E-Book, Englisch, 703 Seiten
Bähr / Erker Bosch
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-3-406-68360-2
Verlag: C.H.Beck
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark
History of a Global Enterprise
E-Book, Englisch, 703 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-406-68360-2
Verlag: C.H.Beck
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark
Bosch is a company with a rich history. It stands for important trends of the modern
world, such as the motorization of transport or the electrification of the household,
and was one of the pioneers of globalization. Its founder Robert Bosch was as well
known for his liberal views as he was for the social principles he applied to company
management.
With this book, Johannes Bähr and Paul Erker present the first comprehensive history
of Bosch to be written by independent historians. In undertaking their research,
the authors had unrestricted access to the company archives. Starting from the figure
of the company founder, his business principles, and the early days of his company
as a modest, courtyard-entrance workshop in the west end of Stuttgart, they go on
to describe the company’s rise to become the world’s leading automotive supplier, as
well as the emergence of a distinctive corporate culture oriented to social concerns.
The authors also profile the company’s most important subsidiaries, charting the
development of the diverse business activities that characterize today’s supplier of
technology and services. The work’s focal points include the company’s conduct
during the Third Reich as well as the later evolution of its corporate constitution.
Spanning a period of more than 100 years, the authors recount the history of one
of the world’s first global enterprises, a history of outstanding innovations and triumphs,
but also of crises that time and again put the company founder’s principles
to the test.
Fachgebiete
Weitere Infos & Material
1;Cover;1
2;Title;3
3;Copyright;4
4;Contents;5
5;Introduction;11
6;I Early years and rise of the company (1886–1932);17
6.1;1 Robert Bosch – portrait of a founder;19
6.2;2 The difficult early years;33
6.3;3 The period of rapid growth;42
6.3.1;The irresistible rise of the Bosch magneto;42
6.3.2;The first regional subsidiaries and the conquest of the U.S. market;54
6.3.3;The transition to a large-scale enterprise and the introduction of the eight-hour working day;61
6.3.4;The strike of 1913;68
6.3.5;The company on the eve of the First World War;73
6.4;4 The First World War and its aftermath;79
6.4.1;The war – a turning point;79
6.4.2;Conversion to a stock corporation and establishment of VVB;87
6.4.3;Changing times: Robert Bosch AG and the aftermath of war;91
6.4.4;Organizational development and the evolution of a sense of identity;102
6.5;5 The 1926 crisis, and diversification in the Great Depression;114
6.5.1;Causes, course, and repercussions of the great crisis of 1926;114
6.5.2;The restructuring of 1926–27 and the resolution of the crisis;124
6.5.3;Trial and tribulation on the way to the diesel injection pump;130
6.5.4;Building up a presence outside Germany and battling for the U.S. market;135
6.5.5;Between sackings and shorter working weeks: Bosch in the Great Depression;140
6.5.6;Power tools, refrigerators, radios, and gas-fired water heaters: the first phase of diversification and the rise of a conglomerate;145
7;II Bosch in the Third Reich (1933–1945);153
7.1;1 The Bosch Group in the economic upswing of National Socialism (1933–1939);155
7.1.1;The development of the enterprise and its subsidiaries;155
7.1.2;The transformation of Robert Bosch AG into a GmbH;166
7.2;2 “Corporate community” versus “people's community”: Bosch, the NSDAP, and the National Socialist regime;169
7.2.1;Robert Bosch AG after the National Socialist assumption of power;169
7.2.2;Clashes and compromises with the NSDAP;175
7.2.3;Between “model company” and “state within the state”: Bosch under wartime totalitarianism;179
7.3;3 Bosch and the Jews;183
7.3.1;Jews and people of Jewish descent at Robert Bosch AG and GmbH;183
7.3.2;For the sake of justice and humanity: how the Bosch circle helped Jews;187
7.3.3;Aryanizations: acquiring equity interests and real estate from Jewish ownership;189
7.4;4 Involvement in rearmament and arms production in the Second World War;193
7.4.1;Bosch and rearmament;193
7.4.2;Emergence and early years of Dreilinden Maschinenbau GmbH;195
7.4.3;From Elektro- und Feinmechanische Industrie GmbH to Trillke-Werke GmbH;199
7.4.4;Concealing operations outside Germany;202
7.4.5;Integration into Germany's wartime economy;207
7.4.6;The last year of the war;213
