Today’s world is moving at an ever increasing pace. New technologies, opportunities, threats all force companies to have the ability to be able to change rapidly in order to stay competitive and survive in increasingly harder business climates. In this thesis we look at how new generations working with new types of media can play a vital role in how a company goes about its change management decisions. The focus is centered on the use of social media in a business environment. We have carried out a minor field study at the Volvo Group where we have looked at how they currently work with change management, how they want to work with change management and also how the current information channels work and how they are being used by people at the Volvo Group. In this thesis we have come to the conclusion that an implementation of social media will yield faster and better communications within a company and also make the company more transparent where every employee’s opinions can be read, documented and saved for future use. This information can later be utilized when carrying out and managing change in a business environment.
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
1.1.1 Industrial v. Social Media
1.1.2 A Changing World
1.1.3 Digital Natives
1.2 Disposition
2 Methodology
2.1 Literature
2.1.1 Social Media Literature
2.1.2 Change Management Literature
2.1.3 The Volvo Group
2.2 Empirical Information
2.2.1 Social Media Data
2.2.2 Interview Material
2.3 Analysis
3 Social Media
3.1 What is Social Media
3.2 Overview of the Social Web
3.2.1 Web Logs
3.2.2 Social Networks
3.2.3 Micromedia and Microsharing
3.2.4 Picture Sharing
3.2.5 Video Sharing
3.2.6 Social Bookmarks
3.2.7 Crowdsourced content
3.2.8 Lifestreams and Aggregators
3.3 Interactive Content
3.4 Why Users Contribute and Participate
3.5 Why Corporations Participate
3.6 About Users and Participation
3.7 Collective and Collaborative Knowledge
3.8 Social Media in Businesses
4 Change Management
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Factors That Drive Change
4.3 Theory E and Theory O: Guidelines for Change
4.3.1 Theory E
4.3.2 Theory O
4.4 Combining the Two Theories of Change
4.4.1 The Two Ways of Combing Theory E and Theory O
5 The Volvo Group
5.1 Volvo Group: the Organization
5.1.1 The Companies and Business Units
5.2 The Volvo Way
5.2.1 What is the Volvo Way
5.2.2 Mission, Vision and Wanted Position
5.2.3 Culture and Operations
5.2.4 Words to Action
5.3 Change Management in the Volvo Group
5.3.1 Leaders’ Role in Change Management
5.3.2 Structure of the Change Management Process
5.3.3 Communication of Change
5.3.4 The Cascading Process
5.3.5 Speed of Communication
5.3.6 Employee Participation in Change
5.3.7 Feedback
5.3.8 Factors that Drive Change
5.3.9 Long-term Goals of Change
5.3.10 Change in Economic Downturn
5.3.11 Barriers to Change
5.4 Violin Intranet Program and Intranet Communication
5.4.1 Purpose of the Violin Intranet
5.4.2 Violin users
5.4.3 Intranet structure
5.4.4 Utilization of the Violin Intranet
5.4.5 Goals and Future Plans
5.4.6 Issues
5.5 Summary of Problems Facing the Volvo Group
6 Analysis
6.1 The gains of social media
6.1.1 Communication Speed
6.1.2 Communication Penetration
6.1.3 Knowledge Spread, Retention and Understanding
6.1.4 Employee Participation
6.1.5 Collective Knowledge
6.1.6 Feedback Channels
6.1.7 Cost Reduction
6.1.8 Informal Structures and Connections
6.2 Challenges
6.2.1 Undemocratic Representation
6.2.2 Abuse
6.2.3 Accessibility and Connectivity
6.3 Non-implementation
6.3.1 Information Control
6.3.2 Loss of Competitive Advantages
6.4 Analysis Summary
7 Conclusions
7.1 Conclusions
7.2 Recommendations on further study
8 References
8.1 Published Sources
8.2 Interviews and Other Sources
9 Exhibits
9.1 Exhibit I: Interview Questions, Kennie Kjellström
9.2 Exhibit II: Interview Questions, Rickard Strömberg
Author: AntonSon, Martin,Wendels, Christopher
Source: Goteborg University
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