Management success at BMW is greatly rooted and attributed to the uniqueness that the world market leaders in luxurious automobile manufacturing and marketing continues to exhibit. In fact, much of the celebrated success at BMW is perhaps drawn from the purely entrepreneurial culture that is seldom among organizations in Germany.
Typically, according to the latter, German management style is characterized by approaches where the top managements are the utmost authority, making all decisions and passing them over to the line managers, supervisors and subordinates to follow without a question. Consequently, there is a big difference between the management and the associates or rather the employees.
Ideally, the management culture at BMW is an absolute contrast of the German management culture; perhaps the major reason for its celebrated success. First, BMW has maintained a rather flat structure, where the gap between the management and the employees has virtually been minimized. More so, the best working environment as well as very sound relations between employees and mangers reigns in the organization. In deed, individual from across the organizational structure work together as equals to make better cars or rather improve the quality of automobiles at BMW.
According to Hellriegel & John, all the 106, 000 employees at BMW exists as a unified network with minimum hierarchical barriers and bureaucratic institutions that have ensured the best environment for collaborative decision making, innovation, invention and coordinated efforts towards improving quality of their products.
The culture at BMW has resulted in the creation of informal networks and quality circles which have provided BMW with a source of even the most heretical ideas for improving quality of their products and improving the company’s profitability. From the time employees enters the company, they get acquainted with the BMW culture that makes them part and parcel of the company experience, a sense of belongingness, history, and company mission. A unified purpose of top quality products, importance of every individual in the organization in the achievement of the company goals and mission, as well as innovativeness are also key aspects of the BMW unique culture.