Social commitment according to Senior Vice President of BMW Group, Maximilian Schöberl is social commitment. For over forty years now, BMW has pursued cultural commitment as an integral part of the corporation. Its operations are guided by a mantra that views innovations and distinctive products as only possible in the presence of a unique corporate culture. Consequently, its human workforce actively strives to cultivate an exceptional culture, as sustainability can only be built on robust cultural foundations. BMW’s culture is anchored to two key pillars: equal opportunities and diversity, teamwork and personal development (Kiley, 20004). A brief look at the organizational culture of BMW reveals a unique culture that transcends sociocultural and ethnic classes. To promote a feeling of unity and value for one’s contribution, BMW encourages its employees to share ideas on a brad range of operational aspects.
BMW, like most companies with sound organizational culture, views teamwork as an essential part of operations. They believe in designing and manufacturing products as a team. Given the company’s emphasis on teamwork, it strives to treat each of its employees with respect. In so doing, its employees are connected and propelled by a strong sense of unity. This sense gives rise to BMW’s second pillar: equal opportunities and diversity. According to BMW working as a team where all members are treated equally without bias should define a company’s corporate culture (Kiley, 20004). The automaker boasts of thousands of employees across the globe. Therefore, the company focuses on drawing its employees into a pool where they work together irrespective of their religion, race, or gender. This diversity is reflected in BMW workforce that is varied in gender, ethnicity, age, background, education, and personality.
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The company is undoubtedly a learning organization. BMW strives for technological leadership in its core areas of competence by harnessing key innovations in a top-down and bottom-up process of self-learning guided by goals and not by rules (Promes, 2016). As a learning organization, the company constantly strive to adapt to the ever-changing situations by orienting themselves to every new situation. One way of adapting to changing situations is through its customer-oriented sales and production process. At BMW, learning is largely shaped by the complexity, failures, adaptation, and usability of knowledge (Emerald Publishing Company, 2009). Consequently, its various units rarely learn from the experiences of other units via the company’s massive body of knowledge. To felicitate learning via networks, knowledge is passed via personal networks that exist between individuals. Learning nits cultivate knowledge exchanges on various aspects.
Efficient knowledge transfer between units is shaped by the context specificity of knowledge. This strongly suggests that efficiency influences the drivers of knowledge transfer, including learning addictiveness, absorptive capacity, and communication channels. Given the various units may display high levels of trust among themselves, it could be argued that there is a simultaneous willingness to share knowledge and idea (Emerald Publishing Company, 2009). Overall, a combination f both strong and weak personal networks and relationships determine the success or failure of knowledge transfer across the borders or within and between units. Therefore, strong relationship ties between managers and units are key to efficient transfer of knowledge, especially in the event of a change. To build such a relationship, BMW encourages its team managers to foster an environment characterized by both formal and informal, strong and weak ties.
With the knowledge that transfer of knowledge has been made easier in the age of IT, BMW stresses the critical value of interpersonal communication. This virtue is inbuilt the company’s organizational culture that places human contribution to its successes above everything else. BMW strives to adapt to changes on the go by encouraging innovativeness. This, according to senior management, promotes change (Emerald Publishing Company, 2009). Therefore, continuous learning among its various units enables individuals and groups to adapt to the ever-changing working environment while aligning both internal and external variables to co-exist as key change drivers. In line with its goal of establishing a working environment that encourages change, BMW pushes employees to constantly learn new ideas. Consequently, the company boasts of a workforce that is equipped with the knowledge needed to navigate the various transformations that the company undergoes by the day. Studies have shown that resistance is often necessary as a way of employees wanting to understand the extent and ramifications of the intended changes, BMW’s learning culture seeks to aid individual employees to adapt and own changes that are being introduced into their working space (Kiley, 20004). Open communication, which is core to the automakers learning model, is key to clearing misunderstanding and uncertainty. It is also worth noting that owing to the company’s framework and culture of change, individual flexibility to change is drastically reduced, which could make adapting to changes even harder.
References
Emerald Publishing Company. (2009). Knowledge transfer at BMW: how much knowledge should business units of a firm share with one another . Retrieved August 25, 2017 from http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/learning/management_thinking/articles/pdf/bmw.pdf
Kiley, D. (2004). Driven: Inside BMW, the most admired car company in the world. London: John Wiley & Sons.
Promes, M. (2016). Change Management and Organizational Learning in a New Working Environment: A longitudinal and mixed methods research design. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
