The General Principles of Corporate Social Responsibility That Should Be Exercised by the Managers

I believe that Welch only fulfilled one portion of his corporate social responsibility duty. Financial results for GE show that Welch was very effective in directing a highly profitable company, but he did so at the expense of many of the employees of the business. Over the years, employees were assigned a ranking system comprised of 1’s, 2’s, and 3’s. Each year, the bottom ten percent of workers (ranked 3’s) were relieved of their duties at the company. In a few

Because corporations are established to profit and shareholders invest money with expectations of a greater return, managers cannot be given a directive to be “socially responsible” without providing specific criteria of checks and balances to which needs to adhere. Therefore, it is imperative to the success of a corporation for managers to not act solely but rather to act within the policies of the shareholders.

Jack Welch joined General Electric (GE) at age of 24 and he worked all the way up until becoming CEO at the age of 45. He has been able to turn GE into one of the most successful enterprises worldwide. In order to do that, he adopted a really different approach from the other business leaders; indeed, he focused on the development of human abilities; this process allowed him to drive a change through a big organization as GE (Francis, 2014). First of all, he believes that the key element to

Many believe that business entities should have an ethical duty to be socially responsible, to work towards increasing its positive effects on society while decreasing its negative effects. Many organizations look for opportunities to be socially responsible while also creating shareholder wealth.

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?

In 2001, the Multinational Monitor released over 40 documented grievances against GE, just before CEO Jack Welch’s Retirement (The Case Against GE). Some of these grievances date back to things GE had done since the 1940s, including nuclear testing on people in the United States. However, some are as

Jack Welch did make GE the most valuable company in the world. He was described as “the most important and influential business leaders of the 20th Century” by some Wall Street analyst. Nevertheless, Jack Welch as the CEO did not fulfill the duty of social responsibility. He did not avoid harm or protect societal assets.

In the case, “The Jack Welch Era at General Electric”, indicate that during the period of Jack Welch was a CEO at General Electric from 1981 to 2001, the company became remarkable profit. Earnings per share rose from $.46 in 1981 to $1.07 in 2001. GE is a company which has a very long history, and Jack Welch was the first working-class person that finally became the famous manager in GE history. He changed and built lots of rules to fulfill his ambition to make the company more wealthy such as eliminated workers, changed GE’s culture by promoting the notion of a “boundary less” organization, used identical 20-70-20 percent curve to manage managers, and reshaped GE stocks. The story of the Welch years has the elements of legend, however,

However, analysts felt that the Welch Era was not without flaws. GE had suffered major setbacks, in the form of criminal indictments relating to military contracts and battles with environmental groups. GE was blamed for the Poly-Chlorinated Biphenyls (PCB)3 contamination in the Hudson River. In early 2001, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency endorsed a $460 million dredging plan to clean the river.

General Electric is a well-known company in many regions of the world, but what people aren’t particularly aware of are the steps that General Electric has taken to get to where it is at today. When I think of General Electric the first thing that comes to mind is the role that the company plays in the production of household appliances, but General Electric is a much bigger contributor to people’s lives than is most people realize. People aren’t familiar with the internal business decisions that General Electric makes to ensure that the company continues to grow and run as smoothly as possible, allowing the company to continue to provide people with the services that they have grown to recognize as being a trademark of General Electric.

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

Crane, A. and Matten, D. (2010) ‘Corporate social responsibility’, (3rd edition) Business Ethics. Oxford: Oxford university press, pp.51-60

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

GE is ranked by Forbes, Fortune 500, and many other companies as one of the most admired companies in