Northwest Airlines Confronts Change

Deregulation of the airline industry in 1978 Increased competition, new travelers' needs, problems, strikes, concern about the safety of aircraft, oil crisis problem ... Northwest has a reputation for being very conservative financial control and relationship rules work very hard. Despite the six years since the start of deregulation, Northwest does not yet have the technological capabilities (electronic reservation systems ...) or human skills that are more customer-oriented and service. Steve Rothmeier took over the management and committed to his side a psychological Ken Myers to help change the organization (potentially hostile environment) in depth : Have more balance between mgmt and workers operate more service-oriented... Rothmeier's Story : Part 1 The strong point of the company is the trust and employee pride The main weakness is unionism (95%). Dr. Ken's job is to prepare supervisors and managers to adopt a more participatory role. Ken style (" bearded academic ") Is quite different from mgmt in place (" weird ") He did not rank high not to be perceived as a member of mgmt but is a general help to communicate, understand the problems of organization and motivation, to pass messages. Northwest is now in a strong position on the domestic market with a strong presence : The most difficult thing is to maintain this leading position and that change can help. A peculiarity of such a large aviation company is that people are still running and it is therefore difficult to convey factual messages. Rumors faster than new. Drivers etc are dif ficult to gather together (via cassettes solution does not really work either for channeling rumors). The efforts of Dr. Ken led the company to become 4th in customer service. To deal with all major operators in 1986 announced Rothmeier acquiring Republic Airlines (Minneapolis, stpaul). Ken's Story : Part 1 Arrived in 1985 in an organization