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We all know hectic mornings. Children to get up, chase round the house and get to school, pets to feed, bills to open, chores to do. All that and get ourselves ready and at work before nine. Now imagine you’d got through all that, finally landed at your desk and found yourself called straight into the supervisor’s office for “a quiet word”. Your offence? Your shoelaces are dirty. Not all over mind, just around the eyelets of your shoes. Perhaps your boss is crazy. Or perhaps they work at Mayo.

This paper presents a case study of customer involvement in the XC90 project at Volvo Cars. A group of female customers in Southern California influenced the development of the XC90 by continuous involvement in the project. In a cost‐effective way, the project management team acquired a common understanding of the target customer, giving context to new product development decision‐making and eventually shaping the market offer. Customer interaction has been managed in a more subtle way than normally suggested by literature – tacit design by customer presence. The pragmatic and experimental approach to customer involvement used in the project complements conventional market research activities and is as associated with organisational innovation as it is with product innovation. This account of value co‐creation in the XC90 project offers guidelines for firms wanting to increase connectivity with customers in their new product development efforts.

In order to lead and control large organisations, top managers could use objectives as an integrative mechanism and a driver of change. This paper aims to study the overall volume target of Volvo Cars regarding the consequences it has on organisational practices.

Interviews with relevant managers at Volvo Car Corporation were conducted.

Different interpretations of a seemingly clear objective, different views on both the rationale for and possible direction of the needed change and an increasing gap between middle and top managers are organisational responses to the demanding volume ambition. The response from the interviewed managers was more emotional than expected, resulting in an overall sense of target fatigue in the studied organisation.

The study suggests that the lack of academic research interest in the management by objectives (MBO) discourse is misleading. Rather than dismissing MBO as what is an outmoded management fad, management researchers should examine how MBO is used in practice.

Organisations rely on objectives, but such objectives need to be translated into detailed actions by top management. The creation of meaning and actual means to fulfil the targets is an important dimension to consider for managers wanting to manage the organisation by using objectives. Organisational context and cultural obstacles must not be neglected.

The paper offers a unique insight into how a major automotive company deals with long‐term objectives. In addition, the paper calls for a renewal of research on MBO.