the struggle over meaning: rethinking the car in automotive industry

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The struggle over meaning: Rethinking the car inautomotive industryAlexander Styhre a & Kamilla Kohn aa Chalmers University of Technology , Gothenburg, SwedenPublished online: 17 Feb 2007.

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The Struggle over Meaning: Rethinkingthe Car in Automotive Industry

ALEXANDER STYHRE & KAMILLA KOHN

Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

ABSTRACT This paper presents a study of the struggle over meaning in the marketing departmentof one automotive producer, the Volvo Car Corporation. Meaning, a shared set of beliefs andworldviews, serves as the basis for organizational activities as well as organizational change.Moreover, meaning is jointly produced in organizations on the basis of global, regional, localand personal problems and opportunities. The construction of meaning is thus based on thealignment of various worldviews and ideologies. In the automotive industry, the very notion ofthe car as either a consumer commodity or the central entity of a ‘transportation experience’ isunder discussion. By inscribing various changes and tendencies for change in society and theindustry into the notion of the car, the co-workers of the industry de-naturalize the car as weknow it, thus paving the way for new dominant types of logic and new conceptualizations of theindustry. As a consequence, new opportunities for organizational change emerge.

KEY WORDS: Automotive industry, meaning, dominant logic, organizational change

Introduction

It is generally claimed that organizations need to develop a capability or capacityin order to adapt to organizational changes in what is said to be an increasinglyfluid and evolving world (D’Aveni, 1994; Brown and Eisenhardt, 1998; Chia,1999; Eisenhardt and Sull, 2001). Without the capacity to change, organizationsrisk not being able to adapt to customer demands and other exogenous changes.This study suggests that the notion of meaning, the idea of a shared, cognitiveconstruct within a given community, is the basis for organizational change.Without an understanding of the rationale for organizational change, thechange process is bound to fail (Abrahamson, 2000; Beer, 2001; Collins, 1998).

Journal of Change Management

Vol. 6, No. 1, 21–34, March 2006

Correspondence Address: Alexander Styhre, Fenix Research Programme, Chalmers University of Technology,

Aschebergsgatan 46, Vasaomradet Hus 3, SE-412 96, Gothenburg, Sweden. Tel.: +46 31 772 44 28; E-mail:

[email protected]

1469-7017 Print=1479-1811 Online=06=010021–14 # 2006 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080=14697010600578866

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The notion of meaning is by no means a fixed or ready-made concept. Meaningis the totality of all activities, symbols and actions that make sense to a community.The construction of meaning is an ongoing process that includes the alignment andharmonization of antagonistic entities or forces. Thus meaning can never be fixedin certain configurations, but is always fluid and continuously changing. What ismeaningful today may be pure nonsense or unintelligible tomorrow. In addition,meaning is always an outcome of struggles between complementary worldviewsand ideologies. Various perspectives and interests are brought together. Atcertain times these ideas could make up an aggregate of meaning, while at othertimes, these opposing worldviews co-exist adjacently to one another.

This paper presents a study of how the struggle over meaning in the marketingdepartment at the Volvo Car Corporation is directed toward the reconceptuali-zation of the very core of the industry, namely the car, the key product andtraditionally a rather unproblematized component of the industry. The automotiveindustry is characterized by a mature market, numerous mergers and acquisitionsand a general tendency towards lower costs throughout the production process.Thus there is a need to reconceptualize and problematize the automotive industryin order to conceive new market opportunities. As a consequence, the dominantlogic of the industry, its taken-for-granted worldviews and its justified beliefsare under scrutiny and subject to criticism. In brief, there is a struggle overmeaning, the meaning of the automotive industry and the meaning of the car.This paper is structured as follows: firstly, the notion of meaning is discussed asbeing the basis for organization change. Secondly, the methodology of thestudy is presented. Thirdly, the study of the automotive industry is beingexamined. Finally some implications are discussed.

