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Milena Pighi joined the BMW Group in 1998 as a spokesperson for Corporate Communications in Italy. In 2004, she moved to Munich, Germany, to take charge of steering and managing Corporate Communications for BMW Group subsidiaries around the globe. In January 2013, she was appointed Head of Corporate Social Responsibility for the BMW Group. The BMW Group is involved in more than 200 educational, social, cultural, environmental, and sports projects in over 42 countries worldwide. Its social commitment relies on partnerships worldwide. These not only have to fit the carmaker's core competencies but also deliver measurable success. With 33 million euros invested annually in corporate social responsibility, the Munich company really wants to make an impact. In this interview, we explore the BMW Group's motivation to be a global leader in CSR and how its outlook on responsible global leadership translates into tangible actions.

Make a contribution on company business models and typical reactions to economic crises.

Media-analysis-based case study.

Crisis is handled through drawing on a strategy deriving from the typical features of the company; through the crisis these features are even intensified.

Multinational companies are complex and only transparent to a small degree; the empirical data therefore rests on a database with articles.

Social implications can be seen at the BMW as a functioning example for social partnership as a form of economic embeddedness at the societal level.

This BMW case aims to show how many of the company's practices that accord with principles espoused in the authors' sustainable leadership model contributed to its recovery after the global financial crisis (GFC).

This case illustrates how BMW institutes the 23 honeybee leadership principles and practices described in the authors' 2011 article “Sustainable leadership: practices for enhancing business resilience and performance” in Strategy & Leadership.

The examples provide a glimpse into the honeybee practices that enabled one firm to emerge successfully from the GFC. Regarding the five performance outcomes on the sustainable leadership pyramid, BMW clearly exceeded expectations in 2010 on financial returns and shareholder value.

Clearly BMW provides long‐term value for all its stakeholders – suppliers, shareholders, employees and customers – as is expected of a sustainable enterprise. BMW's business model, innovative approach to problem‐solving and adherence to sustainable leadership practices underpin a capacity to survive crises such as the GFC.

This is a rare case study of corporate‐wide sustainability practices and principles in operation. Informed by the examples of best practices at BMW, managers at other companies can envision how honeybee management might be implemented at their firm.

The paper aims to describe how BMW in the UK has increased the number of industrial robots at Plant Oxford in the UK; this plant is part of a production “triangle” that brings together three of its four manufacturing plants in the UK to produce the latest version of the Mini passenger car – the Mini Clubman.

The paper describes the major production line techniques that are used in the manufacture of the body‐in‐white (BIW) structure as well as the functions of painting and final assembly of the vehicle. The BIW techniques include spot‐welding and ultrasonic weld inspection for parts assembly.

Over the space of the last three or four years, the management of BMW Group has increased significantly the stature of its UK manufacturing units with the aim of increasing the diversity of models produced, while at the same time achieving greater utilization of its existing capacity, and improving productivity.

The BMW Group continually assesses all of the functions involved in the manufacture of a motor vehicle, and in this context is working both with its own plants and with suppliers of equipment and components to enhance production and quality processes. This includes all of the processes of joining steel and other materials using spot welding and adhesives. There is also much to be gained from the interchange of information between the various plants in the group world‐wide with a view to implementing continuous improvement. The benefits achieved from one process in one particular plant are quickly communicated to other facilities, again with the object of improving quality and productivity. A typical example here is the paint shop.

It is likely that, arising out of greater plant integration and utilization, the management of BMW Group will be able to further increase the capacity of its Mini production units to be in a position to move to the next stage of expansion, namely to reach a target of 300,000 units a year.

BMW continues to rationalise its UK plants in Oxford, Swindon and Hams Hall, further integrating these production facilities with those of major component suppliers to produce a finished vehicle. There is a heavy concentration of KUKA robots within the BIW and sub‐assembly manufacturing facilities.

The car no longer serves simply as a means of transport but is at the core of a new concept of mobility. Car manufacturers are seizing opportunities to change the traditional business model of the auto business. Innovation in this business model has become vital to survival in today’s dynamic market conditions. This paper aims to find out what factors motivate and drive business model change and what the resulting business model innovation is.

This qualitative study is based on a single case, namely, BMW as an illustrative example of an advanced, highly innovative customer-centric service business model (BM). The study adopts a document analysis method to reveal the firm’s BMI process.

First, the study presents a conceptual framework for business model change with the factors –motivators and drivers – that impact on the process of change. BMW’s BMI and its impacting factors are discussed based on this model. The McKinsey 7 s Model framework, the elements of which are strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff and skills is used as an analytical tool to discuss new business model implementation. The study highlights the BM configuration of a traditional car manufacturer, the car as a product and the new car as a service concept.

