Company Analysis Essay on General Electric Company

General Electric (GE) Company is an American global company digital industry that is known to deal in various activities. This institution was incorporated on 15th April of 1892 in New York and its headquarters are in Fairfield, United States. The products and services offered by this industrial organization include airplane engines, generation of power, production of oil and gaseous products, production of equipment that are used for medical imaging, products used for financing, and other industrial equipment. For that reason, this institution is divided into various segments including Power Production, Renewable Energy, Aviation, Transport, Finance, Health, Oil and Gas, Energy Connections and Lighting (Grant, 2016). The Power section mainly focuses on serving the power generating institutions, industries, governmental organizations and many other international customers who deliver products and services that are related to the production of energy and the reuse of water. The products and technological equipment in this company are used majorly for the purpose of harnessing resources like oil, gas, coal, diesel, and water.

The section of the Renewable Energy offers the power energy that is renewable in nature which is then used for tapping energy for example, in the offshore and onshore wind, hydro and in the technologies with low carbon levels. The Oil and Gas section deals fully with anything to do with oil and gas operations including drilling, production and even the transportation of these products using the liquefied natural gas (LNG) and pipelines (Grant, 2016). This sector also deals with the generation of power for industries and compression activities to the refining and petrochemical companies. The Aviation section is known for major function in the design and production of engines for both the commercial and military airplanes. Another major function of this sector is its concentration in the provision of the aftermarket services for the purpose of supporting its own products.

The Healthcare part concentrates majorly in the provision of technologies that are used for the in the health sector, for example, medical imagery, diagnostics, and technologies used in the improvement of performance. The transport sector deals majorly in the supply of the companys products (Korine, 2017). The locomotives in this institution are meant to transport both the products and also passengers and also rail activities to assist in the solution of rail problems. The Energy Connections section is known for its major operation in the designing and monitoring of the technologies that are used in the transmission, transformation, automation, and optimization of energy into electrical energy. The Industrial Solutions in this Company provide technologies that are known for the distribution and the controlling electric energy to protect people, property, and other equipment (Grant, 2016). The last sector is the Capital section which majorly deals with the provisions of financial products and services throughout the world.

In what ways has Jeff Immelt redirected the strategy of GE?

The General Electric Company is known to be one of the largest corporations in the whole world. The former chairman who was also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the institution was called Jack Welch. Jack Welch came up with the first company strategies that showed the goals that had to be met by the institution (Wheelen & Hunger, 2017). The firm currently deals in about fourteen different business activities which reflect the aggressive strategic plans set up by Jack Welch immediately he became the CEO of the organization. In the year 1891, Welch indicated that the company would majorly focus its operations in three major sectors in the manufacturing sections including lighting and transportation, technology- oriented business activities, and services. His main aim was to ensure that each of the business operations the company deals in is ranked first or second in the global market.

Currently, the business transformation for the institution has been visible since the company has been able to expand and carry out around fourteen different business activities as discussed in the introduction part. For these fourteen business operations, the company has been able to achieve a larger market share for almost all these businesses. Welchs program had two major objectives that were meant o improve the operations of this particular institution. One of these objectives were a desire to find out and remove the unfruitful work with the aim of energizing the institutions employees (Whittington, Yakis-Douglas, Ahn, and Cailluet, 2017). This chairman aimed at fastening the companys decision processes, transmission of information through the company, provision fast and reliable feedback, evaluation and rewarding of the company management team based on qualities like being frank and confidence. The second major objective of the GE is the transformation of the companys attitudes at all the levels of the institution and then to encourage creativity and the feelings of ownership and self- worth in the institution. The main aim of this is to ensure that the company is able to tap all the benefits of the international scale and diversity. Jack Welch had explained clearly that a good business leader comes up with a companys vision, articulates the vision, possesses the vision with passion, and then takes action to ensure that the vision goes to completion. Facing the reality whereby a person faces the world the way it is rather than the way the wish was also another good quality of a leader as described by Jack (Whittington, Yakis-Douglas, Ahn, and Cailluet, 2017).

