Organizational Behaviour: a Look at Ge

It is essential to have teamwork within a company. Companies who have embraced the concept of teamwork have reported increased performance in work production, problem solving and it has stimulated new growth. This group project approach has improved employee morale and increased input when managed correctly. The benefits of teamwork can make a positive effect in the company that incorporates this type of teamwork approach.

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

Executives refer to business as a team sport for a variety of reasons. First, many business organizational structures arrange departments either in cross specialty teams or task oriented teams based on operational design and expected outcomes. These teams are designed with members who are assigned roles that increase overall team productivity. The team members bring talents, knowledge and a skill set that uniquely contributes to collective intelligence and resourcefulness. Through collaboration and team work, Successful teams achieve synergy, or “exceeds the sum of each individual’s contribution”.

Many organizations today believe that the use of work teams will allow them to produce better products and provide better services, faster, and at lower costs. Using a work team approach can reinvigorate productivity and service provider motivation, and better position an organization to deal with a rapidly changing environment. However establishing effective work teams is not something that comes easy. Though, the benefits of effective work teams within an organization are very substantial, it takes alot of hard work and dedication on the part of management and team members to develop, implement and maintain effective work teams.

Jack Welch joined General Electric in 1971 where he created a new organization based on increased efficiency and less bureaucracy increasing the value of the organization during his term 4,000% (Bloom, 2013). His leadership led to the creation of GE Workout that consisted of a system of meetings or steps, a problem can be solved and decisions made rapidly, eliminating bureaucracy (Bloom, 2013). The five steps included Step 1: Problem identification, Step 2: Team development, Step 3: Town meeting, Step 4: Upper management decision, and Step 5: Sponsorship. As shown in Figure 1, Work-out was the

When Reg Jones retired and Jack Welch became GE’s CEO in 1981, the country was facing a major recession, with high inflation and unemployment rates, reminiscent of those 50 years earlier during the Great Depression. Thousands of businesses were failing, not only affected by the national economic conditions but also due to increased competition from other countries such as Japan. At the time, GE was highly structured, with numerous management layers and several macro businesses. The company followed very orthodox practices, with 43 different strategic

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

GE was a very successful organization under the immensely charismatic and influential Jack Welch. The period of 1981 to 2001 when he was the CEO saw the company increasing market share rapidly and grew exponentially. This period was a period of increasing environment changes and GE saw Jack Welch as the new CEO. He made a famous speech that the company is a fast growing company is a slow growing economy. We can judge from this that the economy of those days was a very stable one with not many changes in the task environment. There would then be reduced competition and reduced pressure due to changing environments.

GE provides evidence for the development of its employees and the innovation of its organisation. An example of this was GE originally started as an Electrical company which branched out to 11other industries such as financing and Engineering. Boddy (2014) diversity and development are a result of culture performance which managers need to maintain to create a productive environment within their own

The end result was a toolkit of key techniques and identification of core characteristics that made these companies successful. For example, process efficiency, customer satisfaction as their Key Performance Indicator (KPI), well-developed supplier relationships, and consistent innovation of high quality products and manufacturing efficiencies with little to none unused capacities were all discovered as “ingredients to success”. A new training program emerged which helped managers see the error of existing measurement practices. Managers were further trained to look at larger-scale opportunities for improvement, and broaden their vision of what success actually looked like. Welch continued to subtly injecting his ideas about globalizing business units within GE. He looked for opportunities within each business unit to not only increase success levels within United States markets, but to benchmark GE against competitors on the world stage. To prove his steadfastness, Welch hired Paolo Fresco, a proven negotiator, to head the International Operations position. GE took advantage of global economic downturns in countries like Mexico and Japan to increase their acquisitions, doubling revenue from international operations within the first five years. Welch dug even deeper into the fabric of GE with an initiative focused on locating and developing leadership at all levels of the company. GE employees were being developed, evaluated and

According to Bateman and Snell (2009), “Strategies developed around the cutting edge of technological advances create a competitive advantage; strategies that ignore or lag behind competitors’ technology lead to obsolescence and extinction” (p. 56). Using breakthrough technology is essential to General Electric’s success. The ground-breaking ideas of General Electric’s employees uses the advances in technology to improve existing products, create new products, and develop safe and efficient products in the future.

DESCRIPTION GE believes its ability to develop management talent is a core competency that represents a source of sustainable competitive advantage. This case traces the development of GE 's rich system of human resource policies and practices under five CEOs in the post-war era, showing how the development of talent is embedded into the company 's ongoing management responsibilities. It describes the development of a 25-year-old MBA named Jeff Immelt, who 18 years later is named as CEO of GE, arguably the biggest and most complex corporate leadership job in the world and how he frames his priorities for GE and implements them, pulling hard on the sophisticated human resource levers his predecessors

GE was entering a new generational era, one where technology is at the forefront of growth and adaptation. Immelt identified Technology as one of GE’s major drivers for future growth which was signaled by his expansion of GE’s R&D budgets. He shifted the importance of Technology within GE by focusing on the R&D projects that offered large scale market potential, reffered to as “Imagination breakthroughs”.

The GE case is an example of how a company can use its weaknesses and opportunities to further its progress. The company saw the potential of the internet in changing businesses. Moreover, for a change to be effective and be felt across the organization, it must start from the top as Jack Welch showed by taking typing classes. Further, companies should embrace technology involve their clients whenever planning to change. This was seen when GE decided to launch the icenter to connect with customers on its products and services. GE’s strategy, like the other companies, chose to change its way of doing business by embracing the power of the internet and seeking to be a leader in the field (Laudon & Laudon, 2014).

The pattern of management development at GE reflects the pattern suggested by management theory. Management theories are a guide that managers use to efficiently and effectively manage an organization (Ricky,32). In order to create and sustain competitive advantage GE has used strategic management to stay ahead of the game. GE made decisions based on what’s best for the whole organization and placed an importance on including multiple stakeholders in the decision making process. GE implemented a technique called “Blue Books” which governed a manager’s every move (Ricky,54). Blue books were similar to the theory of administrative management in which theorists such as Fayol, Weber, and Barnard focused on management processes and principles of the entire organization (Ricky,40). GE also implemented a pension and profit sharing plan that came from the human relations movement. Elton mayo and his group of researchers conducted a series of experiments on worker productivity and found a link between employee satisfaction and workplace productivity. Lastly, GE used management science to create more customer value at a lower risk which came from the quantitative management perspective (Ricky,55).