Meaning as the Basis for Organizational Change

Organizations are social formations, social systems (Hassard, 1983; Reed, 1992;Scott, 1992). As suggested by, for instance, contingency theory (Lawrence andLorsch, 1967; Thompson, 1967), resource-dependency theory (Pfeffer and Salan-cik, 1978), institutional theory (Selznick, 1949; DiMaggio and Powell, 1991), andevolutionary theory (Nelson and Winter, 1982; Aldrich, 1999), organizations canbe seen as open systems that are affected and influenced by changes in the organ-ization’s external environment. On the other hand, organizations are constitutedby numerous communities of practice that take care of everyday activities.These communities of practice operate as semi-closed systems within organi-zations. Without the ability to shield off the outside world and develop idiosyn-cratic day-to-day practices, it would not be possible to talk of a ‘community’ ofpractice (Wenger, 2000). Organizations thus consist of both open and closedsystems that operate on various levels of the organization. One of the key charac-teristics of social systems such as organizations is the dependence on the notion ofmeaning. In social systems there are no objectives, external threats or opportu-nities, best practices and so forth per se. All these organizational practices andguidelines for standard operating procedures and routines have to be enacted(Weick, 1979). This pragmatic view of organizations suggests that there are norules for organizational activities prior to the decision regarding what constitutes

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legitimate organizational activity. The enactment of organizational priorities andobjectives is always, to some extent, based on meaning. Meaning makes sense, itinscribes purpose and rationality into organizational activities (Weick, 1995).Without a shared meaning, organizations are conceived as being a bunch of activi-ties with unclear relationships (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995; Greve, 1998).Meaning is thus the basis for organizations as it provides opportunities for jointefforts based on the shared understanding of the activities that are the essenceof meaning. In addition, during more turbulent periods, such as major organi-zational changes, meaning consists of what keeps the organization together(Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991). Without an understanding of the processes under-lying an organizational change, the entire process may appear unintelligible andfrustrating (Argyris and Schon, 1978; Bettis and Prahalad, 1995; Beer, 2001).Organization change activities must therefore be meaningful to the organizationmembers.

It is possible to identify at least three schools that make use of the notion ofmeaning: (1) interpretative theories of organizations; (2) narrative theories oforganizations; and (3) neo-functionalist theories of organizations. Interpretativetheories of organizations conceive of organizations as being ‘webs of meaning’,as formulated by Clifford Geertz (1973). Organizations are sites for cultural repro-duction wherein various worldviews and ideologies constitute what is a legitimateoutlook on organizational activities. The root metaphor of the interpretative the-ories is to conceive of the organization as a culture, i.e. a fairly homogeneousset of ideas, symbols, routines and activities that produce meaning and actions.Organizational culture is claimed to produce excellent practices (Deal andKennedy, 1982; Peters, 1982), but also to impose a ‘best way of thinking’ thatmay be repressive (Fucini and Fucini, 1990; Willmott, 1993). Narrative theoriesof organization also acknowledge meaning, but see it as an outcome of the indi-vidual’s use of language, the individual organization member’s petits recits(Lyotard, 1984), the anecdotes and day-to-day accounts of practices and experi-ences (Bruner, 1986; Edwards, 1997; Czarniawska, 1999). Gabriel (2000: 4)claims that man is an animal ‘whose preoccupation is not truth or power orlove, or even pleasure, but meaning’. While interpretative theories and theoristsof organizational culture emphasize that the individual takes part in culture,becomes a member of a community larger than the individual, narrative theorieshave recognized that it is the individual that makes up the organization throughtelling stories about everyday life in organizations (Boje, 1991; Boyce, 1995).Narrative theories claim that organization members produce organizationsrather than exist as entities in organizations subject to managerial operationsand techniques. In addition, meaning is an outcome of sharing the narrativeaccounts of organizational activities.

Neo-functionalist theories of organizations can be separated into at least twoschools, one based on cybernetics and one based on autopoesis, self-organization.The cybernetic model of organization is based on the distribution of informationwithin the organization. Cybernetics is the theory of how systems, social or tech-nical, are determined by the access to and control over information (Ashby, 1956;Wiener, 1948; Thomas, 1995). One of the key concepts of cybernetics is feedback.Feedback means that information is returned to a system in order to provide

The Struggle over Meaning: Rethinking the Car in Automotive Industry 23

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opportunities for adaptation to new external changes. Feedback and informationare what provides meaning in a cybernetic system. The autopoetic model ofsocial systems is based on meaning in terms of being the self-referential systemconstituted by information (Luhmann, 1990, 1995; Maturana and Varela, 1980).No meaning is produced outside the autopoetic system, but is always producedthrough self-organizing mechanisms within the system. Therefore meaning isthe outcome of the production and utilization of information, which in turn isbased on previous information provided by the system (Luhmann, 2000).

