Volvo's Modern Management

Résumé du document

Volvo Group is a manufacturer that develops trucks, buses and construction equipment, drive systems for marine and industrial applications, aerospace components and services. It also provides solutions for financing and services. Volvo as international company has its presence in Western Europe and other regions, such as North America, Asia, East Europe and the Middle East, which confers it to a strong global position and world class products. Volvo has a decentralized organization structure and sizeable in-house units that supply components, services and support to the business areas (Volvo Group 2004). The company was founded in 1927, staffs over 81,000 employees and has production in 25 countries, and operates in more than 185 markets. Volvo's net sales for the year 2004 amounted to ? 22 billion.

Extraits

[...] But we also understood that the group really cares about the environment; that this issue seems to be a priority for Volvo. And we finally tried to explain Volvo Group's organisation for global operations. We saw that the company was very well organised and did not seem to have any problems with its global organisation. As we could see, this organisation looks quite polycentric or geocentric, but also has a culture on its own, Volvo Way”. So we may be able to say that Volvo is an international well-managed enterprise. [...]

[...] In fact, it is really difficult to find environmental problems due to Volvo, or bad reports on the company. This may mean the group is truly concerned about the environment and the life quality of the people living near its plants. III/ Organisation for global operations (Volvo Group 2004/2005) As we were saying in the introduction, Volvo is an international company, not only present in Western Europe but in several other regions around the world, such as in North America, Asia, East Europe and the Middle East. [...]

[...] Volvo Group is such a large company that has a code of conduct, which anybody can read. We are going to look at this code of conduct and tell, as much as possible, if the company respects its enunciated values. First, we can analyse the following paragraph about non- discrimination. “Non-Discrimination The Volvo Group hires and treats its employees in a manner that does not discriminate with regard to gender, race, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, nationality, political opinion, union affiliation, social or ethnic origin. [...]

[...] To which Volvo answered that this requirement on height was to prevent workers from injury (Radio Sweden International 2005). Considering this case, we cannot really conclude on Volvo's social responsibility because it is quite controversial. We may think that the company tries to be socially responsible, but that in some cases, other elements may interfere with these values. Now we can talk about the environment. The first thing to say is that Volvo seems to care a lot about environment. [...]

[...] To analyse this mission statement we can also use the Ashridge-model. According to this, a mission statement should consist of four elements: purpose, values, strategy and behaviour standards. We can make a little chart to identify these points: As we can see, we can find each point of the Ashridge-model in Volvo Group mission statement. Considering that this mission statement fits two models of analysis, that it answers all their criteria, we may say that it is a good mission statement. [...]