VOLKSWAGEN - Brochure "Responsibility knows no boundaries"

Acting with Responsibility - Prof. Dr. Martin Winterkorn and Bernd Osterloh discuss the contribution made by Volkswagen Group to sustainable development.

The Volkswagen Group operates more than 90 production facilities in 18 European countries and 8 countries in America, Asia, Africa and Australia. More than half a million people now contribute to the Group’s success. Can any other business enterprise make similar claim to having globality and diversity as its own attributes?

As the Group grows, so does its responsibility – to offer good and safe places of work; to ensure training and opportunities for the next generation; for education, science and culture; for a society in which every single person can develop their talents and above all: for an intact environment.

As an enterprise driven by value, Volkswagen has always sought to achieve a balance with its stakeholders. The granting of equal status to the aspects of revenue and employment is one of the unwritten principles of our corporate constitution. And will remain so.

Acting responsibly has always been part of our corporate culture. We understand social responsibility as being the ability to harmonise our business activities with the long-term goals of (a global) society. Anyone wishing to check whether and to what extent we achieve this should first look at our products, then see how we procure and produce, and thirdly at the efforts with which we, as upstanding corporate citizens, seek to promote and further develop cooperative structures with and within our social environment.

This is why Volkswagen does not choose its partnerships and projects indiscriminately, but rather according to whether they match our mobility activities or are situated close to a site and are beneficial to people ­ both inside our factories and beyond the factory gates.

This brochure is intended to illustrate that CSR is practised far beyond our home market of Germany­ in all markets and regions within the world of Volkswagen in a fashion adjusted to meet and reflect local needs and resources.

Find out more about our road traffic education project “The Seventh Sense” inChina, about the voluntary social engagement of our workforce in Pacheco/Argentina and the sports and educational activities in South Africa and Brazil under the motto “A chance to play”. Take the time to read about the green factories recently constructed in Pune/India and in Chattanooga/Tennessee in the USA. Learn more about the Green Fleet programme organised jointly by Volkswagen Leasing and German nature conservation federation NABU, as well as details of the fantastic planting project in Popocatepetl, close to our Puebla plant in Mexico.

The list of outstanding projects and initiatives is long. It demonstrates that at Volkswagen, CSR is more than a reaction to external pressures and expectations, but instead has long been an in-house initiative that has evolved into a force in its own right for better competitiveness as well as technical and socio­ecological innovation. It is definitely no coincidence that Volkswagen is achieving business success at a time in which the principle of responsibility towards both people and the environment has gained validity in business enterprises across the globe – find out for yourself!