Meaning is thus what is produced within an organization. What is meaningfulis always a local enactment of a combination of global, regional, local and indi-vidual concerns and puzzles. Therefore meaning is never definite, conclusive orfixed, but is always indeterminate, composed of various forces and fluid.Meaning is thus an outcome of what we here refer to, at the risk of ‘over-antagonizing’ meaning, as struggle. To invoke the notion of struggle impliesthat meaning is an outcome of conflicts or polemics. We believe that struggledoes not necessarily mean severe conflicts, but that the notion of struggle atleast implies an exchange of arguments, a dialogue. However, we believe thatwe are closer to Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Passeron,1977, Bourdieu, 2000) than Habermas’s notion of communicative rationality(Habermas, 1984, 1987), in terms of acknowledging that meaning could rangefrom being wholly unreflected to highly political and based on conflict. In thisstudy, the ‘struggle’ over meaning implies that various members of the auto-mobile industry were participating in an ongoing discussion on the nature ofthe automotive industry generally and the notion of the car specifically. By de-naturalizing the car as a consumer commodity, the contributors to the discussionaimed to create opportunities for a fresh conceptualization of the automotiveindustry. The outcome of the struggle over meaning is what we will call, follow-ing Prahalad and Bettis, (Bettis and Prahalad, 1995; Prahalad and Bettis, 1986) anew dominant logic, i.e. a coherent, unified and consistent set of beliefs andworldviews guiding everyday life. The dominant logic serves as the basis fororganizational change.

Methodology

The study is based on a qualitative method (Silverman, 1993; Denzin and Lincoln,1994). Whereas a quantitative method is primarily aimed at providing nomologi-cal knowledge that enables predictions, a qualitative methodology emphasizes abroader range of perspectives on complex interrelationships within a morelimited number of empirical entities. Since this work is based on the study ofone single company, the Volvo Car Corporation, it is pertinent to speak of acase study (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1994). Case studies include a number ofvarious applicable methodologies that complement one another. In this study,we have used a combination of participant observations (Atkinson andHammersly, 1994) and interviews (Kvale, 1996). Participant observations arebased on an ethnographic method where the researcher spends some timewithin the community being researched – a society, an organization, a specificgroup of interests. The ethnographic approach has been used in organizational


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studies in manufacturing companies (Dalton, 1959; Burawoy, 1979), service com-panies (Hochschild, 1983; Orr, 1996) and knowledge-intensive companies (Latourand Woolgar, 1979; Kunda, 1992). The ethnographic method is used when theresearcher wants to understand all the local idiosyncrasies and wants to pay atten-tion to the subtle nuances in a specific culture or community. The interview meth-odology, which is complementary to participant observation, is based on ahermeneutic approach where discussions with the interviewees are subject tointerpretations. Whereas the participant observation is useful in relations andcertain interactions in an organization, the interview methodology is morefocused on an understanding of individual interviewees’ ideas and perspectiveson their day-to-day activities.

The participant observations included observations at workshops, executivemeetings, weekly and monthly meetings and other formal or semi-formal admin-istrative arrangements taking place at middle and top management level in themarketing department of the Volvo Car Corporation during the period betweenautumn 2000 and spring 2001. The participant observations were conducted byone of the researchers (Kamilla Kohn). During these meetings and workshops,detailed field notes were made, including both observations on actual activitiesand more personal reflections on the progress of the discussion and other relevantissues. These field notes were transcribed and filed. The interviews included 15conducted with relevant people in the marketing organization at the Volvo CarCorporation by both the researchers. The interviewees included customer relationsmanagers, Internet managers, event marketing managers and representatives ofother areas of the marketing organization. During the interviews, an interviewmanual was adhered to, albeit with the opportunity to discuss interesting emergingissues outside the manual. Interviews lasted for about one hour and 15 minutes as amedian duration time. All interviews were transcribed and analysed independentlyby two researchers.

It is important to notice that the discussions and reconceptualizations discussedin this paper took place in the marketing department. The marketing managerswere very clearly outspoken about their views of the automotive industry asbeing what they called ‘production and design oriented’ rather than marketoriented. Thus, the ‘struggle over meaning’ is an attempt to make sense out ofthe work in the marketing function in an industry that is perceived as beingrather neglectful in terms of the market orientation issues favoured by the market-ing managers.

