Remot management at Global Manufacturing, Volvi Trucks corporation

Abstract

Remote management is a concept increasing in importance as a result of the globalisation process. During 2006, Global Manufacturing at Volvo Trucks implemented a global matrix organization. With this, the challenges of remote management surfaced and because of that, they commissioned this thesis. This thesis aims at investigating how remote management is practiced today and how it might improve. The principal also wants to find out if there are any synergies not used to their full extent. Furthermore they wish to find ways to increase the employees’ sense of affiliation with the Volvo Trucks organization, as they have consolidated their organization through purchase of others. In these new units, there is also the question of how to implement the corporate culture, the Volvo Way, in an effective way. As requested by the principal the study is a combination of a theoretical study of the recent research findings and an investigative interview survey. The equally distributed 15 interviews were conducted internally as well as in internal and external benchmarked companies. With theories regarding areas such as remote management, motivation, sensemaking, corporate culture and speed leading, we were able to draw some conclusions from our interviews. Finally, we ended up with a list of five proposals to Global Manufacturing.