General Electric (GE) is an iconic American company. GE is one of the most recognizable businesses around the world. It’s one the largest business conglomerates in the world, making products ranging from kitchen appliances to aircraft engine. “GE was founded in 1892 with the merger of the Edison Electric Company and the Thomson-Houston Company. From its origins, GE was a broadly diversified company, with early businesses including lighting, power transformers and a wide variety of electrical components for industrial, commercial and residential use” (Ocasio, Joseph, 2008). General Electric had been celebrated as one of the most efficiently managed corporation around the world. “In 2001, GE was named Fortune’s “Most Admired Company” for the fifth year in a row and was named The World’s Most Respected Company by the Financial Times for the fourth time” (Cushman, King, & Smith, 2003, page 5). General Electric performance was at some point almost without antecedent.
General Electric had been the darling of Wall Street investors for decades due to its stock performance year after year. At times, it seemed like that General Electric could do no wrong. However, in recent years, General Electric has been going through a painful decline that has threaten the existence of the company.
General Electric faces three major obstacles. Firstly, General Electric has a level of debt that is unsustainable resulting from last decade’s subprime mortgage debacle.
In the early 1990, General Electric took advantage of consumer easy access to credit to leverage their production capacity and increase their profit margin exponentially for the decades that had followed. Thanks to the deregulation of the financial service industry in 1990, General Electric entered the lucrative consumer finance credit including the mortgage market. That was an aggressive and risky move for even a company as big as GE.
Secondly, despite some recent efforts to reduce costs, General Electric’s costs average is higher than that of its competitors. General was one of the first if not the first multinational cooperation. General Electric was global before globalization has become ubiquitous but being global does not come cheap. It has its downside risk.
Thirdly, General Electric has a management succession legacy since the retirement of the legendary Jack Welsh, who was one of the most celebrated CEO in American business history and who managed GE for twenty years, that continues to hunt it.
General Electric will eventually return to its roots, which is effective and strategic management, but it will not happen without a radical shift in the company strategic planning.
References
Cushman, D. P., King, S. S., & Smith, T. J. (2003). Communication best practices at dell, General Electric, Microsoft, and Monsanto. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.contentproxy.pho…
GE Warns of Another Year of Falling Profits. (2020, March 14). Retrieved May 21, 2020, from https://finance.yahoo.com/m/d829f007-a387-3643-847…
Mounier-Kuhn, P. (2014). FROM GENERAL ELECTRIC TO BULL: A CASE OF MANAGERIAL KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER (1956-1970). Entreprises Et Histoire, (75), 42-56,4,140-141. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=https://searc…
Ocasio, W., & Joseph, J. (2008). Rise and fall–or transformation? The evolution of strategic planning at the General Electric Company, 1940-2006. Long Range Planning., 41(3).
Research Paper Instructions
This paper will require you to apply organizational theories, concepts, and perspectives from the module readings to your approved organization
Guidelines
Define your approved organization as you wish in terms of the whole or of the part that is most relevant. In 1-2 pages, provide a description of two to three problems identified. Your description need not be elaborate, but should provide enough information to enable someone unfamiliar with the organizational issues to understand the essentials. This portion should be just the facts, a description, not an analysis of the key events. If using a personal workplace, feel free to disguise names of people and the organization if you desire.
After you have set the foundation, apply theories learned from the course to analyze your chosen organization and its identified problems. Utilizing the three perspectives, ensure clarity is evident on areas of which system, organizational environment, and changes as part of your analysis.
Lastly, provide a personal perspective that discusses what you would implement to address the problems to move the organization forward as part of the evolving changes for organizations today.
Sample Solution