Rethinking the ‘Car’ in the Automotive Industry

This study aims to point out how major organizational changes are always pre-ceded by a problematizing of current, actual operations. In the case of theVolvo Car Corporation, a discussion highlighting the quality of the product, thecar, could be seen as an outcome of a number of global, regional and localchanges, both internal and external to the automotive industry. In the following,we thus proceed from perceived changes in society and the industry to changesin the company and finally to the local discussions and concerns of the localco-workers.


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External Changes

The automotive industry is generally held to be a mature industry, with relativelylow profit margins. As a consequence of this, but also in the light of globalizationtrends, the industry has been characterized by numerous mergers and acquisitions,joint ventures and networked new product development operations. Within theindustry, the focus on extended offers with the car in the area of service hasincreased during recent years. Services offered that have become commonplaceare insurance, financing, service agreements and roadside assistance. More areexpected to come about when telematics is further developed. There have alsobeen new entrants into the automotive market in retailing, e.g. Auto Nation inthe US and Lex, Virgin Cars and Tesco in the UK. Some of the initiatives are,in some respects, consolidating car-retailing operations into conglomerates.Trends in society and changes in consumer purchasing and utilization patternswill challenge the automotive industry in respect of meeting new customerdemands. The automotive industry is also being affected by the ‘greening ofsociety’ debate. Customers are likely to ask for more environmentally aware pro-ducts in the future. In general, numerous operations are taking place in tandem inorder to diminish the effects of a recession and its consequences regarding thedemand for cars, and to improve profitability. During the next few years, the auto-motive industry is expected to undergo radical restructuring.

Organizational Changes

Challenging objectives have been set for the coming years for the Volvo Car Cor-poration in terms of renewal, volume and profit. In addition, Volvo is to securegrowth through becoming a premium brand. Although the goals for the comingyears are very ambitious, there is a general belief that these could be met if theexisting standard operating procedures and routines could be redesigned, and ifa new business logic could be established. However, in early 2001, the sharedview of how future work procedures would look was rather fuzzy, and therewas no agreement on which priorities should be made within the company toreach the goals. Thus there was a rich variety of local interpretations and trans-lations of the goals into images of new working procedures. One of these interpret-ations or translations was the struggle over the meaning of the car.

Local Struggles

On the local level, the general shared view of the future of the automotive industryand the more specific future targets were used as the point of departure for a dis-cussion and debate on the future strategies of the Volvo Car Corporation. The per-ceived changes and expectations regarding changes in the automotive industry, aswell as the more idiosyncratic goals of the company, thus constituted the exogen-ously given ‘facts’ serving as the basis for discussion on the nature of the future ofVolvo. Since the interpretations and translations of the provided facts and figureswere personal and differed between functions and departments at Volvo, a numberof suggestions for a more competitive strategy were articulated. Some of the


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interlocutors did not believe in a need for a radical reconceptualization of theindustry, while others saw company targets as being representative of a majorshift in the way the Volvo Car Corporation was doing business. These variousinterpretations and translations were structures around a number of parameterssuch as the perceived differences between the market and production operations,the short- and the long-term perspective of the industry and the dominant ‘old’logic of senior top management and the challenging ‘new’ logic of youngeremployees and junior management.

Market vs. Production

Some of the interlocutors claimed that the major line of demarcation at the VolvoCar Corporation was between the production and marketing departments. The pro-duction department primarily focused on assembling the automobile as quickly andas cheaply as possible, and with satisfactory build quality. On the other hand,representatives of the marketing department claimed that they could see greatmarket opportunities in terms of providing the car. One market manager argued:

Our sales-organization is built to distribute cars on a market with excess demand.

