Study of Jack Welch of General Electric
Study of Jack Welch of General Electric
For this assignment, we were required to write a paper, which relates our leanings of Organizational Behavior to a current event or business of some form. After doing a wealth of research and reading many of my fortune and business week magazines, I decided that I wanted to incorporate something along the lines of leadership and organizational structure. Due to the current events of September 11, these are very important for all businesses and individuals to take in to consideration. I choose to write about one of our world leaders in the business world with an emphasis on Jack Welch. I plan to discuss how he stresses the importance of Organizational Behavior and how he has used it throughout his career as the CEO of GM, one of our worlds leading industries.
Throughout business history, industries have frequently undergone radical change in response to innovation, new thinking, or other dramatic challenges. These challenges have provided the catalyst for leaders to look closely at the ways their businesses have been conducted, the assumptions and beliefs upon which they have based their actions and decisions, and how they lead their organizations. Welch had done a superb job of embracing the challenges that he was faced with.
Organizational life cycle models assume that an organization goes through inception to growth, maturity and decline or redevelopment. (Gupta, Yash P; Chin, David CW, Dec 1994) In each stage of the organization life cycle, the strategic leadership would be different because the software and hardware resources inside the organization are different in each stage. I will take three different companies existing in different organization life cycle stages to analyze the implication of organization life cycle for strategic leadership of CEO.
When Jack Welch took office in April 1981 as the new chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric, the company had entered the stage between the maturity and decline. In 1980 right before Welch took the position, GE's organizational rigid structure, resistance to change and bureaucratic climate make it impossible to perceive important environmental changes. Moreover, the organizational structure, decision-making process and information management procedures no longer fit the organization's needs. Welch responded to the board's mandate and acted to revive the organization from the decline stage into the earlier stage of the organization life cycle....