Using your knowledge of relevant theories (for example from team working and organisational structure), critically evaluate the novel approach to organisation originally used at the Volvo Uddevalla plant as compared to conventional productional lines.

Bales (1950) found out that in order for a team to work effectively there needs to be group interaction and based on his research, Belbin (1981) the developed the idea of team members playing different roles within the team. A team member (note that this is another keyword) is a person that has accepted group goals as relevant and recognizes an interdependence with other team members in the achievement of these goals.  With the functional and technical expertise that each group member possesses, s/he also brings in his personality which will define his/her role in the group. The person who attempts to establish the goals and agenda of the group, allocates responsibilities and sums up the accomplishments of the group, shows assertiveness, affiliativeness and conscientiousness drive and therefore plays the role of the coordinator. Lattridge talks of the coordinator as the leader who is organizing tasks, a role which was interchangeable within team members at Uddevalla. Even though this role might not have suited everyone naturally, each team member had the chance to show and improve his coordinative qualities. Moreover, playing different roles, team members did not have a feeling of routine that is so typical for a conventional assembly plant. Uddevalla workers reported greater “influence on and control over work” than conventional assemblers (Engstrom, Johansson, Jonsson, et al., 1995). Other roles that can occur in a group working together is the role of the plant (the ideas person that innovates and searches for possible changes in the groups approach to its problems), the implementer (who converts ideas and objectives into practical operational procedures), the monitor evaluator (who analyses problems and evaluates the contribution of others), the shaper (who tries to prioritize and structure the group’s activities), the teamworker (focuses on the interpersonal behaviour of team members), the resource investigator (who identifies ideas and resources in the external environment which are available to the group), the completer (tries to complete the tasks to the deadline) and the specialist (who is focused on providing specialist knowledge and skills). At Uddevalla each team member not only had the possibility to perform as the leader, but also play other roles e.g. the role of the specialist. Training was provided on the functionality of the whole car and a Lexicon was introduced to aid communication. Therefore, Uddevalla workers had the opportunity to obtain a far greater knowledge on the whole assembly than workers employed in a conventional production line company.

Belbin also suggested, that a team works at its best if there is: a match between an individual’s responsibilities and his/her natural team role, a spread of mental ability, an ability to identify and adjust imbalances in the group, a strong plant that produces ideas for the team, a good coordinator that shows patience, command, seeks out ability and elicits trust and a range of team roles available to the group. The main benefit is said to be heuristic – there was individual effectiveness at Uddevalla; workers had the opportunity of discussing their own and other people’s contribution to the team and therefore resolve performance and relationships issues which could create a barrier to overall effectiveness. All this was possible at the conditions under which workers were operating at Uddevalla, whereas workers in a flow production were not having this opportunity and therefore were not working as efficient since there was no chance of personal intervention.

        Another great contribution to effectiveness made possible by working in a team is by the presence of synergy. Synergy the idea of a team working together so well that it outperforms even its best member. Through the process of working together inferior contributions can be eliminated, errors out averaged and workers think more creatively. Another contributor is a process called reflexivity. West (1996) defined it as “the extent to which group members overtly reflect upon the group’s objectives, strategies and processes and adapt them to current or anticipated circumstances. Reflexivity can happen in a task orientated or social aspect. Task orientated reflection includes group objectives, group strategies, group processes and the environment. Social reflection includes social support, conflict resolution, member development and team climate. Reflexive groups are “more likely to be questioning and critical of group or organisational activities and objectives and are prepared, if necessary, to attempt to change them.” Workers that are not part of a reflexive group (i.e. workers at a conventional production line) tend to take things as the go or deny problems, which has a negative effect on effectiveness. West thinks that reflexivity is necessary for effective production. In order to encourage all this at Uddevalla, workers were offered training in self-management. Therefore, after tasks were divided within the team, each worker had the chance to work at his/her own pace and frequently making decisions based on their knowledge and skills. On the other hand, in a flow production, workers had a common pace which made them inflexible in reacting to disruptions and through taking out the same task there was a greater chance of them losing their skills (Karasek and Theorell, 1990).

