The German automotive industry’s strategic sustainability management - dealing with the ongoing global carbon crisis through sustainable-value creation

The importance of leading German automotive industry’s low/non-carbon transition is set upon a collaborative-undertaking approach towards sustainable-value creation. By discussing single corporation’s strategic environmental and social sustainability focus (i.e. pollution prevention; clean technology; product stewardship) and collaborative contribution, the exploratory research identifies and classifies single-applied and collaborative-contributed key, strategic clean/green-technological initiatives by Germany’s influential OEMs and OEM-parts suppliers through interpretation of annual/sustainability-reporting’ patterns/relationships within 2010 to 2015. By unifying those enforced/realised significant, future-oriented measures/ideas, the authors propose universal guidelines of transferable, operational initiatives that motivate the guideline’s incorporation by environmental/sustainability managers of diverse industrial sectors to ensure/promote strategic sustainability development/management