It’s like we just need to get the cars out of the door, and there are the customers

waiting for us. The tensions in the system emerge from the fact that reality does

not look like that. (Market Manager 3)

The production and marketing departments were thus claimed to represent twocomplementary worldviews. On the one hand, the production department priori-tized the production of the car as being the primary outcome of the automotiveindustry, and on the other hand, the marketing department conceived of a ‘trans-port experience’ consisting of a bundle of service offers and opportunities that thecustomer could choose from. One market manager remarked:

We need to put a lot of effort into developing services and experiences for the

customer. (Market Manager 5)

The production department was claimed to represent an outmoded mass productionstrategy being applied in a growing market, while the marketing department wasdepicted as the new opportunity for making profits in the industry on the basis ofthe extended offers associated with the car. One marketing manager said:

If you put it this way: How large a share of the new product development resources

are dedicated to market activities? Five per cent? The company is immensely

product-oriented. (Marketing Manager 1)

Another point of view expressed in this discussion was the difference inperspective of push- and pull-strategies:

The production focus is mainly on getting as many cars out of the factory as possible

with a good build-quality, with or without customers. The problem is then lots of


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cars standing on the lot waiting to be sold. This is the push strategy, where supply

exceeds demand, ultimately leading to lower prices to get the cars off the parking lot,

and lower profits in a long-term perspective. The marketing perspective is that

demand should be created, not that production exceeds demand. The problem is

that these perspectives don’t match, and both exist in the company and struggle.

(Manager 9)

The production and marketing departments were therefore claimed to operate inaccordance with different, indeed incommensurable, worldviews and objectives:the production department emphasized low costs and high quality while themarket department emphasized market opportunities and a potential needamong customers.

Long vs. Short-term

Some of the interlocutors argued that the most important lines of demarcation atthe Volvo Car Corporation were between those functions and departments thatfavoured a short-term perspective, for instance the finance and production depart-ments, and those that favoured a long-term perspective such as the marketingdepartment and new product development. In the production and finance func-tions, the operations of the Volvo Car Corporation always depend on currentproductivity. Being subject to extensive auditing and management control, theproduction and finance departments were both claimed to demonstrate a proclivitytowards a short-term view of operations. In contrast, the marketing and newproduct development departments had a much greater need to evaluate currentoperations on the basis of their long-term anticipated consequences. The market-ing department’s need to build customer relations and design value-added benefitsfor customers can never be examined as discrete events but must always be seen inassociation with preceding and succeeding operations. In new product develop-ment, current automobile models can never be solely based on themselves;rather they are dependent on the long-term strategy of the firm and the generaltrends and tendencies of the automotive industry. As a consequence, there is a con-tinuous shift in focus between long-term objectives and short-term results. It wasgenerally claimed that the need to ‘rethink’ the car is dependent on the ability toconceptualize long-term objectives:

We are in a position where we need to shift the focus from features to the holistic

concept of car ownership and become more conceptualization-oriented in our way

of thinking and working. We should not focus on selling specific features, rather

functions with certain values incorporated. (Marketing Manager 16)

The financial orientation prevailing these days focuses too much on the short-term

objectives, making the work and projects that deliver on long-term objectives non-

prioritized. (Manager 13)

This long-term view was not, in the view of the marketing managers, favoured bytop management. Being part of a major American corporation, heavily


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emphasizing short-term financial performance rather than long-term market orien-tation, implied that some of the marketing managers were disgruntled with thecompany’s objectives.

The Dominant Logic of the ‘Old’ vs. the Dominant Logic of the ‘Young’

Another rationale for rethinking the car was that there is a general problem chan-ging the dominant logic of top management from what could be referred to as aproduction-based worldview to a marketing-based worldview. According tosome of the interlocutors, top management trained and made their careersduring a period when demand exceeded supply in the industry and when manage-ment essentially focused on cost control, quality issues and ‘getting the goods outof the door’, rather than having the emphasis on overproduction. Thus, the domi-nant logic of top management very much focused on internal operations ratherthan the needs or expectations of customers. One of the interlocutors, a middlemanager in the market department, argued:

Management and the organization have to acknowledge that we have a different

business environment which is complex and changing and which has a customer

focus. I would say that business as usual is not an option. You have to create

shock-waves. You need to create ‘smoke in the tent’ – otherwise nobody gets

out! (Marketing Manager 5)

He continued:

We are still in the mode of manufacturing cars, and all the business processes are

driven based on that perspective. Management attention focuses on that area first.

