...1 GE’s Two Decade Transformation Team Globalization Case Analysis GE’s Two Decade Transformation: Jack Welch’s Leadership Yasmine Abdo Al-Kouraishi Muhammad Howard Steven D. Johns Kenneth V. Oliver Kimberly N. Lomax AMBA 670 Managing Strategy in the Global Workplace July 25, 2012 2 GE’s Two Decade Transformation Executive Summary Team Globalization has conducted an in depth analysis on General Electric's (GE) two decade transformation achieved by the company’s former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jack Welch. This report consists of a reflective examination performed by the team, incorporating perspective gained through professional experience and key concepts gleaned from selected course reading selections. As CEO of GE, Jack Welch's management skills became legendary, with little tolerance for bureaucracy and archaic business processes. Acquiring new businesses and ensuring that each business unit under the GE umbrella was one of the best in its field was a primary concern for Mr. Welch. Under his guidance, the company expanded dramatically from 1981 to 2001 (GE, 2012). The culture of innovation and learning, which included incorporation of measures related to new product development, technological leadership, and rates of improvement, aided Welch and the company in defying the critics as the company continued to profit. 3 GE’s Two Decade Transformation Introduction Surviving in today’s challenging business environment necessitates innovative thinking in...
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...1 GE’s Two Decade Transformation Team Globalization Case Analysis GE’s Two Decade Transformation: Jack Welch’s Leadership Yasmine Abdo Al-Kouraishi Muhammad Howard Steven D. Johns Kenneth V. Oliver Kimberly N. Lomax AMBA 670 Managing Strategy in the Global Workplace July 25, 2012 2 GE’s Two Decade Transformation Executive Summary Team Globalization has conducted an in depth analysis on General Electric's (GE) two decade transformation achieved by the company’s former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jack Welch. This report consists of a reflective examination performed by the team, incorporating perspective gained through professional experience and key concepts gleaned from selected course reading selections. As CEO of GE, Jack Welch's management skills became legendary, with little tolerance for bureaucracy and archaic business processes. Acquiring new businesses and ensuring that each business unit under the GE umbrella was one of the best in its field was a primary concern for Mr. Welch. Under his guidance, the company expanded dramatically from 1981 to 2001 (GE, 2012). The culture of innovation and learning, which included incorporation of measures related to new product development, technological leadership, and rates of improvement, aided Welch and the company in defying the critics as the company continued to profit. 3 GE’s Two Decade Transformation Introduction Surviving in today’s challenging business environment necessitates...
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...9-399-150 REV: MAY 3, 2005 CHRISTOPHER A. BARTLETT MEG WOZNY GE's Two-Decade Transformation: Jack Welch's Leadership On September 7, 2001, Jack Welch stepped down as CEO of General Electric. The sense of pride he felt about the company's performance during the previous two decades seemed justified judging by the many accolades GE was receiving. For the third consecutive year, it had not only been named Fortune's "Most Admired Company in the United States," but also Financial Times' "Most Admired Company in the World." And, on the eve of his retirement, Fortune had named Welch "Manager of the Century" in recognition of his personal contribution to GE's outstanding 20 year record. Yet while the mood at GE's 2001 annual meeting had clearly been upbeat, some shareholders wondered whether anyone could sustain the blistering pace of change and growth characteristic of the Welch era. And specifically, many worried if any successor could generate the 23% per annum total shareholder return Welch had delivered in his two decades leading GE. It would be a tough act to follow. (See Exhibit 1 for financial summary of Welch’s era at GE.) The GE Heritage Founded in 1878 by Thomas Edison, General Electric grew from its early focus on the generation, distribution, and use of electric power to become, a hundred years later, one of the world’s leading diversified industrial companies. A century later, in addition to its core businesses in power generation, household appliances, and lighting...
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...9-399-150 REV: MAY 3, 2005 CHRISTOPHER A. BARTLETT MEG WOZNY GE's Two-Decade Transformation: Jack Welch's Leadership On September 7, 2001, Jack Welch stepped down as CEO of General Electric. The sense of pride he felt about the company's performance during the previous two decades seemed justified judging by the many accolades GE was receiving. For the third consecutive year, it had not only been named Fortune's "Most Admired Company in the United States," but also Financial Times' "Most Admired Company in the World." And, on the eve of his retirement, Fortune had named Welch "Manager of the Century" in recognition of his personal contribution to GE's outstanding 20 year record. Yet while the mood at GE's 2001 annual meeting had clearly been upbeat, some shareholders wondered whether anyone could sustain the blistering pace of change and growth characteristic of the Welch era. And specifically, many worried if any successor could generate the 23% per annum total shareholder return Welch had delivered in his two decades leading GE. It would be a tough act to follow. (See Exhibit 1 for financial summary of Welch’s era at GE.) The GE Heritage Founded in 1878 by Thomas Edison, General Electric grew from its early focus on the generation, distribution, and use of electric power to become, a hundred years later, one of the world’s leading diversified industrial companies. A century later, in addition to its core businesses in power generation, household appliances...
