ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY

This paper describes an organizational development program carried out in the shipbuilding industry. The experience from 9 shipyards who initiated and carried out such process is summarized into a development philosophy. A basic part of this philosophy is that the greatest potential for productivity and quality of work improvements is in human resources i.e. organization. But organizational development processes have to be coordinated with other development processes within areas such as product, production technology and production systems. This sort of balanced, coordinated process is called business development. The development program, supported by the Norwegian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, was completed in 1980, but each of the participating shipyards will continue its internal development process. The main reason for this lies in the reported results: The organizational climate has developed in a more participative and satisfying way; Productivity gains. One company reports a 5% p.a. improvement in overall productivity.