So, if the factory operates in an efficient way, then everything is fine. The thing

we need to do in order to change is to get rid of manufacturing. That would force

management to focus its attention on where the business is created, what creates

the value-added and the brand. And the brand, that’s where the money comes

from. If we don’t make this change someone else will, and we will just become a

supplier. (Marketing Manager 5)

The dominant logic of the Volvo Car Corporation was thus to further fine-tune theexisting system and work smarter rather than to reconfigure the entire businessmodel and establish new modes of thinking. Some of the interlocutors lamentedthe inability of top management to reconceptualize current operations into some-thing new that could provide opportunities for reaching the 2005 goal, that is, tosell 600,000 cars annually. Another market manager reflected:

Every other industry, the food industry, the retail industry, the banking industry,

moves with the times. Telecommunications, the Internet and so on. I feel that our

processes in the car industry do not relate to the way times are changing. We are

stifling ourselves with these over-expectations in the car industry. (Market

Manager 4)


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Figures vs. Facts

Finally, some of the interlocutors discussed the new way of re-thinking thebusiness based on the relationship between company objectives and the outlineof current working practices, routines and standard operating procedures. Inorder to leverage the present performance to the future goals, there is a need toalter the business models and enact new competitive strategies. Without aradical new view of the activities of the Volvo Car Corporation, the objectivesare simply not attainable. Thus, there is a distance between the figures (theplan) and the facts (the day-to-day practices) that needs to be addressed by topmanagement. Today, there is a perceived distance between current workingpractices and the long-term objectives:

If we are to achieve our targets for the near future, we need to change our way of

working. I have personally lost faith in the functional hierarchical organization’s

ability to solve these problems. We need to find new ways of working to do different

things and to do things differently. (Marketing Manager 2)

And, as expressed by another:

To succeed we need to continue to change. The changes we have made are not

enough. To do this, integrity and courage are needed at all levels in the organization.

To keep up the pace, we need to change our way of working and make new priori-

ties. Just what this actually is, I’m not so sure about today. Maybe we should just

change to a task-oriented marketing function for a certain period of time in order

to be able to see what we need to continue to change. (Marketing Manager 11)

Rethinking the Car

Discussion about perceived future changes at Volvo Car Corporation, and in theautomotive industry, was organized around the relationships between departmentsat Volvo Cars, the preferences for long- or short-term perspectives on the operations,the idea of complementary dominant kinds of logic and the relationship betweenfuture performance figures and work practices. The most important outcome ofthe problematizing of operations at Volvo Car Corporation was discussion aboutthe car. The car is the very key product of the automotive industry, but it is also adistinguished social artefact, an important invention shaping human societies,inscribed with numerous qualities, myths, possibilities – in short, a genealogy. Bygenealogy, we mean a set of histories, myths, grand narratives that affect how weperceive the car today based on the role it has played during the twentieth centuryand still plays today. In society, a car is not simply a car in the meaning of beinga mechanical and cybernetic piece of machinery aimed at transportation; rather itis also an opportunity for various activities, a cultural artefact, and thus an objectof consumption. In brief, it is an opportunity for commodification and re-commodi-fication. The struggle over meaning that is focused on the rethinking of the car liesbetween the image of the car as a piece of machinery produced by the integration ofvarious engineering sciences and the image of the car as the centre of a transportation


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experience. The transportation experience definitely presupposes the car as itscentral and most important entity, but still places the car within a framework ofvarious services and options that the customer can choose from. The logic of whatwe can call the ‘car-centred dominant logic’ emphasizes the ability of the automotiveindustry to provide efficient, safe and quality automobiles. The logic of what we cancall the ‘car-decentred dominant logic’ claims that since the car is bound to be com-modified, thus losing its values of distinction (Bourdieu, 1984) in relation to othergoods and services, the automotive industry must be able to provide the entirerange of services and offers constituting ‘the entire transport experience’ (to usethe Volvo Car Corporation formulation) valued by customers. These services andoffers include the instalment plans and financing opportunities offered by theVolvo Car Corporation, access to reasonably priced repair work, customizedservice offerings, special events and so forth – that is, all services accompanyingand supporting the use of and ownership of a car. Here, the ‘transport experience’is not solely a matter of the physical performance of the car, its mere transportand all the distinction values inscribed onto the car, but also includes the customer’sfinancial security (being able to anticipate costs for the car) and other relevant ser-vices and offers appreciated by the customer. The car-centred and car-decentreddominant types of logic suggest radically opposed scenarios for the automotiveindustry in the future. To the proponents of the car-centred dominant logic, the auto-motive industry should aim for further economies of scale and scope, specializationin certain niches and segments of the market and, in various respects, a morereinforced focus on specific operations and functions. The car-decentred dominantlogic, on the other hand, does suggest a new image of the car industry wherein theexpertise of other industries, based on service and experience, is to be integratedwith the automotive industry. Being able to exploit new commodification opportu-nities such as the integration of new services into the transport experience providedby the car and its additional services requires more detailed knowledge of serviceoffers. In this dominant logic, the automotive industry is no longer solely based onthe manufacturing of cars, instead comprising the entire spectrum of goods and ser-vices enabling a transportation experience. In the car-centred dominant logic, the carremains the sole focus of the industry, while the car-decentred dominant logicacknowledges a broader span of competencies and skills.

