SAAB, ”Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget” (AB), later ”Svenska Aeroplan AB” and ”Saab Automobile AB”, has always been a carmaker challenging the design and technical solutions of mainstream producers. The “Saab approach” was to dare to be different, not being afraid of offering technology-pushed innovations, such as the first reliable application of the turbo in the passenger car field. The company always looked forward, setting high standards for design, safety and reliability.
Saab’s brand is embodying the tension for the progress where the over-engineering logic was accompanied with simplicity and extreme usability. However, there was something about Saab which is not easy to grasp; a hidden innovative glimpse which was exiting the conventional scheme of the industry of that time; it was special. Due to their mindset, Saab cars were always referring to a peculiar category of niched and unconventional customers; a segment which appreciated the exclusivity and functionality of the car, without focusing on irrelevant, ornamental features. In fact, the purposeful aircraft simplicity derived from the heritage of the company created brand associations which played an important role in developing the “trendiness” of Saab.
SAAB Workshop, repair, service and owner’s manual, wiring diagrams, spare parts catalog for Saab cars
The success of the company was, however, not eternal. Like a comet, Saab was a bright star only for a limited but glorious amount of time, constantly engrossed in financial struggle. Thus, on the 19th of December 2011, the firm filed for bankruptcy (SvD.se, 2011) at the District Court of Vänersborg after many months of failed attempts to secure external financing. At that time, Saab was owned and operated by Spyker, which two years earlier had acquired the company from General Motors, who in turn had owned the company for almost two decades. The failure of Saab raises questions such as how a company which was so special could fail without possibilities of revival, and what the roots of the events driving the company into bankruptcy were.
The case of Saab is of high academic and managerial interest due to its linkages with the topics of mergers and acquisitions, cultural clashes and core rigidities. In fact, the common opinion is that GM, as Saab’s owner, was responsible for the ultimate failure of the company, through a period characterized by cultural clashes and mismanagement of the brand. However, the explanations for the bankruptcy of Saab can be dependent on several historically determined and interconnected tangible and intangible variables, as well as environmental influences.
Therefore, the researchers’ purpose is to investigate the roots of Saab’s trajectory from success into failure, rather than the failure itself, understanding how Saab, with its heritage of innovativeness and uniqueness eventually ended up in bankruptcy. Employing this explorative framework, another aim is to foster further academic research on relevant topics derived from this study.
Saab User Manuals
This master thesis is addressing the case of Saab Automobile AB, creating a full historical reconstruction using primarily extensive quotes derived from semi-structured interviews with former Saab employees and other relevant actors. The aim is to depict and discuss the roots behind the company’s historically unique capabilities and its trajectory towards failure, together with the influence of General Motors’ ownership in this detrimental process. The empirics suggest that Saab’s sustained competitive advantages were mainly based on core capabilities derived from historically determined knowledge accumulations. However, the huge success of the company based on engineering core capabilities paradoxically evolved into core rigidities which enhanced a technocratic culture, decreasing the strategic and organizational fit with General Motors. This cultural clash was nevertheless not the only reason for Saab’s demise; low production volumes and General Motors’ mismanagement created a situation where the development of dynamic capabilities were inhibited. Due to the lack of reconfiguration of knowledge assets, the core capabilities of the firm faded over time, leading the company into becoming a shadow of its past, unable to cope with future challenges. This path towards demise ended in December 2011 when Saab Automobile AB, an icon of the automotive industry, went into bankruptcy.