Alaska Airlines: Empowering Frontline Workers to Make It Right
This case documents the ongoing efforts by Alaska Airlines to enhance its efforts to become more customer centric by empowering its employees using a service framework. It explores how the airline starts with a completely hands-off approach to empowerment in which employees are encouraged to do whatever it takes to please customers. An economic downturn leads them to swing the pendulum the other way and develop a rules-based framework with strict guidelines. Ultimately, they settle on an intermediate model in which employees are given “freedom within a framework.” This forces them to try and shift from a rules-based to a principles-based culture. The case explores not only what they did but also how the framework was rolled out. All this seems to be working until they acquire Virgin America in 2016. Virgin too espouses customer centricity and front-line autonomy but does so in a different way. The dilemma now is blend the two cultures that are both trying to achieve similar goals but do so quite differently.
Keywords: Employee empowerment; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Service Delivery; Organizational Culture; Integration; Air Transportation Industry;
Citation:
Gulati, Ranjay, Andrew O'Connell, and Caroline de Lacvivier. "Alaska Airlines: Empowering Frontline Workers to Make It Right." Harvard Business School Case 418-063, March 2018. (Revised August 2020.) View Details