Relational practices, representation and self-regulation: Collaboration in the HR-Forum of the Suppliers teams at Volvo Ghent

Abstract

This paper provides a process-oriented description of some selected aspects of the functioning of the Human Resources Management Forum of the Suppliers Teams of Volvo Cars at Ghent. (STVC-HRM). The Forum is an outgrowth of the Supplier Teams network of the Volvo Cars site in Ghent. It functions as an information, advice, and coordination collaborative task force with regard to issues as recruitment, selection, evaluation promotion and dismissal, work and vacation planning, wage comparisons, training and quality management, dealing with industrial relations, grievances and strikes, and other interdependencies between the network partners. In the paper we discuss the founding events of the collaborative, the formulations of goals, and the tasks it performs. We then characterize the nature of the relational practices of the platform: convening the stakeholders, membership roles and the “bridging function” to the community or the partners, the issue of leadership in a multi-party context, the development of ground rules, activities and realizations of the platform. In the final section we further develop the more critical success issues which foster the social learning of the collaborative: self-regulation, the quite exceptional form of stakeholder representation which we call the” bridging function”, and the overall quality of their relational practices. To study the relational practices of the platform several data sources were used including the company website, documents, reports of meetings, process oriented observational notes and in-dept interviews.