Course: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, Degree of Master of Science in Business and Economics, Controller major, 15 credits - 2FE24E

Institution: School of Business and Economics at Linnaeus University 

Authors: Adam Johansson, Ebba Hansson, Sami Talah 

Supervisor: Cristoffer Lokatt

Examiner: Pia Nylinder

Titel: How do production companies motivate their employees to achieve the organization's set goals and objectives? - A qualitative interview study on Scania & Volvo Trucks

Background and problem: Given the significant role that employees have in today's society, it is essential how the employer motivates and directs their employees to make them work with the goals set by the organization. In the production industry, it is difficult to motivate employees because of their monotonous duties. The tasks are considered to be monotonous as they are classified as repetitive, boring and stressful. Gagne & Deci (2005) believe that different employees in different industries are motivated in different ways. The fact that two world-leading companies in the truck industry use different perspectives on how their employees should be motivated and guided to achieve set goals and objectives is therefore interesting to analyze.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how production companies control their employees with the help of motivation to achieve set goals and objectives. Further this study will analyze the differences in the management control of motivational work and the motives underlying the choice of the organization's management through motivation.

Method: This study was conducted as a qualitative interview study of two cases companies. Through semi-structured interviews, two respondents participated. The selection of respondents is a convenience selection due to COVID-19, but the selection of the fall companies is target selected. As a result, the quality of the study has been ensured through the selection of respondents and the choice of theoretical sources.

Conclusions: This study as a whole gives some idea of how Scania and Volvo Trucks guiding their employees through motivation to achieve the organization's goals and objectives. What we come to realize is that these two companies choose different approaches. Scania uses more "soft" values, while Volvo Trucks uses more "hard" values. A part of Volvo Trucks' work is to distribute monetary rewards, but also uses "soft" values in their motivational work. But not to the same extent as Scania does. This study also demonstrates that the cultural aspects of how an organization should try to motivate their employees to the goals and objectives have a greater impact than we anticipated. What the companies have in common is that they manage to take into account the individual needs of their employees from different perspectives.