Evelyn Neville

Question:
Discuss about the Case Study for Strategic Analysis of General Electric.

Answer:
Introduction:
The following reports tends to evaluate the multitudes of strategic decision making processes applied by
the company in terms of increasing market share, mitigating the level of risks pertaining to engagements
in financial and technological sectors. Application of numerous sets of strategic management tools taking
into consideration the industry dynamics along with the diversity in terms of operations of GE are made.
The implementation of balanced scorecard method was made in order to assess the company’s
strategies in terms of multiple criterions primarily the financials, consumer perspectives regarding the
company. Moreover, evaluation of leadership of Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt has been made in regards to
strategies, corporate restructuring policies along with discussion on whose approach can be followed by
the company.

Core competences:
The company has succeeded towards creation of major degree of core competence both in terms of
external measures such as market consolidation, ability to penetrate newer markets rapidly through
usage of knowledge gained in course of operating in other markets (Geenergyfinancialservices.com.
2016). De Barros and Medeiros (2013) stated that underpinnings pertaining to prevailing market
conditions tends to facilitate intense rivalry between firms, and those firms that succeeds towards creating
synergies among its different sets of operations tends to benefit majorly. The presence of GE in various
high growth industries enhanced the company’s ability at transferring the degree of risk from one industry
domain onto another. Moreover, Král and Králová (2016) states the fact that higher degree of market
presence results towards enhancement of market exposure by the firms thereby assisting towards
collection of material information on lesser time frame than its competitors. Operations in over 170
countries worldwide has facilitated towards gaining higher quantum of market exposure enabling the
company in policymaking and strategizing taking into changing market dynamics. Zentner (2015)
advocated the fact that in order to improve revenue generation capability and streamlining introduction of
newer sets of products, upkeep of relevant advancement in technology and strategy is prerequisite.
Moreover, reliance on emerging global trends in order to undertake future expansionary measures
facilitates towards creation of entry barriers by the company once it is able to capital upon such trends
(GE Capital Global Holdings. 2016). In terms of internal competencies the company employs the best
talents around the globe for its operations and has succeed in bringing in high level of diversity in
workplace through recruitment of accountants, auditors, engineers, physicists amongst others (Financial
Times. 2016).
Strategic analysis comprises of evaluation of a firm’s current and prospective frameworks of operations.
Strategy analysis is focused upon the investigation of the degree of alignment of the firm’s strategy with
that of its long-term objectives. Moreover, it aims towards ensuring that the co-ordination among the
company’s different sets of financing, operating along with the investing activities is complementary to
each other. General Electric has operations in over 170 countries with employee strength of over 330,000
as based on data available on December 2015 (Ge.com. 2016). In terms of stock market operations, the
company has been listed in NYSE, Euronext Paris and London Stock Exchange among others. The
company is engaged in several businesses pertaining to aviation, healthcare, lighting, transportation,
power generation, energy resources, electricity, oil & gas distribution, renewal energy and capital
(Ge.com. 2016)
General Electric Corporations is engaged in multiple sectors comprising of operations in power
generation and hydro generations, healthcare services along with providing capital procurements towards
different sets of industries. The company was founded in 1892 and has its headquarters in Boston,
Massachusetts. The products offered by GE includes electricity and water distribution facilities, energy
products comprising of petroleum and LPG products, aerospace engines, electrical motors, healthcare
services and software solutions to other industries. The company, after a tumultuous financial period
leading to downgrading of its securities and large financial losses with regards to GE Capital, the primary
source of revenue generation by GE, has focused upon gaining market share through offering innovative
products. Moreover, the company has increased expenditure pertaining to research and development and
aims towards introducing newer sets of services and products that stretches its product line and results in
catering to larger segment of the markets (ge.com. 2016).
The major sets of competitors of General Electric comprise mainly the electrical appliances companies.
Primary among such competitors are Emerson Electric Company, NACCO Industries, Harman
International, Sony Corporation and Whirlpool Corporation (NASDAQ.com. 2016). In case of its
healthcare services the company faces major competition from Toshiba Corporations along with Siemens
and Phillips Healthcare (Hoovers.com. 2016). The oil and natural gas unit of GE has Baker Hughes
Incorporated, Schlumberger Omnes, Inc. and Archrock Inc competing against the company
(NASDAQ.com. 2016)