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...GE's Sustainability Assessment Week 2 Assignment | AbstractAn analysis of GE's sustainability efforts and missteps, from the years in which the company was under the leadership of Jack Welch to ongoing activities today. Abdul H Shakur DeVry University – March 2016 Sustainability Operations Professor: Brad Bergman | GE's Sustainability Assessment Week 2 Assignment | AbstractAn analysis of GE's sustainability efforts and missteps, from the years in which the company was under the leadership of Jack Welch to ongoing activities today. Abdul H Shakur DeVry University – March 2016 Sustainability Operations Professor: Brad Bergman | GE's Sustainability Assessment Introduction General Electric, (GE) the 1892 brain child, and merger of two companies Thomson-Houston Electric and Edison General Electric. Early on the main products included light bulbs, motors, toasters, elevators, and other appliances. From the humble beginnings the General Electric Company (GE) has grown into a monolith. The company now manufactures products such as engines for airplanes, petroleum production equipment, power and nuclear generators. Also GE is a common household name and has long been one of the top providers of household appliances. GE is reponsible for producing some of the greatest innovations that the world has known. GE, while famous for big innovation is also recognized...
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...GE’s Two-decade Transformation: Jack Welch’s Leadership « We Bring Good Things To Life ». This is how General Electric (GE) defined its activity, in general terms, between 1979 and 2003. During this period, and more precisely from 1981 to 2001, Jack Welch was the company’s CEO. This previous advertising slogan, designed by the advertising firm BBDO, largely contributed to GE corporate identity; indeed, according to Baer Performance Marketing, “When you hear the name General Electric, […] “We Bring Good Things to Life” is also brought to mind” (baerpm.com). Furthermore, it didn’t have for only purpose to promote the firm’s products and services, but it also emphasized their high quality, and as a result, it highlighted GE’s will to improve consumers’ lives. In other words, the slogan had more than communication purposes: it would lead the entire process of value creation; it summed GE’s strategy up. General Electric was created by a merge between two electricity-related companies – Edison General Electric Company and Thomson-Houston Electric Company, in 1892, from Thomas Edison and Charles Coffin initiative. Widely considered as one of the most successful corporations of the 20th century, recognized by Fortune to be the “Most Admired Company in the United States” and named Financial Times’ “Most Admired Company in the World” in 2001, the firm has dramatically grown from a merge between two electricity enterprises to an American multinational conglomerate corporation...
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...KATZ GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Syllabus STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT (BSPP 2409) Instructor: Dr. John C. Camillus Donald R. Beall Professor of Strategic Management 338 Mervis Hall Phone: 412/648-1599 Fax: 412/383-7226 E-mail: camillus@katz.pitt.edu Administrative Assistant: Ms. Janice M. Trygar 341 Mervis Hall Phone: 412/648-1529 Fax: 412/648-1693 E-mail: jmtrygar@katz.pitt.edu Office Hours: 1) Mondays 11:00 am to 12:00 noon 2) Wednesdays 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm 3) By appointment. Course Description: “Strategy,” in the context of management, focuses on creating a harmonious relationship between organizations and their environments. Successful strategy matches an organization’s resources and capabilities with the opportunities that arise in its external environment and, in so doing, creates value for customers, shareholders and other stakeholders, as well as an advantage over the competition. This Strategic Management course offers a set of perspectives, concepts and tools for analyzing and understanding the general management task of formulating and implementing competitive strategies. Frameworks – derived primarily from industrial organization economics and the behavioral sciences – that relate to strategy formulation, the design of management systems, and motivating performance will provide the bases for analyzing and responding to organizational, industry, national and international contexts. The primary...
