SUBJECT: ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR (ASSIGNMENT)

CASE STUDY: PEOPLE EXPRESS AIRLINES

QUESTION 1: Do you think that change from participating management

style to a more classic one contributed towards the final collapse of
people express? Explain your reasons.
ANSWER: YES. The change from participating management style to
classic one was the reason of downfall of People Express. Employees
were working in coordination and supportive manner which increased
the productivity and efficiency. Employees were holding some shares in
the company so there performance was directly affecting share prices
of the company. This helped in increasing their efforts to get good
returns in terms of rise in share prices and to maximize their wealth on
long term basis.
People express suffered heavy and significant losses post expansion.
The company did not adapt to change in the working requirements like
rapid business functioning, management system requirements.
Above situation of continuous losses gave rise to “Autocratic
Approach” in a workplace which is based on power and authority in
hands of single person. In short it brings up dictatorship in an
organisation and end of discovery, innovation and opinion sharing.
Human resource is one of the most significant factor driving an
organisation. So there retention should be the priority of any business
organisation for sustainable growth and development of organisation.
Post expansion company also failed to maintain “Custodial Approach” in the
organisation which was rude and was practically incorrect behaviour of Donald
Burr towards employees which affected labour retention giving rise to high
labour turnover rate.
Failure in retention of key managerial personnel due to change from
participating management style to the classic style for loss of revenue and
ultimately bankruptcy.

QUESTION 2: Do you think that a particular style of management that

is effective when the company is growing, is equally effective when the
company has grown large. Justify your reason.
ANSWER: NO.
No doubt growth of the company is based on Management’s approach
and management style of business. Management plays a vital role in
the success of organization. In the globalised business environment we
get to know about varied management styles or prospective of various
authors. Management style is a vast and upto some extent a vague
concept. There is no Fixed formula to get expected results, but
management has to apply some logics keeping in mind opportunities,
nature of business, size of organization and availability and utilisation
pattern of resources.
As the above factors vary from organization to organization we cannot
rely on a particular/single style of management for sustainable
development of the organisation To avoid the failure the company can
follow SWOT analysis which is required once the company has grown
large.
Hence, same management style is not effective when the company has
grown large.
QUESTION 3: Why do you think Donald Burr changed his managerial
style. Was he justified in firing Lori Dubose because she disagreed with
the managerial policies.
ANSWER: Participating managerial style consists where all the
employees contribute in the decision making of the company. Donald
Burr must have changed the managerial style because he must have
thought that coming together and having more opinions was not
proper because it creates confusion to find out best outcome and that
style was not effective. Whereas as per Donald Burr giving more
freedom to the employees was not right as the company could not
match the expansion. He must have thought that giving more freedom
to the employees was a disadvantage as they might have not done
their appointed work effectively and efficiently within the given period
of time.
I don’t think the step taken by Donald Burr was justified in firing Lori
Dubose. After the change in style the entire functioning was in the
hands of Donald Burr so he didn’t give chance to other employees to
question and come forward . Just because she started questioning and
speaking critically was not wrong, instead he could have taken it in
positive way and could have had healthy discussion and find out better
solution.