Ge Transformation

Analyzing GE’s corporate-level strategy from 2001 – present with Jeff Immelt as CEO, GE focuses on the growth and development platforms. Technology is the key driving force for GE’s future and growth. Advancements in industries such as energy, health and aviation fueled demand for cleaner and more efficient energy production. GE identified new markets with potential high-growth that offered attractive returns through strategic mergers and acquisitions. As CEO, Jeff Immelt established a process for identifying projects that offered attractive growth potential which were then nurtured and treated as special projects or initiatives that were not subject to strict budget constraints. Immelt introduced GE’s three strategic imperatives as: (1) sustaining its strong business model, (2) strengthening the business portfolio, and (3) driving its growth initiatives. www.ge.com

Did GE in the Welch era fulfill its social responsibility duty? Could it have done better? What should it have done?

Achievement Motivation: Leaders have a relatively high desire for achievement. The need for achievement is an important motive among effective leaders. Leading achievers obtain satisfaction from successfully completing demanding tasks, attaining higher standards, and augment better ways of doing things. They are intrinsically motivated to achieve. For instance, Jack Welch of General Electric had high need for achievement. When he was appointed CEO of GE in 1981, US economy was in recession and high unemployment rates. He set up a plan to bring about changes that would radically restructure the company over the next five years, his first move was for each business under GE to become #1 or #2 competitor in its industry or to shut down. Eventually in times of recession, it was difficult to become #1 or #2 and they shut down many business units. Such as central air-conditioning, housewares, coal mining. GE freed up over $11 billion of capital by selling off more than 200 businesses. Meanwhile, the company made over 370 acquisitions, investing more than $21billion in major purchases as Westinghouse’s lighting business, employers reinsurance, RCA, kidder Peabody.

Q : 2 Is Immelt betting on the right things to drive growth in GE ? Can he hope to change a company whose growth was driven by acquisitions and productivity improvement into an organic growth company dependent on innovation, entrepreneurship and risk taking particularly in such a large complex performance driven corporation?

I appreciate you adding more historical information throughout your post. I find that both Jack Welch and Dennis Hightower were at the right place at the right time and they ultimately were able to successfully implement the needed change for their respected companies. In today’s business world and taking consideration of the growth of globalization, leaders and organization should recognize that change is continuous. Jick & Peiperl (2011) expands on this issue by stating:

This report’s objective is to provide analysis of the leadership challenge that General Electric (GE) is currently facing, and to recommend solutions. The primary problem is determining what kind of candidate is required to replace retiring CEO Jack Welch. This has left GE to question how much does the company want to change policy over the previous era, and where does the company want to be in future?

At the beginning of the 1980s General Electric, the big USA electronics company determined a goal of increasing its market share. This aim was achieved by acquiring Radio Corporation of America and advanced satellites divisions and disposing of its consumer electronics divisions. This was General Electric’s effective strategic planning that helped to increase the annual income. These are the GE strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that still form the basis of strategic planning. The developed GE culture is its strength as well as human resources. The competition is great that is why the competitive advantage is the strength too. Technology is an essential part of any business and its usage presents great opportunities to GE Company.

GE's strategic thrusts are those parts of the strategy that allowed the company to deal with changes more effectively. This meant that there was a focus on a number of areas in achieving these objectives to include: transforming the culture, selling off unprofitable business, working on developing effective leadership and focusing on businesses that can diversify profit margins. The combination of these different elements is important, because they help to give the company direction and focus. In many ways, one could argue that this is what made GE one of the most respected firms prior to Jack Welch's departure. ("GE," 2012) (Bartlett, 2005) (Welch, 2007)

Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric (GE) for 20 years from 1981 to 2001. Jack transformed GE, taking a solidly profitable manufacturing company and turning it into an exceptionally profitable conglomerate dominated by service business. As such a big company who was running businesses for decades, GE has a lot of social responsibilities. Corporate social responsibility is the duty of a corporation to create wealth in ways that avoid harm to, protect, or enhance societal assets. I will analysis the social responsibilities of GE from the following aspects.

Widely regarded as a leading global corporation in the 20th century with operations in over a hundred and seventy countries and over three hundred thousand workers, General Electric remains an icon in best management practices. With its operations in power, appliances, energy management, aviation, oil & gas, and transportation among others is ranked as among the top leading firms in the US. It is also a global leader in the digital industry with interests in transforming needs into responsive, connected and predictive solutions. With its vast operations, GE is involved in innovation, product development, and funding startups among others (Hydle and Karl 261).

Analysis - GE has likely been so successful over the years because of its ability to foresee major trends and capitalize upon them. In the 1960s, for instance, GE was one of the eight major computer companies. Even recently, since 1986, GE has continued to acquire several organizations; portions of NBC, wind manufacturing, universe pictures, aerospace industries, international firms, software and hardware manufacturing, even oil companies abroad. The company culture describes itself as not one company, but many each unit a vast and complex enterprise in and of itself, with a corporate

Welch also wanted to make certain that they maintained their best employees. He asked top executives to identify future leaders, outline planned training and development plans, and detailed succession plans on all key jobs. He didn’t like the reward system of insignificant salary increases year after year. Instead, stock options became the primary component of management’s compensation.

Jack Welch is among the celebrated chief executive officers globally. He was the manager of the General Electric Co. Welch always appears in the list of the best, the smartest, the toughest bosses whole of the America. He has changed the company’s bureaucracy in terms of planning and systems. The paper will discuss Jack Welch as one of the most prominent industry leaders. He and his colleagues have been instrumental in turning around a large company. Additionally, the paper will examine the condition of General Electric Co. when Welch took over. Furthermore, the paper will address the transformation of the Company since then. More importantly, the paper will investigate the strategy that was used to

Jack Welch’s vision of what GE was possible of gave the company a vision for twenty years while he was the CEO and chairman. He states, “leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.” (Winning, pg 67) He not only allowed for employees to stretch, but demanded it. In teaching workers to stretch Welch knew that workers “may fail. In fact, they probably will fail. But stretching, and stretching the business, is going to improve performance results.” (Jack Welch on Leadership, pg 105) He also states that “only by setting the performance bar high did it become possible to discover people’s capabilities.” Jack Welch’s emphasis on candor and breaking the bureaucracy of modern business separated him from his contemporaries. He excited others of the possibility of being the biggest and best company in the world and rewarding his best employees that shared the values of GE. According to FORTUNE Editorial Director Geoffrey Colvin In "The Ultimate Manager, Welch leads the annals of management history not for anticipating the new world's changes ahead, but for acting on them: "His great achievement is that having seen it, he faced up to the huge, painful changes it demanded, and made them faster and more emphatically than anyone else in business. He led managers into this new world, which we still inhabit, and just as important, he showed business

This report talks about the successful strategies adopted by GE that was accountable for its success. It will start by answering the question the importance of studying GE recent globalization strategies and practices, and then, by giving a quick background of the company globalization process evolution. After that, the report will demonstrate a close analysis to 4 main strategies of the company. Finally a conclusion will be given based upon the current challenges and future perspective.