CIICPD 2023

One such tool “translating awareness into action”, as described by Richard Thaler (2008) in the nudge management theory, aimed at monitoring human instinctive behaviour. By proving that people act primarily on instincts and emotions, the author deconstructed the long-held economic belief that customers make rational decisions and proposed a set of tools, so-called nudges, designed to manage people and teams through positive emotions and instincts. In the form of soft pushes, these tools create a better sense of one’s performance, teamwork, work environment or corporate atmosphere. They thereby, non-coercively regulate human behaviour toward accepting diversity and creating inclusive actions. To affect all sectors of business practice, individual nudges aim at a variety of categories, according to the type of situations and business areas where they can be implemented. 1.4 Škoda Auto Company Profile An example of implementing the DEI principles into corporate practice will be demonstrated in a case study from the automotive industry – Škoda Auto, a.s. (ŠA) (Škoda Auto a.s., 2022) representing the largest producer of cars in Czechia. The company was established in 1895 in Mladá Boleslav and originally bore the name of its establishers Laurin & Klement. Initially, the company produced bicycles, but continuously shifted towards car manufacturing. In 1925, Laurin & Klement merged with Škoda Works in Pilsen to better position themselves on the market. Since then, Škoda has utilised the iconic winged-arrow logo. During the communist era, after the Second World War, Czechoslovak development gradually tended toward homogeneity of the country with only a few exceptions (Sloboda, 2016). Immigration was strictly regulated and controlled by the socialist government. The production of every company was planned centrally. As a result, the local population had few opportunities to experience intercultural encounters, and companies became less competitive worldwide. After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the Czech government sought a strong international partner to which ŠA could be sold, finally deciding on Volkswagen (VW), thus becoming the fourth brand of the VW Group including VW, Audi and SEAT (Škoda Storyboard, 2022a). This helped ŠA to become more linguistically and socioculturally diverse (Nekvapil, 1997) and set the company on the path to becoming the successful and competitive corporation known today. Based on the Diversity Report from 2021 (Škoda Supplements, 2022), Škoda Auto a.s. employed over 35,000 employees, out of which around 24,000 work in manual positions and 11,000 in administration and management. As such, the company represents one of the main national employers in Czechia. The company is located in four major locations across the country, with Mladá Boleslav being both the headquarters and the main production site. Production also takes place in Kvasiny and Vrchlabí. Prague is mainly a sales, marketing and IT projects hub. Needless to say, the headquarters located outside of the capital city has an impact on attracting regional talent. The organisational structure of ŠA is divided into the Central Management Department, so-called Governance, then Finance and IT, People & Culture, Procurement, Technical Development, Sales and Marketing, and Production and Logistics. According to the

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