Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Societal expectations of responsible corporate conduct are currently a fact. It is manifested in
a corporate need for limiting and managing external effects, such as environmental impact.
An environmental management system is a tool for organizations to structure their
environmental work and increase their efficiency. Managing the corporate operations to
accommodate to environmental objectives requires an organizational understanding of the
objectives as well as the procedures. A condition for a successful implementation is the coworkers
´ willingness to participate and collaborate.

A study made on the co-workers attitude towards the ISO 9000 standard (i.e. quality
management system) reveals that the earlier positive findings are not completely true. The
results uncovered that one fifth of the co-workers actively opposed the quality system.

What effort is necessary for the company to take to make the co-workers more motivated with
the environmental work? This study’s main purpose is to identify the factors that are affecting
the co-workers motivation to environmental management work at Scania in Södertälje. A case
study was conducted on a division at Scania and a qualitative research interview was made
with one of Scanias environmental managers. The interview was then compared against
established theories about motivation and organisation design.

Some of the most important findings were that Scania has integrated their environmental
objectives with their production system. The top management were also committed to the
environmental work, which is experienced in a continuous dialogue. Given clear objectives,
co-workers are given degrees of freedom to design their own work method by themselves.