Figure 1: Portfolio of GE over the Years

(Source: ge.com, 2016)
The major recalibrations made by the GE Group in terms of changes made in portfolio are aimed towards
diversifying its activities amongst healthcare, energy and financial services sectors. Moreover, even
though transportation business has displayed large profit margins, the company has not taken initiative
towards expansion of its investing activities pertaining to transportation services and products. Moreover,
large acquisition of firms known for their innovations in healthcare provides evidence that the firm focuses
on diversifying from its core businesses to include newer sets of portfolio that increases the overall
portfolio returns along with high growth prospects.
Relevant Strategies:
The immediate objective of GE should be to improvise upon its global presence in coming up with newer
sets of products that tends to cater to the emerging trends in global markets such as investments in solar
powered energies. Moreover, portfolio of the company needs to include higher percentage of application-
based technologies. Further, inclusion of research and development of Artificial Intelligence can result in
heightened degree of financial prospects as the sector provides major returns on investments. Much of
GE’s woes came from the fact that the company has been a conglomerate and despite reducing the
number of sectors from company’s portfolio, the firm has been unsuccessful at repeating the levels of
earnings that it previously did. Thereby dissemination of a portion of the company, onto sectors that have
high growth rate but current returns from which showcases inadequacy, can in fact improve the decision-
making and strategizing activities. Further, with the advent of nuclear non-proliferation treaty the company
can cater to significant amount of foreign governments towards meeting their energy requirements using
nuclear energy.

Figure 2: Snapshot of company strategies in accordance with market trends

(Source: ge.com. 2016)

Balanced Scorecard Framework:

Balance scorecard enables organizations, both profitable and non-profitable ones, in evaluating the
degree of deviations of the company’s financial and operating performance from its strategic objectives
(Schmidt. 2015). The balance scorecard approach presents managers with four sets of strategic analysis
alternatives to assess the degree of non-alignment between business decisions and the strategies of
organizations. Moreover, Gobble (2012) states that through assessing growth prospects, internal
operations, enhanced value creation for its consumers in accordance with effective financial and
management and policy making the degree of non alignment can be gauged.
 Figure 3: Balanced Scorecard Framework
(Source: As created by the Author)

Perspectives on Business and Internal Processes:

The strategic shifts in GE’s operations through higher priority for its financial services along with the
infrastructural businesses are a result of corporate restructuring. Divestments from activities that has slow
growth rate and entering into businesses with stronger growth prospects is a priority for the company and
shifting of its business from consumer electronics to financial services showcases the strategic shifts in
portfolio management. Presence of the company in 170 countries provided scope for initiating cultural
diversity at workplace. Moreover, contributions towards growth and revenue earning abilities of the
company followed by larger pool of prospective employees to choose from has enabled the company
towards bringing in various sets of expansions in operations into day to day operations in order to
improvise upon business decision making of the company.

Financial Perspectives:
Longer-term strategies of GE focus on recalibrating the business portfolio in terms of reducing the beta
factors from its broad set of investments. The degree of dependence upon GE Capital as the primary
source of revenue of the GE Group has to be reduced over time. The volatility in regards to the financial
sector followed by weaker sets of regulation imposed by the Federal Reserve and the SEC has vitiated
the reliability of revenue generation from financial services (Geenergyfinancialservices.com. 2016).
However, diversification in terms of portfolio through mitigating risks from sectors and operations
providing low rates of growth onto investments that have high growth prospects can improvise the overall,
financial performance along with efficiency and solvency position of the company.

