The Jack Welch Era At General Electric Case Study Examples

Jack Welch is an American business executive. He started a reconstruction of General Electric which later proved to be financially helpful for the company. He was the the Chief Executive Officer between 1981 and 2001. In his able leadership of the corporation, he showed a glimpse of fairness for the employees. Donations and grants from this corporation have over the years been of great help to children with some medical condition like autism. Globally, General Electric (GE) in collaboration with all the organs of the company seeks to roll out some wanting projects. Having pointed out all this, we can say that Jack Welch managed to fulfill the duties of corporate social responsibility during this tenure at the helm.
Welch made GE the most valuable company at the time in the world as the chief executive officer CEO. Under Jack Welch leadership, the environment was badly polluted most notably in the areas where the GE products were produced. Hudson River was heavily polluted with a larger amount of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that was channeled into it, reduced job opportunities across a number of American states, making contracts with some other employees from outside and various countries, an evaluation system that later proved defective all proved to be the failures of Welch. PCBs have been demonstrated to cause cancer as well as a variety of other adverse health effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous and endocrine system according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be defined as a doctrine that promotes an expanded social stewardship by various businesses and other entities. It is all about a corporation giving back to the society having helped it stay up in the market. It also suggests that corporations or organizations embrace responsibilities in line with a broader group of stakeholders in addition to their usual financial responsibilities to stockholders. Commitment to environmental sustainability projects, freely giving to programs in the society and efforts to inculcate a more diverse and safe workplace are some of the examples of CSR. Organizations have acknowledged that there is a need for transparency and openness regarding their social undertakings.
Alternatively, Welch demonstrated a narrower view of corporate social responsibility closer to Friedman’s view that the only social responsibility is to increase profits while obeying the law. Welch introduced periodic corporate initiatives which became known as GE’s Operating System and these major initiatives include: Boundaries Organization. Here, Welch had a believe that the key to transforming diversity into a comparative advantage was the merely a transfer of good practices and learning within the corporation.
In any organization, there are three groups of people that they need to be kept happy—customers, employees, and shareholders. It can be a real challenging at times trying to balance the desires and needs of all three especially when crucial and vital decisions need to be made. A couple of leaders tend to put their employees first, their customers second, and their shareholders third. It is a winning strategy that leads to a superior customer satisfaction ranking and financial triumph in an industry characterized by stiff competition. It can also be defined as the transparent business practices that are based on ethical values, compliance with legal requirements and respect for people, communities and the environment. There is a controversy that revolves around the roles of employees, stakeholders and shareholders. This debate is quite astonishing.
There is a question of who is more superior of the three organs, the one who owns the corporation and therefore has the ultimate control over the business and in this case the shareholders are the ones who posses those ownership rights. After all, they take virtually all the risk. The idea that people other than shareholders have a stake in the company is quite senseless unless you alter the rules of the system guaranteeing the shareholders that they will get their original investment back in case of collapse of the organization. In this case, the question of who is better placed to claim a company’s seniority has been answered.
According to some theories, company managers are regarded as agents of all stakeholders. They have two obligations namely; to ensure that the ethical rights of stakeholders are not infringed so as to balance the real interests of the stakeholders at the time of decision making the key objective being that of ensuring a balance in profit maximization Any company has its customers, stakeholders and employees as its major constituents. There are no doubt a many challenges that emerge as a result of ranking the shareholders above the employees and stakeholders. The three works as a pair so any attempt of giving more recognition to one of the three bodies will ultimately affect the performance of other stakeholders and the corporation as a whole negatively.
The cost of production entails the value incurred in the process of converting raw materials to finished goods. From the accounting point of view, salaries and wages paid to the employees are accounted for under the cost of production. There are a number of priorities in corporations, that is, strategic planning and performance management, employee engagement survey, customer service strategy and corporate reorganization. For General Electric, I don’t find any reason for rebalancing their priorities.