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This study shows that Siemens has assiduously endeavored to achieve business excellence and enhance the company’s economic value, and has made considerable efforts to address the issue of sustainable development in various ways. However, the study has also found that much is said than done and there are implementation issues and problems that deserve managers’ full attention. A series of recommendations are proposed to broadly address these issues and problems. Managers who have already embarked on, or intend to take, sustainability initiatives will find the study informative and insightful.

In 2006 the German-based electronics company Siemens faced widespread corruption and bribery allegations. Investigations of the German state attorney’s office disclosed an amount of more than 2.3 billion of suspicious payments to foreign governments (Schubert & Miller, 2008). It turned out that Siemens had bribed governmental officials in order to secure contracts and to obtain favorable conditions over more than three decades (Schmidt, 2009). Though Siemens had a clearly stated anticorruption policy this did not prevent the company from getting involved in one of the largest corporate scandals in German business history.

A deeper analysis of the scandal reveals at least four fundamental shortcomings which enabled the corrupt practices on all organizational levels. First, most of the managers saw no alternatives to secure their foreign business, especially in countries where bribery payment has been a widespread practice. Second, the managers had created misguided bonds of loyalty believing that personal engagement in the corruption scheme was part of their dedication to the company. Third, due to corporate routines and commonly accepted practices, most managers lacked a clear sense of reality seeing corruption as part of the regular business at Siemens. Fourth, poor governance structures and a lack of clear regulations for doing business in a corrupt environment made it easier for managers to bypass official regulations.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how multinational enterprises have historically managed global patenting and to what extent the localization of patent management has supported the expansion of these enterprises. This study focuses on the electric appliance industry (one of the first industries to see the emergence of global companies) and consider the case of Siemens, a German multinational company, comparing it to General Electric (GE), an American company.

The work adopts a global business history approach. Taking GE’s global patent-management model, described by Nishimura (2004, 2009, 2016), as the benchmark, this study analyzed Siemens’ worldwide control of its intellectual property rights between 1890 and Second World War, using German, Japanese and American primary sources.

Patent management is a common means for firms to globalize and transfer technology internationally, but it can take various forms. While GE transferred patent management to its foreign subsidiaries (a process known as localization), Siemens kept worldwide patent management at its headquarters – except in Japan, where in time it transferred this activity to a joint venture. The transfer of production called for localization of patent management while focusing on exporting to other markets made it possible to keep patent management at headquarters.

Patents are usually a source for quantitative surveys. This paper uses them to discuss how multinational companies manage property rights globally. It is the first paper to address this issue by comparing two major actors in a similar industry.

The article's purpose is to explain that Siemens Business Services in the UK and Ireland has improved its process for recruiting project and programme managers by introducing online knowledge and personality tests.

Presents information provided by Trevor Band, Siemens Business Services' project‐management champion for the UK.

Shows that, with support from PSL, Siemens Business Services has introduced development centers to facilitate the learning and development of its senior project managers, and it is running leadership development workshops for its most senior managers, to embed its new project management ethos from the top.

Furnishes useful information for anyone involved in recruiting project managers, or for people considering the use of online testing in recruitment for other posts.

Indicates that the various initiatives have helped to elevate Siemens Business Services to the forefront of project management best practice within the Siemens Group.

This paper investigates and addresses issues, problems and challenges that a regional company of a multinational corporation is facing in the implementation of IT‐platforms (SAP R/3) and the business process re‐engineering (BPR). While many organizations have reported significant improvement in business results from implementing SAP R/3 and BPR, others have failed or experienced various difficulties in achieving intended business and management results. This empirical study describes and discusses Siemens' experience in the process of implementation. The author argues that a holistic approach to IT management is needed, which recognises and emphasises active integration and interaction of strategy, business processes, management system and structure, and organizational culture.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

When the walls came tumbling down around Europe in 1989, and the iron curtain was torn down, the full impact was missed at Siemens, the German‐based technology‐focused behemoth. Not that they have faired all of that badly. Between 1992 and 2004 revenues rose from Euros 41 billion to Euros 75 billion and profits from Euros 1 billion to Euros 3.4 billion. Yet the feeling persists that performance is not exactly world‐class.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