Customer Perspectives:
The company expanded its presence in the electronics market through newer sets of domestic and
industrial appliances (Ge.com. 2016). Through facilitating diagnostic instruments such as CT and MRI
scanners in its healthcare services the company and expansions of its healthcare services through
numerous acquisitions of diagnostics units GE’s objectives was to improve its perception of a reliable
brand among its customer base (Ge.com. 2016). Assisting consumers towards the decision-making
processes regarding selection of products that compliments their activities and preferences can be
beneficial for GE in terms improving the customer retention statistics. Benefits of a long product line
catering to large segments of market can lead towards the consolidating the brand image among
consumers.

Learning and Growth Perspectives:

GE has managed to diversify its business operations on multiple occasions based upon the emerging
sets of opportunities that came up in the manufacturing services. The diminution of its income prospects
as an aftermath of the global financial crisis resulted in stringent sets of policy implementations (Sorkin,
2015). Moreover, the potential opportunities in financial sectors around the globe have resulted in larger
proportion of GE Capital in the overall portfolio. Over 65% of the GE group’s revenue arises from markets
outside the United States, resulting in higher growth prospects in markets such as South Asia and the
Middle East. GE’s business is growing at double-digit figures in emerging markets. Whereas, in rising
economies such as Brazil, China in addition to India the growth figures are even larger touching growth
rates of over 20% (ge.com. 2016). Moreover, despite a high growth in its transportation businesses GE’s
automotive and locomotive businesses continue to be outside of its core businesses.

