Flight Centre Analysis

1.1 Introduction: Flight Centre is an iconic Australian organisation distinguished for its culture and unique organisational structure. They have adopted a flat and transparent structure which has enabled them to implement a egalitarian culture of empowering employees, allowing them to become extremely successful.

1.2 Organisational Culture and Structure: Organisational culture is a system of shared values and beliefs, which governs how people operate in organisations. These shared ethics have a vital influence on the employees in the organisation and dictate how they function and operate their job. It is broken up simply into the companies; identity, collective commitment, social system stability and sense making device. Organisational structure is a system that involves institutional regulations designed to display how various roles and responsibilities are delegated, controlled and coordinated. Organisational structure displays how information is distributed from each level with the company. It aims to portray a culture oriented towards authority in contrast to organisations that eliminates flatter management hierarchy and empowers employees.

2.1 Organisational Structure FC: Flight Centre has been called the “world’s most productive workplace” (Blake, 2001).The structure in Flight Centre (FC) is extremely transparent with accessible leaders. They have developed a four layered organisational structure, as displayed on their website. The village is a self-help support group that is a vital part of the companies structure. The structure of the business simply is shown below:

1. Family (Teams – min 3, max 7 members) Villages (min 3, max 7 Teams).

2. Tribe (Areas – min 10, max 20 Teams).

3. Nations/Brands (min 8, max 15 Areas).

4. Regions/States/Countries.

5. Board and senior leadership team.

As shown above, FC has a anthropological business model which is where the employees are all split up into, “families”, “villages” and “tribes” displaying the theory that the more dated social groups still possess a place in the mind. They have developed a culture of working in teams, thus a strong organisational culture has allowed for FC to thrive as they feel apart of a team and feel a sense of camaraderie and share equal values and motives whilst doing their jobs. By having a flat style of organisational structure they will be able to produce better quality of work as they will be able to resolve issues rapidly as a flatter organisational structure emphasises teamwork. FC structure also gives greater responsibility for employees as management levels are reduced which helps the company as it assists both the company and individuals as it provides the employees with a sense of direction and also motivates them as they feel like they play a vital role within the business. The lean structure also assists with communication as it can be done extremely efficiently and in a quick manner. They also have a extremely rigid recruitment criteria, which then allows the company to only select the very best employee fit for the job which gives the business a competitive advantage as by implementing a difficult criteria allows for the management to select a person that will be a long term asset of the business. Thus, the organisational structure which follows the anthropological structure assists in effective and efficient information providing and assists the employees and management to make more informed and greater organisational decisions.

2.2 Organisational Culture FC: In a general sense the culture followed by FC is a egalitarian culture. This is where there is huge information sharing, performance and team based rewards which foster healthy competitiveness and teamwork,

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