The culture of family-owned provincial enterprise is a defining feature of German business strength. Is it also a curse? Volkswagen’s troubles have a lot to do with the German style of business, where companies are often clans and combine uncompromisingly provincial identities with operations that span the globe.
Consider the carmaker’s attempt to deceive regulators about the emissions produced by its vehicles. This does not sound like a plan hatched in a world-beating company where sketches are drawn with precision rulers and tolerances checked with intricate gauges. It sounds, rather, like a hare-brained scheme devised by amateurs in a company where malformed ideas, if they come from someone senior enough, are never allowed to die.
Germany is a country that believes family businesses to be the backbone of its success. Visit the areas around Cologne, Stuttgart or Freiburg, and you will find thousands of them. Often they are pushing the limits of technology, labouring over designs for what sound less like products than flights of fancy: smart meters to control the energy consumption of households, or machines that can cut, weigh and cook whole meals in one pot.