Company Strategies
The primary strategy pertaining to GE shall have to be lesser degree of reliance upon financial services
despite GE Capital coming close to asset and capital management capabilities of large banks such as
CITIGROUP, Goldman Scahs and Bank Of America. The secondary strategy should be towards
diversification of activities onto newer domains that stands to gain huge profits over longer terms such as
Artificial Intelligence, Solar Energy and Super Sonic Aviation. Higher expenditure on product innovations,
more emphasis upon marginal expansion, and optimal allocations of financial and non-financial resources
is what the GE’S strategy is based upon. Creation of new sets of growth framework is to be prioritized by
the company’s higher management. Increasing sets of investments in the fundamental technology sector
followed by incremental participation of the company into coupling of manufacturing and advisory services
can be beneficial towards streamlining the present policy implementation. The initiation of converging
advisory services along with product innovation has beneficial for the company in the recent past. For
instance after initiating the Durathon Plant, the company focused upon providing consultation and
assistance regarding the selection of battery sources and configuration that solves the energy
requirements of its consumers. Moreover, the company has to reinstate its strategies in the energy sector
in a manner of reducing manufacturing of energy products that yield low sales volume. Instead, the
company should foster divergence of its strategies into reselling products of other manufacturers in
markets that GE has a better accessibility than such manufacturers. GE has had been able to showcase
the reinvention of its marketing strategy that puts emphasis upon capitalizing on competitor’s lack of
market exposure as compared to GE (Albany Business Review., 2016). The company should be cautious
towards acceptance of large-scale acquisition spree whereby the constraints of becoming a market leader
are heightened through ambiguous preferences of consumers and complex nature of products. The past
year saw the operations of GE diversifying into consulting services about financial instruments followed
by an initiative to increase its presence towards energy storage sector as the company recalibrated its
aims to capitalize upon emerging issues pertaining to energy requirements
(Geenergyfinancialservices.com. 2016).
Discussion on Jeff Immelt and Jack Welch’s approach towards managing
General Electric:
Jack Welch was instated as the CEO of General Electric in the year 1981 following an exit of Reginald
Jones. Welch focused upon expansion of the company through diversifying activities from its initial
business of electricity, power and lighting of the company into newer sectors such as financial services,
automation, and medical apparatus (The Economist. 2016). Under his guidance, the management
approach along with the company approach has been towards providing products that are simple in
nature but has high amount of functionality. In terms of management decision-making approach, Welch
has been instrumental towards bringing in concepts of constructive conflicts in functioning of operations
and production managers. Moreover, Jack Welch advocated the prevention of bureaucratic processes
ongoing at the time he joined General Electric and implemented management reforms that are focused
upon improving the quantum of openness, linearity in decision-making and fostering of creative
atmosphere (The Economist. 2016).
During his tenure as CEO of GE, Jack Welch had initiated massive restructuring pertaining to the
company’s portfolio. His decisions pertaining to acquisition has aimed at industries that had high rate of
growth along with incremental returns over the long periods. Moreover, he recalibrated the organizational
structure of the company through massive job cuts and eliminated multilayered hierarchy of the
management. Massive forms of restructuring through sellout of business with low profit and inclusion of
sectors onto the company portfolios that have been amongst the topmost achievers in their domain has
been key trademark of Jack Welch’s approach (Financial Times. 2016). Moreover, such restructuring
resulted towards movement of the company into technology driven industry domains along with service
sectors.
Under Welch’s management, the line managers were provided targets pertaining to cost of production
and budgetary costs regardless of the prevailing market conditions. Further, Jack Welch changed the
process of procuring annual and quarterly financial targets through transferring the target setting
procedures from the purview of line managers onto the accounts controller. The high amount of paper
work involved in the budgetary processes were replaced through use of five page standard playbook that
tends to present the shortcoming and functional issues faced by the company (Financial Times. 2016).
Jack Welch initiated the process of imbibing and developing leadership skills among the lower
managements along with management trainees through enhanced exposure of the company’s decision-
making culture, introduction of mentoring scheme along with provision of high incentives. He also
introduced the performance based bonus system in place for the higher and mid level managerial
personnel and such initiatives resulted towards heightening the process of talent recognition. Prior to his
retirement, Jack Welch focused towards rewarding the top 20% performing employees while relieving the
bottom 10% of their duties from the company thus providing the employees with the impetus of working
efficiently to get into the top 20% or face the risks of relegation to the bottom 10%. “The implementation of
six sigma function in the operations of General Electric can be attributed to Welch post which the
deliverance of production, service and line managers improved considerably” Gary Hamel (Harvard
Business Review. 2012). The emergence of GE Capital occurred during the “Welch Era” which resulted
in the financial service section of the company becoming the largest source of revenues for the company
(Mycc.cambridgecollege.edu. 2016). GE Capital amassed a vast segment of financial services sector
providing all forms of services in terms of capital procurement, investment activities, trading, medical and
health insurances along with loan advisory services (Geenergyfinancialservices.com. 2016). In times
where diversification policies were experiencing massive financial downturn resulting in unpopularity of
such policies, Jack Welch continued diversifying GE’s activities resulting and thereby highlighted the
substantial opportunity of high income and mitigation of tailed risks from one industry to another.
 Figure 3: General Electric portfolio in 2001
(Source: ge.com 2016)
The initiative undertaken by the GE management under the leadership of Jack Welch resulted in
globalization of business operations with widespread expansion in market activities outside of North
America. These expansionary measures resulted towards implementing knowledge derived from a
separate market based in a separate geographical location onto other markets that GE operated in (The
Economist. 2016). Moreover, the process of market penetration and consolidating activities were
streamlined during Welch’s tenure creating an overall synergy enhancement by parallel developments of
diversification and market expansion (The Economist. 2016). During the tenure of Welch, the business
portfolio saw an increase by manifolds through inclusion of GE Aircraft, GE Plastics, GE Capital and GE
Specialty Materials. Moreover, awarding Welch with the CEO of the Century title during 1999 highlights
the enormous contribution he had upon GE.
Jeff Immelt took over the role of CEO in the year 2001 from his predecessor Jack Welch bringing in
management style and strategic decision making that were vastly divergent to that of his predecessor.
Immelt followed a policy of improving the morale and levels of motivation pertaining to the employees and
managerial personnel of GE through limiting the quantum of stringent performance evaluation that
prevailed during Jack Welch’s time (Harvard Business Review. 2012). Moreover, the level of job
insecurity that was prevailing at GE prior to Immelt’s joining has dropped considerably with Immelt
bringing in newer sets of policies that focused more upon integration and employee co-ordination rather
than employee motivation (Financial Times. 2016). The occurrence of 9/11 right after his appointment as
CEO followed by large sets of financial scandals in the North American markets led towards exacerbating
investor’s grievances along with skepticism on the part of various other stakeholders concludes Gary
Hamel (Harvard Business Review. 2012). The imminent result was a faltering in the stock prices of the
company by magnitudes unseen by its investors. Immelt reiterated the fact the objective of the
management should be to foster long-term growth instead of focusing upon policies that tends to cater to
short terms instances of high profit margins and EBITDA (Sorkin. 2015). Under his leadership, the
transparency of the company’s financial and operating activities was enhanced and facilitated improved
dissemination of information pertaining to the customers, creditors, corporate regulators and industrial
community.
Jeff Immelt initiated the processes of parlance between the degrees of diversifying activities in terms of
conglomeration along with fostering creation of subsidiaries that were market leaders in their respective
sectors. Immelt laid down newer sets of strategies through identification of emerging issues that are
anticipated to have repercussions globally such as imminent energy crisis, shifts in manufacturing and
production, globalization of R&D activities in production industries, nanotechnology in addition to
emergence of technology driven healthcare facilities (ge.com. 2016).