He continues to explain that for an organization to be effective, it has to be simple. An organization can achieve this simplicity if the stakeholders to that particular organization are self- confident and have self- assurance. He even explains the strategy whereby he talked of the companys businesses aiming at being the first or the second globally showed the power of simplicity in the GE Company. The company is said to had implemented simplicity buy ensuring that the layers in management were gotten rid of. The reason for this is because the hierarchy in management is usually known to hide weaknesses and also mediocrity. Another thing that created simplicity was the reduction of the corporate employees by the institution. Direct communication between the CEO and the managers of the fourteen businesses ensures that the process of decision-making has become easier than before (Provasnek, Schmid, Geissler, and Steiner, 2017). Another main vision of the GE Company was that of being fast. The company aims at ensuring that each of its fourteen businesses is fast in delivering its products and services. This helps the institution to serve many customers globally and to meet its other set objectives. The third vision which was among the above two is that of self- confidence. The institution had to believe that it was going to meet its set objectives and that it would be in a position to serve all the international consumers.

Jeff Immelt took over from Jack Welch in the year 2001 when he was appointed as the companys CEO. Jeff, as any of the CEOs, had to indicate the vision that he had for this particular corporation. This shows the attempts by this particular CEO to redefine the strategies that the company had to undertake so as to achieve its goals. He explained that the GE Company is an industry that aimed at joining both the physical and the technological world, and also takes into account such features as fastness, flexibility, and scalability (Provasnek, Schmid, Geissler, and Steiner, 2017). To ensure that this vision is achieved, the company had to ensure that it brings more adjustments to the business processes of the company including the completion of the companys ever largest acquisition which is power equipment by Alstom and grid activities, then getting rid of one of the companys businesses, GE Capital. It was clear that the previous management to the company before Immelt took over was the best in the history of the GE Company. Immelt knew that leading this institution would be a difficult task ever for him. In fact, the company went through a lot of challenges after Immelt took over as the companys leader. Despite all these challenges, this CEO had clearly set several strong strategies for this company including reconfiguration of the institutions business activities, redirecting its operation objectives to the rising in the companys revenue and customer satisfaction, refocusing the competitive advantage of the company so that it revolves around innovation of technology and service to the customers, then improving the industrys organizational structure, leadership processes, and its norms and practices.

When the company decided to eliminate the GE Capital in the year 2015 shows that the set strategy set by Immelt was now at the peak. It is described, however, that the greatest achievements of Immelt in this institution was changing the business model of the company and also taking the institution through all the challenges of the 21st century whereby its financial services had greatly gone down. At the time when he was appointed, Immelt set up great objectives for the institution and he was ambitious that they would be attained. Among all the challenges faced by Immelt were the reinvention of the company and also that of the management system of the diversified organization (Korine, 2017). This CEO did not like the fact that the company was described as a conglomerate by indicating that such a name does not belong to the GE community as a whole. From the above description, therefore, it is clear that Immelt had put his effort in ensuring that the company operates well towards achieving the objectives.

To what extent is the strategy aligned with

The requirements of the 21st century business environment?

The time that Immelt took over the leadership of GE from Jack Welch was a time in which the worlds market economy was headed towards the downturn. This change in the business environment together with economic instability gave Immelt the idea to find out the ways that the company was going to make great profits in the future. During the reign of Jack Immelt, the idea of creating value by reducing costs and elimination of the assets which perform poorly had been used to the maximum (Stadtler, and Lin, 2017). According to Immelt as far as the current market situation was concerned, the major way in which growth was to be attained in the industry was through the organic growth. The fact that the economic situation throughout the world was poor, it was difficult for Immelt to identify the specific areas that would lead to maximum profitability for the institution.

However, he was able to identify some few major global trends including the population that was growing old, increase in the demand for energy and the issues with the global warming, and many other business opportunities in the new growing markets. After the identification of a new growth platform, GE was then expected to create the most competitive position in its business operations through the deployment of its major resources like financial, technical, and managerial resources. Immelt was able to identify that technology was one of the factors that would lead to the future growth of the company (Stadtler, and Lin, 2017). The new business environment which was now faced by the GE Company was characterized by the frequent changes in the customer needs, wants and what they expected. This factor was identified by Immelt as he spent more time with the consumers. This allowed him to ensure that the IT design focused more on the c...