7.5;5 Beyond the bounds of the "Bosch community": forced labor;218
7.6;6 The Bosch circle and resistance to Hitler;236
7.7;7 Death and legacy of Robert Bosch;245
7.7.1;The legacy: a family company – with reservations;249
8;III Adaptation and change between economic boom and economic crises (1945–1983);253
8.1;1 Reconstruction in the shadow of Allied decartelization policy and disagreements within the company;255
8.1.1;Continuities and breaks with the past: the struggle for positions of power within the company;255
8.1.2;Conflicts with the works council;262
8.1.3;The constraints of Allied antitrust legislation: Bosch and its “deconcentration case” (1947–1952);264
8.1.4;On the brink of a growth crisis: sales figures and corporate financing in a period of tumultuous expansion;271
8.2;2 From family-run business to foundation- owned company: the long march to a new Bosch constitution;276
8.2.1;Who decides what the will means? Execution of the will, and the appointment of Robert Bosch Jr. to the board of management (1953–1964);277
8.2.2;Robert Bosch Industrietreuhand KG and shareholder structure: further development of corporate governance at Bosch (1965–1982);302
8.3;3 Corporate organization and corporate strategy between economic miracle and oil-price shock;311
8.3.1;Divisionalization, crisis strategies, and corporate management in the Merkle era;312
8.3.2;Monopoly of supply versus collective buying power: Bosch and terms of supply in the pre-López era;323
8.3.3;The challenge of re-entering the U.S. market: stages and problems of the second phase of internationalization;332
8.3.4;The "greener automobile": aspects of an environmental history of Bosch;341
8.4;4 Between Americanization and Japanization: manufacturing organization and work environment;351
8.4.1;Manufacturing organization in times of postwar reconstruction, capacity bottlenecks, and labor shortages;351
8.4.2;Structural adjustment policies, rationalization strategies, and labor conflicts in the 1970s;365
8.5;5 The phase of “indiscriminate diversification”: strategic alliances and the move into new areas of business;375
8.5.1;The Bosch-Siemens alliance in the household-appliances business;376
8.5.2;The Blaupunkt crisis and attempts to reorganize the German consumer-electronics industry;379
8.5.3;Strategic investments and political machinations: Bosch, MBB, and restructuring in the arms and aviation industries;383
8.5.4;Moving into telecommunications technology: Bosch and the AEG crisis;386
8.6;6 Initial conclusions;393
9;IV Bosch and the challenges of globalization (1984–2012);397
9.1;1 Radical change and continuity in the shadow of economic turbulence (1984–1993);400
9.1.1;Bosch is unstoppable: the dynamics of growth and a new leadership culture;400
9.1.2;From ray of hope to quagmire: development of the communications technology business;409
9.1.3;Bosch in the three major economic regions of the 1980s: Europe – USA – Japan;421
9.1.4;Kaizen auf schwäbisch: CIP and lean production in Bosch manufacturing;427
9.1.5;The great clash of 1993;434
9.1.6;Upheaval at old-established locations: labor relations and labor conflicts;444
9.2;2 Into the digital age;452
9.2.1;Technical strengths: research, development, and innovation;452
9.2.2;Development and acceptance of electronically controlled gasoline injection;456
9.2.3;Vehicle dynamics systems and navigation devices;459
9.3;3 From restructuring to change: the process of renewal in the 1990s (1993–2003);469
9.3.1;Corporate governance and corporate organization;469
9.3.2;Crisis and reorganization: the automotive technology business sector and the perennial problem with loss-making products;475
9.3.3;Diesel injection systems and the diesel boom;482
9.3.4;A fresh phase of diversification: acquisition of Rexroth and Buderus;487
9.3.5;The rediscovery of values: value-driven and values-based management;494
9.3.6;Changes in the parallelogram of forces in corporate governance;500
9.4;4 Globalization, diversification, and focus on values (2003–2012);511
9.4.1;Driving change forward: new strategies and trends;511
9.4.2;Getting the workforce through the crisis intact: Bosch in the financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009;524
9.4.3;Green Bosch: growth in renewables, losses in the solar business;531
9.4.4;The China boom and growing markets in the other BRIC countries;535
9.4.5;Looking beyond 125 years;541
9.4.6;Final conclusions;548
10;Appendix;561
10.1;Notes;563
10.2;Bosch Group headcount and sales revenue (1886–2012);662
10.3;List of abbreviations;666
10.4;Photo credits;673
10.5;Sources and bibliography;674
10.6;Index of persons;693
10.7;Index of companies;699
11;About the Book;704
12;About the Authors;704
