Jody Hoffer Gittell

Through extensive research, the author gets to the bottom of what has sustained Southwest Airlines' positive employee relations and high performance through good and bad times.

The Southwest Airlines Way

Marjorie M. Godfrey

Glyn Elwyn

Stuart W. Grande

Dale Collins Vidal

Are We There Yet?

Thomas A. Kochan

Greg J. Bamber

Andrew Von Nordenflycht

"And you thought the passengers were mad. Airline employees are fed up, too-with pay cuts, increased workloads and management's miserly ways, which leave workers to explain to often-enraged passengers why flying has become such a miserable experience."—The New York Times, December 22, 2007 When both an industry's workers and its customers report high and rising frustration with the way they are being treated, something is fundamentally wrong. In response to these conditions, many of the world's airlines have made ever-deeper cuts in services and their workforces. Is it too much to expect airlines, or any other enterprise, to provide a fair return to investors, high-quality reliable service to their customers, and good jobs for their employees? Measured against these three expectations, the airline industry is failing. In the first five years of the twenty-first century alone, U.S. airlines lost a total of $30 billion while shedding 100,000 jobs, forcing the remaining workers to give up over $15 billion in wages and benefits. Combined with plummeting employee morale, shortages of air traffic controllers, and increased congestion and flight delays, a total collapse of the industry may be coming. Is this state of affairs inevitable? Or is it possible to design a more sustainable, less volatile industry that better balances the objectives of customers, investors, employees, and the wider society? Does deregulation imply total abrogation of government's responsibility to oversee an industry showing the clear signs of deterioration and increasing risk of a pending crisis? Greg J. Bamber, Jody Hoffer Gittell, Thomas A. Kochan, and Andrew von Nordenflycht explore such questions in a well-informed and engaging way, using a mix of quantitative evidence and qualitative studies of airlines from North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Up in the Air provides clear and realistic strategies for achieving a better, more equitable balance among the interests of customers, employees, and shareholders. Specifically, the authors recommend that firms learn from the innovations of companies like Southwest and Continental Airlines in order to build a positive workplace culture that fosters coordination and commitment to high-quality service, labor relations policies that avoid long drawn-out conflicts in negotiating new agreements, and business strategies that can sustain investor, employee, and customer support through the ups and downs of business cycles.

How Airlines Can Improve Performance by Engaging Their Employees

Up in the Air

The original low cost operator, Southwest Airlines is now one of the world's most profitable airlines. This book examines the relationship-based performance principles & innovative management that have driven this company to the top of the league.

Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance

Mary Godwyn

The sociological study of organizations encompasses both planned and formal organizations as well as spontaneous and informal ones. Sociologists examine organizations with attention to structure and objectives, interactions among members and among organizations, the relationship between the organization and its environment and the social significance or social meaning of the organization. The ways of defining and examining organizations vary depending on the theoretical emphasis. This book focuses on three things: * providing a wide and historically accurate portrait of the diversity of sociological theories and their application to organizational studies * updating selections that reflect a variety of ways that new technology affects methods of organizing and types of organizations * including readings that examine a range of both formal and informal structures, and both deliberate and impromptu interactions. Lively and provocative, this textbook is theoretically rigorous, disciplinarily informed and representative of heterogeneity within organizational studies.

Structures and Relationships

Sociology of Organizations

Jody Hoffer Gittell

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