INTERNAL COMMUNICATION AND COWORKERSHIP, IMPLICATIONS FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION. A qualitative case study at Volvo Trucks, exploring coworkership through self-determination theory

Abstract

Employee engagement is essential for companies' success, competitiveness and for handling large scale organisational changes. Specifying the barriers and drivers for employee engagement is therefore necessary to handle major organisational changes, such as digital transformation. This case study at Volvo Trucks Tuve manufacturing plant in Sweden explored the concept of coworkership (a form of employee engagement) in digital transformation efforts, through the basic psychological needs (self-determination theory) of employees. Sixteen semi-structured interviews, multiple internal company documents and on-site-observation data from Volvo Trucks Tuve were used to explore coworkership conditions. From a template analysis, eight major themes emerged, which pose four supporting and four hindering factors for coworkership conditions. This study makes a major contribution to research on coworkership, (a) by demonstrating the usefulness of self-determination-theory for understanding employee engagement in working digitally and (b) by specifying hindering and supporting factors for employee engagement in digital transformation.