SCANIA CASE STUDY

Scania Case Study

Scania Case Study

Introduction

The change process encompasses all activities aimed at helping the organization to successfully adopt new attitudes, new technologies, and new ways of doing business. Effective management of change allows the transformation of the strategy, processes, technology, and people to reorient the organization to achieve their goals, maximize their performance, and ensure continuous improvement in an ever changing business environment. A change process occurs very efficiently if everyone is committed to it. Meanwhile, for people to commit, they cannot be "run over" by the process, as something far away from it, because they are not. In truth, change occurs through people and to be considered people as part of the process of change, it is necessary to know their values, their beliefs, their behaviours. Organizations and individuals are included in it are constantly changing. In organizations, some changes occur because of the opportunities that arise, while others are projected. In this connection, this study will discuss the case of change process that happens in Scania Angers and how management has kept diverse employees motivated to work.

Discussion and Analysis

History of the Company

The origins of today's Scania AB are in fin de siecle Sweden, where an ambitious young works manager for Surahammars Bruk, a steel company, named Peter Petersson managed to persuade the company directors to open a carriage production line at their premises in Sodertalje. Petersson's plan was initially successful, and the next decade was spent supplying a variety of public and private customers with carriages (Amabile 1990,21). The Swedish State Railways regulated the production of carriages, and in 1904 Vagnfabriksaktiebolaget i Södertelge, as they were then called, were allocated the production of 150 carriages by the SSR. This was not enough to run a profitable company; but luckily, the industrious Petersson had not been resting on his laurels. For years he and Gustaf Erikson, an engineer, had been working on what was essentially the first Swedish designed and built car, even producing a prototype in 1897. However, by 1902, Erikson had come up with a reliably functioning truck, equipped with an petrol-powered engine and two gears. By 1903, they had taken orders from Ystad-Eslöfs Järnväg AB for one of their trucks (Benson 2003,315).

The Early Years 1907-1921

1907 saw the inauguration of a new factory, specifically for the manufacture of automobiles and engines, but tragically, soon afterwards, Peter Petersson died. Determined to follow his vision, Vagnfabrik developed and produced a new truck, a 3-ton model. Despite this new truck winning the Swedish Royal Automobile club award for 1909, the orders were low, and it proved to have a deleterious effect upon their finances, so much so that Surahammars Bruk resolved to sell their Vagnfabriken (Deci 2000,227). The man who decided to take a chance on it was Per Alfred Nordeman, the Managing director of Maskinfabriks-aktiebolaget Scania, a Malmo company which began in the bicycle manufacturing industry, before branching out into the assembly of automobiles. A merger of sorts was agreed, and out of this emerged AB Scania-Vabis, which ...