1 Robert Bosch – portrait of a founder
Robert Bosch was born in Albeck, a village near Ulm in the Swabian Jura, on September 23, 1861. He was the eleventh of twelve children born to a couple who worked as innkeepers and farmers. Their inn, the “Gasthaus zur Krone” in Albeck, with its approximately 75 hectares of arable land and forest, had been in the Bosch family for several generations. Robert’s father, Servatius Bosch, an educated, well-read man, was also a freemason and someone who held firm principles.[1] His mother, Maria Margaretha Bosch, née Dölle, came from an innkeeper family in nearby Jungingen, and despite her huge brood helped out tirelessly in the inn. The couple, while not being particularly rich, were very comfortably off.[2] Today we would say the parents belonged to the prosperous middle class.[3] “We children were fond of our parents; they showed us understanding,” Robert Bosch wrote in his 1921 “Memoirs.”[4] In fact, the parental home exerted a stronger influence on him than might be assumed at first glance. His parents may not have been responsible for his fascination with electrical engineering and precision mechanics, but they did instill in him a head for business, a disciplined approach to work, and a love of farming. For Robert Bosch, his father was in many respects an exemplar. He grew up sharing his father’s political stance, understanding of social affairs, and highly developed sense of justice. As a social-liberal democrat with a commitment to the “ideas of 1848,” Servatius Bosch felt a deep aversion to Prussian militarism. In Albeck, he had a certain reputation as a stubborn opponent of the mayor. He is said to have taken matters into his own hands when a broom-maker was imprisoned on what he considered unjust grounds, freeing the man from his cell – which cost Servatius a two-month spell in the state penitentiary at Hohenasperg.[5] “Never forget your humanity, and respect human dignity in your dealings with others,” was a motto that Robert Bosch ascribed not only to himself but also to his father.[6] Servatius Bosch was a member of the local railroad committee, from which we can infer that he took a forward-looking attitude toward the technological and industrial developments of the age. In 1867, the landlord of Albeck’s “Zur Krone” is said to have visited the World Exhibition in Paris.[7] Robert Bosch was also shaped by the region into which he was born. To his dying day he saw himself as a Schwabe. “The Swabian,” Theodor Bäuerle writes in his biography of Robert Bosch, “was for him the epitome of the good German, the industrious worker, a pillar of German civilization.”[8] Robert Bosch not only spoke the local dialect in the family and among friends and associates, he was also the living embodiment of several qualities often attributed to the Swabian: thoroughness, conscientiousness, dependability, and a certain mulish obstinacy. In 1869, when Robert Bosch was just under eight years old, the family moved to Ulm. His father sold the house and land in Albeck, since none of the older sons wished to take over the inn. In addition, it was becoming apparent that the place was not going to lie on the new Ulm-Heidenheim railroad. In Ulm, Robert Bosch attended the Realschule, the secondary-technical school, while his parents now lived from private means.[9] Robert’s brothers had in the meantime gone their own ways. The eldest, Jakob, became an innkeeper, taking over the “Adler” in Jungingen from his maternal grandfather.[10] His brother Karl, with whom Robert Bosch was subsequently on closer terms than with any of his other siblings, went into partnership with their sister Caroline’s husband, Gustav Haag. Together they founded an installation business for gas and water appliances in Cologne. Karl’s elder son Carl later became president of the board of IG Farben and in 1931 received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Carl’s career filled Robert Bosch with pride that “the rustic farmland of the Ulm Jura has produced two men who are a glorious credit to the German nation.”[11] Another brother, Albert, studied architecture, settled in Ulm in that profession, and worked as a stonemason at the minster there.[12] Following his father’s advice, having completed Realschule, Robert Bosch began an apprenticeship in precision mechanics – although at the time his interest lay more with the natural sciences.[13] During his three-year training under the Ulm mechanic and optician Wilhelm Maier, he made his first acquaintance with electrical apparatus. Later, he was to describe this apprenticeship as deeply disappointing. His master, he complained, had “not even encouraged learning.”