airport, Stapleton International Airport and the JFK International Airport in New York. The company employs over 80000 people. It is a public listed company with stock being listed under the New York Stock Exchange. The Airlines offers over 130 international destinations to its clients in over 60 nations across all the continents in the world. United Airlines offers various products to its clients based on the affordability and preferred price range. These products include; the United Basic economy (which is the cheapest), then the United Economy, United Economy plus, United First, United Premium service, United Polaris Business and then the United Polaris first which is the most expensive product for the customers.

Despite having fantastic offers and products for its customers, the United Airlines Inc. has been faced by numerous customer service issues over the previous few years. The customer service issue has come up due to what most clients refer to as “resentful employees”. Most United Airlines customers often say that the United Airlines employees are less willing to help the customers than employees in other Airlines. In fact, Brian Kelly, CEO of the travel site ThePointsGuy.com once called United Airlines’ Newark hub is “ground zero for customer service failures.” Most of the issues in customer service started being reported in 2009. Most customers including respectable people like war veterans are alleged to have been abused and insulted by the employees of the company.

  1. CORPORATE CULTURE.

United Airlines have a strong culture that emphasizes the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The mission of United Airlines is “to create an inclusive work environment, characterized by dignity and respect that empowers every employee to serve the global marketplace and contribute to our success. Looking at this mission statement, it is very clear that United Airlines is employee and workplace focused. The company is built on a mission statement that mainly seeks to empower the employees to deliver success to the company. This mission statement does not incorporate customers. It does not speak of respecting, offering quality service or empowering clients in any way. This has most certainly led to a culture where employees feel indispensable and do not in any way find it necessary to take care of the clients since the company does not even find this issue necessary enough to incorporate it into the company’s foundation.

The vision statement also brings this fact into light. “Through our diversity and inclusion strategy, we find innovative and effective solutions to engage employees from diverse backgrounds and cultures in taking our flier-friendly service around the globe. We are driving to become recognized as an airline where:

  • Leaders embrace diversity and inclusion as a business advantage.
  • Employees feel highly valued, are actively engaged and are treated with dignity and respect.
  • Customers value our inclusive approach to delivering flyer-friendly service.

The first statement of the vision statement is all about the employees. It focuses on employees from diverse backgrounds being engaged and made to feel important. This is not a bad culture but it is a tendency for all successful companies to put the clients first. It is a common belief among the successful companies that the client is the “employer” and is also the key to success. United Airlines behaves in the exact manner by treating the employee as the main key to its success. This brings about a culture where employees feel overrated and they can treat the clients in any way the can.

In the long term, employees will treat the clients any way they want because the company is built on the culture of emphasizing employees and disregarding clients.

  1. AREAS OF WEAKNESS.

The major area of weakness of the United Airlines is its culture. Research into organizational behavior has pointed out that organizations with problematic and weak organizational culture normally overlook their customer interests. These organizations will usually find themselves suffering great damage to their reputation as a brand. Clients and the public in general lose confidence in the organization’s services. This is exactly the case in United Airlines. People at the top of the chain in the airline are the major cause for this issue. The behavior and values they portray reflects a culture that disregard clients and their interests.

Another weakness in the culture of United Airlines is the glaring disconnect between the company’s mission and values and what is actually practiced and portrayed by the employees. Despite the company emphasizing on empowerment of employees from diverse backgrounds, it has previously been reported that the company favors employees and clients from certain backgrounds. There have been claims of dubious promotions over the past few years. Corporate values, mission statements and visions should not just be what is written down in documents. They are what should form the basis of the behavior for everyone in the company including the top management. Leaders in the United Airlines Company should be able to inculcate a sense of equity and fairness in the organization. However, they do the exact opposite. They say one thing but do another. This erodes trust in the entire organization and the effects trickle down even to the customer service level.

  1. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS.

The solutions to United Airlines’ customer service issue should start the core leadership of the company. The company should first identify the key inappropriate conducts in the company by everyone in the company. After this, they should address these problems specifically by designing applicable programs to preempt misconduct in the company. The leaders should start by building a culture of honesty and fairness. A strong culture built on foundations of honesty and justice is the main solution to restore integrity and reputation and retain clients. The leaders should have the ability to inspire others to work towards a positive change. The leaders should incorporate an ethical environment in order to be successful in remedying these issues.

The company should also focus on being proactive rather than reactive to customer service issues. They should create measures to curb assault and abuse of clients by employees. Employees that mistreat customers should face the law and have tough measures taken against them. Currently the company treats customer issues without any importance and weight. This culture has to change so that clients can be feel safer to travel with the airlines.

The company should also turn to be more customer-focused than it currently is. The company should emphasize more on its clients. This will enable the clients to trust the integrity and service being provided by the company.

  1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.

United Airlines is a large company with huge revenues and market share. However, the company is being faced by weak organizational culture whose effects trickle down all the way from the top management to the junior employees. This has affected customer service with most customers reporting incidences of abuse and mistreatment by employees. This is a sign of rotten corporate culture that shows evidence of ethical issues in the top management level of the company.

These issues have negatively affected the company’s reputation as a customer friendly brand. This has eroded trust in the public eyes and is leading to loss of clients and customers for the airlines.

The company should focus on remedying these issues before they get out of hand. United Airlines should be more proactive rather than reactive to issues of customer satisfaction. It is common knowledge in all industries that customers are the key members of any successful organization. United Airline’s solution to its customer service issues lies in remedying its weak corporate culture. United Airlines should start by building a culture based on honesty, fairness and ethics. The leaders should be the main role models of the company concerning the new culture and they should inspire the other employees to adjust their ways in order to remedy the situation.

United Airlines should also focus on being more customer-focused. At the moment, the entire company is all about itself with its vision and mission statements all being about itself and its employees.

REFERENCES.

Sigurdsson, E. (Oct 25, 2017) Corporate Leadership and Culture: United Airlines & the ‘Re-accommodated’ Doctor – guiding principles for Boards, C-suite executives, and General Counsel. Retrieved from

Koenig, D. (September 11, 2015) United Airlines’ new chief executive faces a list of not-so-small problems. Retrieved from