Saturn was only an idea in 1983—General Motors’ new idea about how to organize a car company. The idea was to give the company and its employees a lot more autonomy instead of imposing the rigid rules and conventions under which auto factories normally operated. Yet, since 1990, when the Saturn plant opened in Spring Hill, Tennessee, GM has changed the organization little by little. Is today’s Saturn still a different kind of Car Company? The Saturn project went into high gear after GM and the United Auto Workers came to agreement about having plant employees take a more active role. Instead of operating under an inflexible system of narrow job specialization, the plan was for Saturn’s employees to work in teams and handle a variety of tasks as needed. The new company was to be managed as a separate entity and therefore hired its own engineers, developed its own vehicles, and purchased its own supplies and raw materials. GM also built Saturn a new state-of-the-art plant at a cost of $3.5 billion. And to reinforce Saturn’s independence from the GM hierarchy, its top manager was designated its CEO.

1. In a factory such as Saturn’s, where certain tasks must be completed in exactly the same way to produce each car, why would the company not push for job specialization?
2. Does GM appear to be organized by function, product, location, customer, or more than one of these departmentalization bases?
3. How does eliminating the CEO position at Saturn affect the chain of command at GM?