[14] The experience made a profound impression on him and was later to play a major role in shaping apprenticeship training at his own company. His apprenticeship completed, the “years of travel” then customary for young journeymen began for Robert Bosch. Initially, he worked at his brother Karl’s company in Cologne, where he also learned basic bookkeeping. He then moved to Stuttgart and joined C. & E. Fein, one of the earliest electrical engineering businesses to operate in the city. He did not stay for long there, either, switching to a jewelry workshop in Hanau that manufactured foxtail necklaces.[15] In the autumn of 1880, he entered military service with an engineering battalion in Ulm. One of his friends from this time, Eugen Kayser, subsequently became his brother-in-law, and later still a close colleague. At the end of his term of military service, Robert Bosch was given the chance of pursuing an officer’s career. However, he decided against it and instead resumed his “travel years,” first taking a job at the Schuckert works in Nuremberg, then working for the mechanic Gottlob Schäffer in Göppingen. Clearly, Robert Bosch found it hard to make up his mind between precision mechanics and electrical engineering.[16] So he decided to enroll as an auditor at what would later become the Stuttgart Polytechnic in order to tackle the theoretical principles of electrical engineering.[17] After only one semester, he felt the urge to move on. In the spring of 1884, together with a friend from Ulm, his former fellow-apprentice Leonhard Köpf, he took ship for the United States. In retrospect, Robert Bosch wrote that he had embarked for America “partly to see the world but partly also because that country, the land of freedom, held a particular attraction for me. After all, by upbringing and after the example of my father and my elder brothers, I saw myself as a young democrat.” [18] Robert Bosch (1881) On the basis of references he brought with him from Germany, Robert Bosch found employment in New York City as a technician at the company run by the German-American entrepreneur Sigmund Bergmann. Bergmann, an immigrant from Thuringia, had jointly developed the first light bulb with Thomas Edison in 1879. His business was a forerunner of the General Electric Company, which Edison set up subsequently. In New York City, the young technician not only became acquainted with the world but also suffered the hardships of having a job with no security. As soon as the next slump arrived he was laid off, and although he quickly found a new position at the Edison Machine Works it was an experience that left its mark on him. Robert Bosch promptly joined a worker organization named the Knights of Labor and in a letter to his future wife, Anna Kayser, declared himself a socialist.[19] He was disillusioned with the “land of freedom” because, as he later wrote, “the cornerstone of justice was missing: equality before the law.” [20] Following such disappointments, it was likely his engagement to Anna Kayser (which had ensued by correspondence) that persuaded him to leave the U.S. after only a year and return to Europe. Robert Bosch spent the first six months working for Siemens Brothers outside London, but at Christmas 1885 he went back to Germany and became officially engaged to marry Anna Kayser. She lived in Obertürkheim, just outside Stuttgart, so it made sense for him to move to the Stuttgart region. Before he finally settled there, Bosch worked for a few months for Buss, Sombart & Co., a gas-powered engine manufacturer in Magdeburg.[21] He was drawn to Stuttgart for personal reasons in the main, and not because the city was a particularly important industrial center (in fact, at the time it was by no means a big place). But after many “travel years,” it is likely that Robert Bosch also felt the need to return to his Swabian homeland, and calculated that there were good career prospects for him in the Württemberg capital, with its roughly 130,000 inhabitants. At the time when Robert Bosch settled in Stuttgart he was 25 years old. Seven years had passed since the completion of his apprenticeship – a lengthy total of “travel years,” measured by the standards of the time. There is a strong sense that he did not find it easy to commit to a specific occupation. His letters, however, show that he had decided some time back to opt for self-employment, and now had personal reasons for taking the plunge. In Robert Bosch’s view, setting up his own company would give him the kind of assured income that at the time was deemed essential for a man contemplating marriage. Sure enough, the business was...