The digitization process has increased the pressure on large firms to transform. However, current frameworks on digital transformation are not well explaining what factors contribute to, or hinder, a firm's digital transformation. Innovation diffusion theories could complement existing frameworks, and for this reason, the purpose of this paper is to expand the existing body of knowledge on what contributes to, or hinders, an industrial firm's digital transformation by applying a validated framework based on innovation diffusion theories on two pioneer cases: General Electric and Siemens EHR/Health Services.

The framework used in this paper is based on several years' empirical studies and iterative literature reviews on innovation diffusion theories. Further, each use case is based on literature reviews and unique empirical data, collected by the authors of this paper as a result of taking active part of respective company's multi-years transformation.

Common drivers of, and clear inhibitors to the two firms' transformation, were identified. The innovation diffusion framework was found to work very well in identifying those factors.

The implications are that researchers better can analyze/explain a digital transformation of a firm, and business managers can better plan or improve their firms' transformation processes.

The theoretical contributions of this paper are two: first, complement existing frameworks with a validated framework for innovation diffusion; second, provide an extension of our body of knowledge on factors that contributes to, or hinders, industrial firm's digital transformation.

Since previous research has mainly focused on “how multinational companies generally practise knowledge management”, this paper seeks to suggest that very little is known of the particularities of knowledge‐sharing and knowledge management practice in the context of a specific country and culture.

It uses an in‐depth case‐research approach focusing specifically on Siemens ShareNet in China. A total of 35 interviews have been conducted with executives, general managers, and line managers within different units at the headquarters as well as in China.

Knowledge management needs to take the cultural dimension into consideration, as culture decisively influences knowledge‐sharing behavior. Potential for knowledge sharing in the emerging market of China is higher than one may expect, if the necessary adjustment to the cultural context can be made.

This research paper investigates a single case focusing on Siemens ShareNet in China. Thus, the findings may have limitations in their generalizability. Any future research needs to pay more attention to both “non‐monetary incentives” and “cultural impact” of knowledge sharing, as theses two issues are of particular value while so far largely unexplored.

Knowledge management officers are able to deepen their understanding of motivations and barriers of knowledge sharing especially in the Chinese context. The paper also demonstrates potentials for hands‐on improvements.

This study reveals that knowledge management needs to take the cultural dimension into consideration, as culture decisively influences knowledge‐sharing behavior. It also indicates that the potential for knowledge sharing in an emerging market such as China is higher than one may expect.

Siemens, once noted for its bureaucratic and hierarchical approach to business, has adopted a grass‐roots and “bottom up” approach to knowledge management, which has transformed the company over the last three years. Without any suggestion or provocation from above, middle‐level employees and managers in Siemens business units began to create repositories, communities of practice and informal sharing approaches for knowledge.

Many companies claim to have established senior executive relationship programs, but few have linked their account plans to senior executive actions, and consequently, only a few can report successful growth results. This article provides a systematic approach to create a replicable executive engagement process.

During 1997‐2005, five research consortiums on global account management (GAM), involving more than 30 companies around the world, were conducted. The objectives were to explore current successful practices and future competencies in GAM. In addition to the empirical investigation of the effects of successful GAM implementation, several case studies were developed.

The case of Siemens Information & Communication illustrates the benefits on both the supplier and the customer sides when companies make a systematic effort to link their account plans to senior executive actions. In the case of Siemens, the growth rate of the systematically “managed” accounts outperformed that of “non‐managed” accounts by a factor of two.

The results from the research in general and the case in particular suggest that executive engagement in customer affairs represents a strategic choice rather than an agenda filler. By following the described process, companies can create their own growth agendas.

This paper offers middle and senior managers a proven and inexpensive process for translating account plans into real growth. Companies that commit to creating such an executive engagement process can expect to benefit from hard‐to‐copy intimacy with their customers, which in turn results in new, sustainable sources of competitive advantage.