Southwest Airlines is the largest domestic carrier in the United States. It provides domestic flight services across 89 destinations in the country. This is comprised of towns and cities in 42 different states.
Being a service industry, the companies’ greatest source of uncertainty is input. The company must rely on stakeholders such as suppliers to conveniently avail products that will be converted to the final output. Since suppliers are part of the specific environment that Southwest has relatively little control over, they bring about high uncertainty.
Technology is a very huge part of Southwest Airlines operations including its productions of foods and services. One particular element of technology is knowledge. Southwest exists in a relatively crowded airline business that features strong competitors such as Jet Blue and Continental Airlines. To survive in such a competitive market, Southwest is always seeking to collect knowledge on the airline market particularly regarding its competitors’ strategies, products and services. This enables the company to formulate products and services that overcome those of competitors. In addition, the company conducts various feasibility studies on the products it hopes to provide to its clients so that it acquires enough knowledge on them to determine their success potential when availed to the clients.
Apart from knowledge, another type of technology that Southwest utilizes in its production process is material technology. Since it is a service industry, material technology at Southwest acts as support tool in the production of goods and services. The company brags of several Boeing and Airbus planes, which it advertises as providing the best flight experience to travelers. The other types of material technology at Southwest Airlines are computers. Computers are used for a variety of functions including booking of flights for clients, formulation and storage of passenger manifests amongst other functions amongst other functions.
Being a service industry, it is relatively difficult to categorize Southwest airlines into a particular level of technical complexity. However, the company’s technical complexity can be likened to the continuous flow production level. This is because the company’s activities are forever continuous. From booking of flights, buying of tickets, flight boarding and subsequent air level, it is always a continuous process at Southwest Airlines. As a result, the company can be seen as utilizing continuous process technology.
Southwest’s technical complexity can also be explained using two other elements: task variability and task analyzability. Southwest operations involve routine and repetitive activities. As a result, there is relatively low task variability and high task analyzability. In light of this, of the four types of technology proposed by Perry, Southwest appears to be utilizing the routine manufacturing technology only that in this case, the company is not manufacturing tangible goods but is rather producing services.
The company has a quite relaxed form of task interdependence. The activities of the people and departments are not very dependent on each other as long as the final company objective is achieved. This is common in service industries where random adjustments are made to fit with the new emerging demands of customers. The company therefore uses a mediating type of technology. This is a type of technology that is characterized by a work process where the input, conversion as well as the output activities is performed interdependently of each other.
With the above characteristics of organization technology, Southwest has an organic structure. Seeing that the company has been quite successful in a highly competitive service industry, it is my opinion that the company is operating its technology effectively. There is a room for improvement however, and, Southwest could always conduct more research to identify its customers’ needs so that it can be able to anticipate any future industry or market trends.
References
Jones, G. R. (2010). Organizational theory, design, and change (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN-13: 9780132729949
Gittell, J. H. (2003). The Southwest Airlines way: Using the power of relationships to achieve high performance. New York: McGraw-Hill.