This study reveals the BMI of BMW’s digital services and its key motivators and drivers. BMW mostly innovates in three key dimensions of the Business model. These are value creation, value delivery and value capture. Most of the elements in these dimensions are innovated.

This article explores the contribution of ethnographic studies to our understanding of multinational corporations, through a literature review and through a case study of BMW Plant Oxford. The study considers that ethnographic studies can provide a more complex view of power relations between managers and workers, and can develop embedded perspectives taking into account the influences from outside the firm on its employees’ actions, developing the image of the firm not as a solitary entity, but as embedded in complex global networks and social discourses.

Betina Szkudlarek, a highly valued member of the editor team of Advances in Global Leadership (volumes 12–14) is resigning, to our regret, to dedicate more time to her work with refugees. Based on her keynote speech at the 2021 ION meeting, the interview demonstrates how scholars can make a tangible contribution to today's highly complex problems that go beyond our research findings. Betina explains the impact of COVID-19 on migrants and refugees and provides examples by various stakeholders. She also describes how her research expanded into partnerships with multiple governments, corporations, and service organizations. Betina is a wonderful example of a scholar-practitioner who is willing to research grand challenges and also make extensive practical contributions to resolving them.

Betina is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Sydney Business School. She publishes on the topics of cross-cultural competence, intercultural communication, and international transitions. She is a Strategic, Sustainability and Growth Consultant with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, where she works with the recipients of the UNAOC's and BMW Group's Intercultural Innovation Awards.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how the role of marketing for luxury brands can be re-thought in order to ensure that such brands establish a strong connection between their luxury image and positive social and environmental values.

The findings are based upon qualitative empirical research which informed a new categorisation of consumer motivations, through the application of self-determination theory which shows how concerns for environmental and social sustainability can be integrated with individual psychological needs.

The findings provide a deep understanding of consumers of luxury-eco products which could be used by marketing practitioners to shape socially responsible purchasing decisions.

The research was designed for theory building, not theory-testing, so future research would be needed to study the efficacy of the recommended strategies for encouraging eco-luxury behaviour.

To increase the likelihood of practical applications, the authors follow the presentation of their findings with suggestions and examples for marketing to each of the consumer types identified by their research.

The findings of this research have implications of a global, environmental and social kind. The societal adoption of eco-luxury consumption is about educating consumer desire, shifting it from its current focus on personal satisfaction, to a higher level of personal and social flourishing.

The findings effectively support the claims of self-determination theory by demonstrating how and why consumer motivations differ and how an improved sense of well-being can be achieved through internalised levels of self-determination.

The research aimed at explaining women microcredit repayment delay when loans are not granted on any joint liability group nor any other scheme based on social capital or financial collateral.

Previous research showed that greater female autonomy is associated with bearing fewer children and the former could be correlated to a higher loan repayment rate because of social and financial benefits for the household. Female autonomy proxied through the number of children and its square is regressed on the number of weeks of repayment delay in an OLS model as well as in a multilogit model that identifies borrowers according to their credit status (regular, delayed, and delinquent).

We found that more autonomous women, those bearing less than four children, repay credit more promptly and are less likely to switch into the delinquent credit status.

Economic variables need to be complemented with some specific characteristics of the borrower, as they have a role in explaining women’s repayment delay.

The research provides an alternate explanation about why women repay loans when a microcredit institution does not rely on a lending methodology based on joint liability groups.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of real-time data emerging from implementation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and netnography on the efficiency of the new product development (NPD).

Customer-oriented organizations are the ones that survive in the market with a flow of new products to the market. Expectations like reduced timelines with quality focus provoke innovations. Customer inputs become the soul for a successful product wherein it becomes important to keep a constant stream of information flow back from the market. Literature review states that real-time data gathering with the implementation of IoT ensures the same. Along with real-time data, researchers have envisaged the need to identify the customer persona before incorporating customer opinion and sentiments vide netnography.

The organization can leverage the collaboration of IoT origin real-time data and sentiment analysis to effectively manage the NPD. Real-time customer data coupled with customer opinions and sentiments prove to be a game changer in the NPD process.

The originalities of this study are impact of IoT origin real-time data coupled with sentiment analysis on the NPD process. While impact of IoT origin data is reported in isolation similar to sentiment analysis, influence of collaboration of real-time data with sentiment analysis on NPD process is reported in this study.