Corporate Culture at American Airlines Introduction T

As the attached PowerPoint slide suggests, leadership and leaders themselves shape corporate culture by functioning as role models, by creating reward systems, through hiring decisions, and by developing a corporate structure and strategy.

Bolman and Deal (1991) have argued that leaders create, within corporate culture, a set of "frames" or lenses through which culture is established, manipulated, modified, and affirmed. At American Airlines, the dramatic shifts in leadership in recent years, coupled with the growing antagonism between unionized labor and management over layoffs and salary caps or reductions, has damaged the capacity of leaders to create and maintain a practice corporate culture.

A relevant definition of what constitutes leadership was offered by Joseph Rost (1991, p. 26) who says that:

à leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers

. . .
f these executives may be a viable incentive for them, but it is functioning politically as a disincentive for labor. As the second PowerPoint slide attached to this report indicates, there are many levels of culture within an organization. Artifacts consist of visible organizational structures and processes. Espoused beliefs are comprised of strategies, goals, and philosophies which often serve as justifications for corporate behaviors. Third, underlying all organizational cultures are certain unconscious assumptions or beliefs that are taken for granted, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. These function as the ultimate source of values and actions within the corporation. In discussing these aspects of corporate culture, Bolman and Deal (1991) make the point that culture is conveyed through many different frames of reference û political frames, human resource frames, and so forth. At American, Thomas (2004, p. 54) reported that Arpey had taken steps to change cultures as follows: Arpey launched a plan to cut annual costs by $4 billion, or 25% of American's pre-9/11 operating costs. But with pay cuts of up to 23% and morale at an all-time low, he also brought in corporate therapist Overland Resource Group, which ha
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Approximate Word count = 1756
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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