Discussion

Since at least the early 1970s, there has been a debate on the various forms of post-industrial (Bell, 1973; Kenney, 1993), post-Fordist (Piore and Sabel, 1984; Hirstand Zeitlin, 1991), and post-bureaucratic (Garsten and Grey, 1997; Du Gay, 2000)organizations. This debate has been based on a general belief in a shift from coher-ent, stable and predictable markets to fluid, continuously evolving and unpredict-able markets. From the organizational strategists’ point of view, the world isbecoming more complex. Meaning makes sense and thus provides opportunitiesfor action. Without a meaningful construct of the outside world, action is highlyelusive and difficult to deal with. Therefore, meaning is constructed through theenactment of a set of legitimate worldviews and beliefs. The enacted worldviewsand beliefs serve as the basis for organizational change and organizational


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operations. In the automotive industry, characterized as a mature industry withexcessive supply that has undergone consolidation and where new players areentering the market, the future is complicated to predict. To some co-workers,the future of the automotive industry and the Volvo Car Corporation lookspretty much the same as the present day, and the company should furtherdevelop its expertise in being an automobile manufacturer and a developer ofnew automobiles. To other co-workers, the car is merely one component of theentire transport experience, which is constituted by services, offers, the car,events and customized solutions to the individual customer’s demands andneeds. These two complementary views of the car have created a frameworkwithin which the future of Volvo and the automotive industry could be debated.Either position (together with other enacted worldviews) provides meaning, andthus opportunities for action.

Meaning is never wholly local or global; it based on local discussions andinterpretations of global, regional and local occurrences, problems and opportu-nities. In the case of the automotive industry, the tendencies and trends of theindustry and the changes in consumer behaviour and preferences, as well as pol-itical decisions, constitute a body of ‘facts’ that needs to be taken into account. Thecar-decentred dominant logic suggests that the car industry must face up to thechallenges of the industry and adapt to the logic of what has been called an enter-tainment economy (Debord, 1977; Ritzer, 1998; Wolf, 1999) wherein a product orservice is always based on more value and utility than what is merely offered bythe product or service in itself. Products and services always rest on additionaloffers that have an ‘entertainment value’. In that respect, the car-decentred domi-nant logic represents a departure from the more orthodox, engineering-science-based dominant logic that emphasizes product expertise and core competencies.The car-decentred dominant logic therefore provides a more spectacular imageof how profits are generated in the automotive industry.

Conclusion

Meaning serves as the cognitive basis for human societies. In organizationalchange processes, organizations are to some extent uprooted and turned intonew configurations. A profound understanding of the organizational changeprocess thus enables less painful organizational change (Abrahamson, 2000).This paper suggests that the notion of the car, the very key product of the automo-tive industry, serves as the basis for a struggle over meaning in the automotiveindustry. To some co-workers at the Volvo Car Corporation, the car remains thekey strategic focus of the industry, while other co-workers suggest that the caritself is no more than an important component of the transport experience thatthe end-user is paying for. The two dominant types of logic in the industryimply different approaches to a competitive strategy in the future. On the onehand, it is business as usual, albeit with an increased emphasis on new joint ven-tures and new ways of organizing the production and new product developmentprocesses; on the other hand, the industry needs to radically challenge its ownassumptions and dominating ideas and alter its current business models in orderto compete in new markets for new customers – in brief what Ansoff (1965)


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called diversification. The ongoing change within the automotive industry istaking place on the basis of the meaning of its key output; the car – themachine that changed the world.

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the struggle over meaning: rethinking the car in automotive industry

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