Organizational Culture

As the information and pictures of United Airlines’ brutal removal of a paid passenger continues to impact its brand, what is not being discussed is how a company or industry created an organizational culture to remove a customer in place of an employee.  (Read Yahoo! for additional details and reporting.) United stated that “United told ABC News that passengers were offered up to $800 to give up their seats for four crew members who needed to board…” (LINK)

Michael D. Watkins, in a May 2013 article for Harvard Business Review describes organizational culture as:

“Culture is consistent, observable patterns of behavior in organizations…This view elevates repeated behavior or habits as the core of culture and deemphasizes what people feel, think or believe. It also focuses our attention on the forces that shape behavior in organizations, and so highlights an important question: are all those forces (including structure, processes, and incentives) “culture” or is culture simply the behavioral outputs?”

The question that is not being asked is why would a company (or industry) condone the removal of a paying passenger in order to facilitate their scheduling? Regardless of process or protocols that must be observed, and one cannot overstate the physicality of the incident, the basic premise still remains.  Would a big-box store close its doors because its employee was stuck in a traffic jam? No, I don’t think so.