Ge's_Marketing_and_Leadership

GE’s Management and Leaders General Electrics is a successful internationally operating organization acclaimed not only as the most admired company but also the most respected company in the world (Grant, 2005). The global popularity of the company pushed the company up as one of the top multi billion dollars company producing and supplying highly recognized lines of product brands throughout the world. The success of the company has been attributed to its capability to cultivate efficient and healthy organizational through effective management and leadership. The successful operations of any organization like General require management and leadership, which play as key determinants in the success or failure of the business. The process of management include four functions which include planning, organizing, leading and controlling applying different strategies to accomplish the organizational objective or goals. The General Electrics has been known for its efficiency in maintaining an effective organizational structure lined up with the best people contributing to the success of the company. The company has been bound with a solid foundation of management and leadership determined to develop strategies in the practices of the human resources practices contributing to accomplish one of the company priorities to set quality and satisfactory standard customer services. General Electrics has been successful in its strategic efforts in keeping an updated organizational structure attributed as a major contributor in the success attained by the company. As a globally-operating giant company, the overall control of the General Electrics is on the palms of the Corporate Executive Officer (CEO) with lines of successful corporate staffing working hand in hand in the management of the organized segments of the company. The management of the company has been known for its efficiency since the commencement of the operation but the successful management of the company was made as one of the best with the leadership initiative of Jack Welch who took the office as the CEO in 1981-2002 (Grant, 2005). The company management before Welch may have been successful yet Welch recognized the poor structure stuck with the traditional style based on a rigid hierarchy. The changing business environment highly perceived by Jack led him to take initiative in changing the organizational bureaucratic management into a style he believed would be competitively compelling with the revolutionary fast progression and increasingly customer-focused environments cultivated as the new trends in business operations. Welch was not only instrumental in restructuring the organizational management but the leadership style initiated was a significant contributor in the phenomenal success of the company. Welch contributed in the improvement of the style of motivating, directing and guiding the people involved in the organizational operations. Leadership has great significance in managerial practice and that has been highly emphasized in General Electrics. Theoretically effective leaders are known to be individuals with great capabilities in supporting, motivating, and influencing the employees of the organization towards achieving the high objectives set by the organization. Since the General Electrics was under the leadership of Welch, the company realized the potentials of its employees as the organizational competitive weapons. The concept has since then adapted the idea of the advantages of cultivating an organization with people with diverse knowledge, skills, ideas, and talents (Grant, 2005). With Jack Welch’s leadership, the General Electrics went through major restructuring and reorganization, which led to the phasing out of the multi-layered management as well as the multiple positions in the administration. The restructuring and reorganization also disbanded the traditional sectors, which were replaced by designating leaders in the company businesses. The changes that have since adapted by the company include modification of leadership functions. The hierarchical application of the reporting system was phased out as the leaders were empowered to report directly to the company CEO. The expansion of the intensity of the CEO duties and responsibilities led to the creation of Corporate Executive Council as an addition to the organization which allowed the company to create a forum for the organizational leaders such as the chiefs and the senior officers of the company. Since then, the organization has followed a thinly layered leadership style incapacitating the operating units to become major participants in the decision-making in the organizational operations (Grant, 2005). The company since then has been operating with moderated number of upper levels employees particularly in the sectoral administration and the corporate headquarters. Generally, General Electrics has been maintaining the applicability of the ideals to execute leadership in the company in an effective way of influencing or using power to draw the best out of the company leaders and all employees through application of practices and standards based on values and principles which the company believes will led the company to maintain its position as one of the top company. General Electrics has been focussed on cultivating leaders and managers with capabilities to support, influence and motivate all its employees by setting good examples and establishing open communication encouraging the employees to be actively involved in the decision- making processes in the organization. The company believes that the importance given to the employees is not only a good motivator but plays significant roles in boosting the morale of every employees of the organization. The company leadership has also placed high emphasis on dealing with the company vision and maintaining the accomplishment of the company mission effectively. General Electrics has not missed on appointing well experienced and good leaders based on the adapted concept that such kind of leaders will be instrumental in helping the members of the organization to collect their energies towards accomplishment of common organizational goals (McKenna, 2000). The company has been keen in appointing highly refined managers fully manager equipped to run the globally-operating company businesses. The restructuring of the business structure