Volvo Group Advanced Business Leadership (ABLE)

Since 2017, the ABLE programme (Advanced Business Leadership) has been developing leaders in the Volvo Group’s second-highest tier of management, known as Leading leaders.

The programme is delivered in collaboration with the School of Business, Economics and Law’s Finnish partner Aalto University Executive Education. Participants are nominated from all over the world, from all of the companies in the Group and are encouraged to apply an outside-in perspective with a view to strengthening their customer focus, reassessing their organisation’s value creation and strategic thinking, and successfully driving and communicating change. The programme runs for 11 full days, spread over five months. So far, around 80 leaders have completed the programme.

“Our aim is to develop all the leaders within the Volvo Group, no matter which country they work in. For the ABLE programme, we wanted a supplier with roots in Swedish culture, since the Volvo Group has its headquarters in Sweden, but with a global presence so the participants get to meet lecturers from different cultural backgrounds. And by choosing GU School of Executive Education and Aalto University Excutive Education, that is exactly what we got,” says Marion Trumel, Learning Programme Manager at Volvo Group University.

 

Volvo Cars Procurement

In the car manufacturing industry, procurement is a core function. The School of Business, Economics and Law (SBEL) delivers three different, recurring executive education programmes with an academic foundation for the Volvo Cars Procurement organisation.

The objective is for its leaders and employees will broaden their business competence and business awareness through nomination and participation to all three integrated programmes, over a period of 3-5 years:

  • Business Acumen for Procurement (BAP), 2 days
  • Advanced Business Acumen (ABA), 3 days over 3 months
  • Strategic Awareness & Business Acumen (SABA), 5 days over 5 months

The is content integration between the three programmes, making them a truly holistic sequence. For the multi-module ABA and SABA programmes, there is also an academic programme director assuring the consistency of the learning experience.

 

Volvo Cars R&D

Just as for the Volvo Cars Procurement organisation, our School is a long-time provider of business acumen skill development for the R&D organization.

Each year, newly appointed R&D managers follow Volvo Cars own Introduction to Technical Leadership (ITL) programme. It is coordinated internally by Volvo Cars. As one module out of five, we provide the Business Acumen for Technical Specialists (BATS) programme.

During two intense days on BATS, participants are brought up to speed on strategy, value creation, management control systems and understanding financial statement.