大众丑闻分析

At the horizontal level, given CSR department at the top management. Although it is difficult to findthereason why Volkswagen installed their ‘defeat device’ to cheat the tests,we could assume the reason: the type of CSR department is not useful for the top managers’ decision making. In order to compete in the market,Volkswagendid it best tosell cars, which is made easier by misleading the environmental tests.Although Volkswagen has an ambitious strategy to exploreanattractiveandenvironmentallyfriendlyrangeofautomobiles, it can be regarded an excuse. Volkswagen may have toed to cheat to create low polluting values,otherwise they were not allowed toexpand bigger markets like the USA (Hermans, M., & da Cruz Caria, P. (2016).
Explanationof CSR governanceห้องสมุดไป่ตู้problem in Volkswagen
At the vertical level, CSR governance has two tasks: strategy formulation and oversight. It is worth noticing where CSR departments are anchored in the body of the organization. In Volkswagen, CSR governance is aware of putting CSR department: Supervisory Board into the top level. And the strategy will be emphasized many times. However, “assessing the organizational integration of CSR in daily business practices and routines is critical for distinguishing between CSR ‘talk’ and CSR ‘walk’” (Baumann-Pauly et al., 2013, p. 3).Recent studies show that placing the CSR department at the top management level can help exert high strategic value and needs and get the support from the senior level or even chief executive officer’s (CEO) (Pollach et al.,2012; Morgan et al., 2009; Elving and Kartal, 2012).
CSR governance
The term ofCSR, stem from 1970s,stands for corporatesocialresponsibility which focuses company’s sustainability development. Business Dictionary defines CSR as "A company’s sense of responsibility towards the community and environment (both ecological and social) in which it operates.
In fact, at the operational level,single-headed type reports directly to the board of management and put the weight on both the strategy implementation and performing(see FIGURE1); two-headed type, an indirect governance structure, reports to the supervisory board rather than the board of management and mainly concentrates on managing more than strategy formulation (see FIGURE2);
Questions about the Volkswagen scandal
There exists a question at Volkswagen is that did members of the supervisory and management boards know about the rigging of emissions tests? According toJohn(2015), the 2014 report of the supervisory board declared that “the Supervisory Board was directly involved in all decisions of fundamental importance to the Group”. This question raised an attention to the Volkswagen’s organizational structure. From the perspective of CSR, Volkswagen, seeing ‘sustainability’ as an objective, has Management Board and Supervisory Board. Reporting to the Management Board are twenty members of the Supervisory Board who are responsible for monitoring management, approving important corporate decisions, and appointing the members of the Management Board.The following analysis find the value destruction in Volkswagen can be attributed to the bad CSR governance and group thinking.
Introduction
OnSeptember 18, 2015, Volkswagen shocked the world because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) notice that Volkswagen’s “clean diesel” vehicles were found to be in violation of the Clean Air Act. Then,the Volkswagen emission manipulation scandal has given rise to hot discussions about the root reasons of the scandal. Through analyzing aspects of the 2015 Volkswagen emissions test rigging scandal, this essay aims to use the theories of corporate social responsibility (CSR) governance and group thinking to explain the problems at Volkswagen. Then, based on theories of organizational behavior, this paper will suggest changes to organizational practice to prevent such incidents from happening in the future.
In modern organizations, awareness of CSR is increasing fostered and CSR governance has played a vital role to facilitate sustainable, environmental friendly development and reputation for corporations. In general, the internal organizationalCSR structure can be subdivided into two levels: the vertical (governance) and the horizontal (operational) (Kathuria et al., 2007). Additionally, CSR governance involves structures at the top management level and reporting lines and within the control of CSR strategy. Eccles et al. (2014) found that companies engaged in sustainability are more likely to have a separate board committee responsible for CSRthan companies without a sustainability strategy. Since human resources is led by a separate department and the corporate function should be supported by an organizational structure. At the operational level, coordination among the departments is key to ensuring smooth processes and a coherent pursuit of corporate objectives to efficiently use resources and competencies (Asif et al., 2013). Furthermore, Lock, I. and Seele, P. (2016) concluded three types of CSR governance including single-headed type, two-headed type and infused type.