initiated by Welch was since then followed by his predecessors with abilities to seize strategic opportunities with managerial skills in running decentralized organizations. Since General Electrics has entered to a global-level sphere of business competition, the company has since then cultivating managers fully aware of the global issues and highly sensitive to diversity issues skilful and competent in building communities and interpersonal relations. The main key to the success of General Electrics was attributed to its healthy organizational culture (Grant, 2005). The cultivation of a strong culture has been attributed to the efficiency of the company leaders and managers in playing their roles. The leaders and managers of the company have been effectively contributing their capabilities on cultivating employees to grow and work hand in hand. The strategy has been instrumental in the development of a strong organizational culture which helped General Electrics to climb on top of the business ladders during its many years of operation. The leaders and managers of he company have unfailingly meet the needs of the members which greatly contributed in the establishing a solid unity among the company units operating globally. The unity maintained in the company with the good leadership and management has become one of the significant assets of the company which has significantly contributed it its successful global operations. The company leaders and managers have been successful in maintaining the good reputation of General Electrics as highly attractive company worth working with. The good impression drawn by the company has contributed to easy finding of workers that has been helping the company to realize its vision to maintain a company running with never ending creation of innovative ideas that would be brought altogether to life (Grant, 2005). So far, the managers and leaders of General Electrics have demonstrated great success in building a company culture far different from any ordinary organizational culture. The high performance culture maintained by the company has never failed to aim for maintaining a business with superior quality best demonstrated by the financial stability of the organization throughout its operation for many decades (Grant, 2005). The progressive growth of the profitability of the company has been witnessed globally through monitoring of the records of the company throughout the phases of the cycle of its economy. The phenomenal success of the company gaining the credits for maintaining triple ratings for forty four consecutive business years (Grant, 2005) have been in way attributed to the strong culture of the company as a net outcome of efficient roles played by the company leaders and managers. The entrance of the company in globalization has led to initiatives of establishing trends in management which helped in effective operation across borders without affecting the strong culture of the company. Just like any other global companies, General Electrics also faced challenges in management of the company operations and its people in different countries. However, with the initiatives of the company leaders and managers, GE became successful in managing its global operations and its people united to work together effectively to attain the organizational goals. The structure of no boundaries popularized by GE has been attributed as the key contributor in the global success of the company (Falk, 2001 no boundaries involves phasing out of the traditional boundaries drawn by multi-layered management trafficking the information flow within the organization (Falk, 2001). With the initiation of Jack Welch, the multiple boundaries in the organization have been phased out which made the General Electrics to operate since then with application of no boundaries. The structure facilitated the development of the company as more responsive and flexible in valuing all the company shareholders as a priority higher than the accounting profits of the company. The lack boundaries of the company strengthened the partnership with its trusted partners while the company and the customers come in unity with their views on the needs which pushed GE to be more persistent in providing satisfaction of all its customers. With, no boundaries the company phased out the demarcation distinguishing the domestic and foreign operations. The globalization of the company lead to taking efforts to strengthen unity and team work of all the organizational people working in different global units of the company where group labels like management, hourly, and salaried were ignored as a strategy of getting the people across borders to all work together in unity (Grant, 2005). The expansion of the scope of operation of the company has led the employment of international people. With the increasing diversity of its people, GE learned to effectively manage the company resources by integration of the activities in its accomplishment of the global advantages. The company imposed prohibition of discrimination within the organization where every member is valued as an asset of the company (Bateman & Snell, 2007). The company has also designated leaders to assist in its globalization process attending on the international concerns and issues with potentials to affect the global operation of the company. General Electrics generally have been successful in maintaining a healthy organizational culture bound to good leadership and management. With the current position of the company the successful operation of the company will continue to excel in providing satisfaction on the needs of the people. Technology has been highly ruling the company and that can be proposed as the key player that will help GE to maintain its reputation throughout the coming years of the time. References Bateman, T. and Snell, S. (2009). Part 4 Leading: Mobilizing People. “Management: Leading and Collaborating in a Competitive World”. New York: McGraw Hills Company. Falk, S. (2001). Organizational Evolution in a ‘Boundaryless Organization. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://web.mit.edu/org-ev/www/documents/samthesis.pdf Grant, R. (2004). General Electric: life after Jack. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/grant/docs/16GE.pdf McKenna, E. F. (2000). Business Psychology and Organizational Behaviour: A Student's Handbook (3rd ed.). Psychology Press.