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...Entrepreneurial School of Thought This school sees strategy formation as a visionary process and is fell under the descriptive school of strategic management. The chief architect of the strategy is the CEO of a company. This school took formal leadership seriously and CEO is responsible for strategy formulation. It stressed on mental state and processes such as instinctive knowledge, belief, wisdom, experience and insight of a single leader. The leader should be visionary in formulating strategy. The entrepreneurial school promotes strategy as a process which has a clear image and sense of direction which can be termed as a vision. Entrepreneurial strategy often occurs in startup companies and organizations in trouble and needing a turnaround. For any organization to sustain success it must engage in some form of entrepreneurial activity in order to effectively compete in the marketplace and continue to increase stakeholder value. In this school the organization becomes responsive to only one person, the CEO and vision is the central concept of this school. Vision is the mental representation of a leader and it outlines what the organization wants to be or how it wants the world in which it operates to be. It is a long term view and concentrates on the future. It can be emotive and source of inspiration. It serves as a guiding idea and often tends to be a kind of image than a fully clear plan. Visions are often flexible so that the leaders can change them as they like. Visionary...
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...Corporate Strategy Analysis: General Electric Co. (1981–present) Stanislav Bucifal Australian National University July 2009 Corporate Strategy Analysis: General Electric Co. (1981–present) Stanislav Bucifal Introduction The General Electric Company (GE) is widely regarded as one of the world’s most successful corporations of the 20th century. This paper aims to critically analyse the corporate strategy of GE during the period from 1981 to present under the leadership of two very different but equally influential CEOs—Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt. The essay is organised in four sections. The first section describes GE’s corporate strategy from 1981 to 2001 with Jack Welch as CEO, followed immediately by a critical analysis of Welch’s strategic approach in the second section. The third section then describes GE’s corporate strategy from 2001 to present with Jeff Immelt as CEO, followed again by a critical analysis of Immelt’s strategic approach in section four. 1. The Jack Welch period (1981–2001) When Jack Welch took up his post as GE’s CEO in 1981 he embarked on a radical transformation of GE’s strategy, ushering in a new era of performance management and internal efficiency. Welch’s profit guidance aimed for earnings growth of 1.5 times to double of the GDP growth rate and his management philosophy found its articulation in GE’s slogan—Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence (GE 1995). These values would reflect not only in the organisation’s systems and processes...
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...Publishing 2009 Corporate Strategy Analysis: General Electric Co. (1981–2008) – A Case Study Stanislav Bucifal Introduction The General Electric Company (GE) is widely regarded as one of the world’s most successful corporations of the 20th century. This paper aims to analyse critically the corporate strategy of GE during the period from 1981 to 2008 under the leadership of two very different but equally influential CEOs—Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt. The paper is organised in four sections. The first section describes GE’s corporate strategy from 1981 to 2001 with Jack Welch as CEO, followed immediately by a critical analysis of Welch’s strategic approach in the second section. The third section then describes GE’s corporate strategy from 2001 to 2008 with Jeff Immelt as CEO, followed again by a critical analysis of Immelt’s strategic approach in section four. Keywords: General Electric, Corporate strategy, Leadership, CEOs. 1. The Jack Welch Period (1981–2001) When Jack Welch took up his post as GE’s CEO in 1981 he embarked on a radical transformation of GE’s strategy, ushering in a new era of performance management and internal efficiency. Welch’s profit guidance aimed for earnings growth of 1.5 times to double of the GDP growth rate and his management philosophy found its articulation in GE’s slogan—Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence (GE 1995). These values would reflect not only in the organisation’s systems and processes but also in GE’s products and services through their...
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...Corporate Strategy Analysis: General Electric Co. (1981–present) Stanislav Bucifal Australian National University July 2009 Corporate Strategy Analysis: General Electric Co. (1981–present) Stanislav Bucifal Introduction The General Electric Company (GE) is widely regarded as one of the world’s most successful corporations of the 20th century. This paper aims to critically analyse the corporate strategy of GE during the period from 1981 to present under the leadership of two very different but equally influential CEOs—Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt. The essay is organised in four sections. The first section describes GE’s corporate strategy from 1981 to 2001 with Jack Welch as CEO, followed immediately by a critical analysis of Welch’s strategic approach in the second section. The third section then describes GE’s corporate strategy from 2001 to present with Jeff Immelt as CEO, followed again by a critical analysis of Immelt’s strategic approach in section four. 1. The Jack Welch period (1981–2001) When Jack Welch took up his post as GE’s CEO in 1981 he embarked on a radical transformation of GE’s strategy, ushering in a new era of performance management and internal efficiency. Welch’s profit guidance aimed for earnings growth of 1.5 times to double of the GDP growth rate and his management philosophy found its articulation in GE’s slogan—Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence (GE 1995). These values would reflect not only in the organisation’s systems...