        However, working in a group has also negative effects on efficiency and overall performance. The most obvious and a direct challenge to the synergy idea is the so-called Ringelmann effect. Max Ringelmann found out that “a group pulling on a rope exerted only about 75% of the force these individuals produced working separately”. Basically, people don’t work as well as they could because they are relying on the others. This could not happen in a flow production since every worker has to perform individually.

Janis (1972) found out that within a group the ability of decision making can be reduced by something he termed groupthink. He defines that as a “detoriation of mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgement that result from in-group pressures”. In a direct connection to this idea stands the idea of group polarization. Group polarization can involve a risky or caution shift within decision making. Basically, that group members became more conservative or on the other hand more extreme when taking a decision which can have negative consequences for the outcome of the group’s work.

The biggest threat to efficiency, in my eyes, is a conflict situation within the group. A conflict might arise through personal or professional differences within the group. Whatever the cause, the process of co-operation which is the main point of working together is disturbed and halters the whole working process. Conflict can arise through the storming phase after the group has been formed but also in a highly productive team, when team members develop individually faster or to another direction than others.  The best way to solve conflicts is communication which will then hopefully result into members focusing on the common group task.

        In her article, Lattridge says that the main goal of creating self-managed groups at Uddevalla was to flatten the work hierarchy (another keyword). The hierarchy at organisations can also be referred to as the organisation structure. The structure sets out the internal and formal shape of the organisation focusing on division of labour&function and power&authority. “The idea behind this concept is that the purpose of the division of labour is to break down general goals into specialist ones, which become the goals of designated organization units [at Uddevalla the different teams]. These are then recombined, as it were, through the hierarchy […]”. Contingency theory assumes that there has to be a balance between organisation structure and context. This balance was found at Uddevalla by making workers in the first place accountable to themselves and then directly to the plant management without anyone in between them. In a mass production, where work is done by a large number of semi skilled workers, the task of labour management and supervision can become critical and difficult to overlook. By flattening the structure, a divisional structure was adopted, thus giving the team the opportunity of self-regulation and improving communication. This way, tasks are clearer to everyone, people can be better supervised and made responsible for mistakes in the actual outcome of the work. In a flow production and a tall organisational structure, on the other hand, it can be very difficult to find out who and what caused the mistake and who will take the responsibility for it, thus workers not paying to much attention to quality of their work as they can’t be held responsible for it.

        As you can see, the main difference between a conventional production line and the novel approach at the Volvo Uddevalla plant is the fact that at Uddevalla work was carried out by teams. This brought a lot of advantages with it, which are at the same time the disadvantage of working individually in a conventional production line. Thus, the disadvantages of teamwork are the advantages of working in a flow production. There are a lot more differences in these two production lines - much more that could be covered in a 2000 words essay. For example, in this essay the motivational aspect of simply working in a group was nearly completely ignored. However, “because assemblers at Uddevalla worked in groups, they had more opportunity to interact socially with their co-workers. Furthermore, Uddevalla workers reported more satisfactory “supervisor climate” and “relations with fellow workers” (Engstrom, Johansson, Jonsson, et al., 1995)“. Furthermore, it was ignored that, “When compared to conventional assembly, Uddevalla work had some areas where lower demands were placed on workers, and other areas with higher demands. Serial-flow workers have higher demands in terms of assembly timing because a predetermined model paces their work. The tilting devices at the Uddevalla plant were created to maintain musculoskeletal comfort. Working on tilted cars places less physical demand on the workers compared to conventional assembly (Kadefors et al., 1996). On the other hand, psychological demand is greater: During the 100-minute cycle time, the Uddevalla assemblers completed significantly more tasks than conventional assemblers, and the tasks where varied and complex. Uddevalla workers reported more psychological workload than conventional workers, though they also reported more satisfactory “stimulus from the work itself” (Engstrom, Johansson, Jonsson, et al., 1995).” 

The main essence of the novel approach was the flattening of the organisational structure and the working in teams, which doesn’t happen in conventional flow production lines.

Bibliography

• Berggren, C., (1993), Volvo Uddevalla – A dead horse or a car dealer’s dream?. Royal Institute of Technology, Departement of Work Science, Stockholm
• Engström, T., Jonsson, D., Medbo, L. (1996), Production model discourse and experiences from the Swedish automotive industry. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, vol. 16, issue 2, pages 141-158

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