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Case Study

Statkraft: Building a culture of collaboration in a fast-growing state-owned company

By Louise Muhdi and Martin Králik

17 pages

May 2023

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Reference: IMD-7-2432

The case presents a multilayered story of long-term cultural transformation taking place within a large enterprise and an increasingly strategic industry sector. Global developments, including Europe’s energy crisis, have placed renewable energy high on policymakers’ and business leaders’ agendas. They herald green energy as a catalyst that can accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels, intensify the fight against climate change, and lead to the creation of entire new industry sectors. Statkraft is Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy. From its roots in hydropower, it has expanded into solar, wind, offshore wind, hydrogen and biofuels. In recent years, Statkraft has repeatedly ramped up its production targets, continued its ongoing spate of company acquisitions, and penetrated new geographies on several continents. It has also reorganized its general management into four market-oriented business units. To tackle this unprecedented complexity while living up to its ever-growing aspirations, Statkraft has had to redefine and invigorate the way its employees collaborate, particularly across silos. “We grow together” has now been upheld as one of the organization’s core values. The stakes are high, and so are the obstacles – chief among them the deep-seated resistance to change, especially within the business areas that are accustomed to a high degree of autonomy. To date, Statkraft has begun shifting its governance model towards a matrix. It has explored a number of avenues that lead to empowering people, encouraging experimentation, and instituting rewards that are linked to improved collaboration. Nonetheless, there are powerful hurdles to overcome and tradeoffs to be made as the company implements and deepens the collaboration agenda.

Learning Objective

Map out the opportunities, tangible and intangible, that collaboration can unlock in a complex enterprise
Identify sources of resistance that impede the adoption of collaborative mindsets and behaviors
Explore practical avenues for managers to operationalize collaboration as a key value and bring it to life
Identify the missing links that often persist in promoting a collaboration culture, especially vis-à-vis leadership
Explore the competing demands and tradeoffs to address when implementing transformation at scale

Keywords

Human Resources, Knowledge Management, Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Design, Collaboration, Empowerment, Autonomy, Agility

Settings

World/global, Norway
Statkraft, Energy, Renewable Energy
Number of employees: 4,800 / Annual turnover: USD 8.3 Bn (2021 revenue)

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

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Teaching note

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