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...rkabalis@stern.nyu.edu Office Hours: 11:30 AM– 1:00 PM on class days and by appointment Class Hrs: Wed 1:30-4:20 PM on Jan 27; Feb 3, 10, 17, 24; Mar 3, 10, 24, 31; Apr 7, 14, 21, 28. Due Dates Team Case Write-up: 2/24. Final Team Project : 4/28. Indiv Take Home Final: 5/2. ____________________________________________________________ _________________ Course Overview Welcome aboard! What do leaders do? What happens inside organizations? And how do these relate to each other? In a nutshell, that’s the stuff this course is made of. Business organizations of all types face chronic management problems that pose significant challenges to them. These problems include the difficulty of designing organizations capable of coping with highly dynamic business environments, the challenge of developing strategies and structures for hypercompetitive conditions, the greater complexity of managing global enterprises, the difficult task of shaping a corporate culture, managing politics and conflict between individuals and organizational units, motivating employees who are more mobile than ever, designing attractive incentive systems, managing and harnessing intellectual capital, and so on. Such challenges and how the top leadership can deal with them are the subject of this course. The course has two major components. The first is “macro” in nature. It focuses on organizational level issues and problems, such as how an organization should be designed (e.g., centralized or decentralized), what...
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...Jeremy Daniel Managing Change May 2, 2008 Case Write-Up Final – GE’s Two-Decade Transformation: Jack Welsh’s Leadership 1.) How difficult a challenge did Welch face in 1981? How effectively did he deal with it? What major lesson can we learn from his “first stage” that should be incorporated into our general “planned change” framework? Jack Welch faced several difficult challenges when he came into office in 1981. One of his primary areas of concern had to be replacing the retiring CEO Reg Jones. Jones had had great success during his time at GE, particularly in terms of growth of strategic planning with the organization. He restructured the organizational levels of the company to handle the tremendous volume that his strategic planning process was producing. Many of these processes used within the business community as benchmarks to follow. The public perception of Reg Jones was also very high, as he had been recognized with “CEO of the Year” honors multiple times, as well as “CEO of the decade.” Welch had to be up to the task of replacing a man that many in the industry considered a legend. Another major challenge Welch faced that can’t be overlooked is the external environment when he took over as CEO. At the same time he was charged with the task of replacing his successful predecessor, Welch also had to deal with a U.S. economic recession. Additionally, there was an increasing amount of rivalry from global competition that compounded the problems being faced...
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...Jeremy Daniel Managing Change May 2, 2008 Case Write-Up Final – GE’s Two-Decade Transformation: Jack Welsh’s Leadership 1.) How difficult a challenge did Welch face in 1981? How effectively did he deal with it? What major lesson can we learn from his “first stage” that should be incorporated into our general “planned change” framework? Jack Welch faced several difficult challenges when he came into office in 1981. One of his primary areas of concern had to be replacing the retiring CEO Reg Jones. Jones had had great success during his time at GE, particularly in terms of growth of strategic planning with the organization. He restructured the organizational levels of the company to handle the tremendous volume that his strategic planning process was producing. Many of these processes used within the business community as benchmarks to follow. The public perception of Reg Jones was also very high, as he had been recognized with “CEO of the Year” honors multiple times, as well as “CEO of the decade.” Welch had to be up to the task of replacing a man that many in the industry considered a legend. Another major challenge Welch faced that can’t be overlooked is the external environment when he took over as CEO. At the same time he was charged with the task of replacing his successful predecessor, Welch also had to deal with a U.S. economic recession. Additionally, there was an increasing amount of rivalry from global competition that compounded the problems being faced...
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...Executive summary In this assignment I was able to use relevant leadership theories to critically analyse and evaluate the leadership of Jack Welch. I first provided a brief insight into Jack’s background, outlining what made John F. Welch into the man we know today as Jack Welch. Secondly, shed some light on the financial position and the culture of General Electric (GE) in the early 80’s when Jack assumed the mantle as its Chairman and CEO. Thirdly, I discussed his changing leadership styles over the years. Finally, I give my opinions on how I would have lead differently if I was faced with the same situations. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 5 2. Welch’s Background 5 3. The situation – GE before Jack Welch 7 4. Jack Welch the leader 7 5. Discussion – How I would lead differently 10 6. Conclusion 11 Reference List 12 1. Introduction Leadership is a complex concept and there are different ways of becoming a leader. Leadership is the process of influencing an organized group toward achieving its goals. (Hughes, Ginnett and Curphy, 2012). Leadership is about influencing and not dominating others, leadership occurs when other people happily accept the goals of as organization as their own (Hogan, 1994). Because the behavioural patterns of employees vary depending on their individual circumstances, it is important that leaders to develop an empathetic approach towards resolving the issues of employees. Leadership theorists associate this ability...
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