2. Can Daimler fire Gartner? What is the legal situation?

Is it ethical to fire him? On November 20, 2016, Rainer Gärtner, chief executive officer

(CEO) of Daimler Trucks and Buses China Ltd. (DTBC), the Chinese heavy-duty segment of multinational automobile manufacturer Daimler AG (Daimler), found himself sitting in a police station in Beijing, China. The police officers had taken him in for questioning after a heated quarrel in a parking lot where he allegedly lost his temper over a parking space.2 Gärtner and a Chinese driver were both trying to park their cars at the same time in the same space. This resulted in Gärtner screaming racially loaded insults. Onlookers tried to intervene, and Gärtner used pepper spray. One bystander got injured and had to be treated in the hospital for eye injuries.3 How did it all happen? How did a seemingly small frustration get out of control and turn into such an ugly story? What on earth had happened to Gärtner? Chinese social media soon connected this incident with Daimler’s corporate culture and asked people to boycott Mercedes cars. The story went viral and was picked up by mainstream news outlets around the world. Against general upward market trends, Daimler’s share price weakened. What options did Daimler have to remedy the situation?

Gärtner’s Background Until that Sunday morning in November 2016, everything was going perfectly fine for Gärtner. His career was on a smooth and rather steep trajectory; his life was full of achievements.

He received his Master of Business Administration degree with a focus on exports, sales, and marketing from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (Germany), followed by a Doctor of Philosophy degree in economics from the same university in 1997. Besides his native German, he spoke English, Spanish, and Turkish.4 Gärtner’s employer, Daimler’s business unit Mercedes-Benz Cars in Germany, entrusted him with increasing responsibilities.

From 2004 to 2010, he was a senior manager with the Mercedes-

Benz Guard division. In this role, he was responsible for product management and worldwide sales, marketing, and service operations for armoured cars at headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.