Figure 2: GE portfolio in 2012

(Source: ge.com 2016)
In during the mid 2000s Immelt announced restructuring of GE’s portfolio, thereby reducing dependency
on plastics and insurance business. Whereas on the other hand, taking up the level of financial services
and capital lending by the firm onto higher proportion of the total portfolio (Král and Králová, 2016). Jeff
Immelt reinstated the performance benchmark pertaining to the company through setting up targets of
achieving growth rate at 200-300% of that of global GDP rate. However, the performance analysis
pertaining to the company displayed the fact that in terms of revenue figures not much improvement can
be seen after Jeff Immelt took over. Moreover, the return on equity along with the ROIC has dropped from
the levels of 26% and 27% in 2001 to 14.2% and 11.9% in 2012 thereby highlighting a fall in investor’s
earnings (Ge.com. 2016). The strategies Immelt followed towards lowering dependency of GE on
financial services and increasingly diversifying its activities onto technology driven services and
manufacturing heavy activities assisted GE towards mitigating repercussions of financial crisis.

Figure 4: Proposed restructuring of GE portfolio.

(Source: ge.com 2016)
Expansion of its global operations in both emerging and developed markets along with up gradation of
product manufacturing base has been initiated under the leadership of Immelt. The reposition of GE by
Immelt onto sectors that are manufacturing and technology based led to lowering the quantum of
exposure to the global financial crisis with creation of buffer (The Economist. 2015). During current tenure
of Jack Immelt, the company oversaw massive strategic shifts as GE recalibrated itself for nuclear-based
power plant services along with entering the healthcare sector through manufacturing high resolution
imaging devices for medical diagnostics.
The comparison amongst the leadership of Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt highlights the fact that under
Welch the company has undergone massive expansionary measures and diversification whereas under
Immelt the company has showcase higher levels of adaptability to prevailing market conditions. In terms
of present volatile business scenarios, GE requires a manager who will be able to foresee the
restructuring of portfolio according to market opportunities. Moreover, in order to alleviate the revenue
generation margins the company has to set up stricter targets for its managers and employees to
achieve. Thereby, for diversification of activities Jeff Immelt’s style of leadership is preferable over that of
Jack Welch. However, massive depletion in the levels of returns displays the fact that Jeff Immelt has
largely been unsuccessful at carrying on the quantum of market consolidation as that of his predecessor.
Thereby, it can be assumed that Jack Welch leadership would have been more preferable for GE over
that of Jeff Immelt.

Conclusion:
The portfolio of GE has displayed considerable changes over the years displaying the level of dynamism
that such company has been subjected to under the leadership of Jack Welch previously followed by Jeff
Immelt. The company witnessed highest degree of expansion under the guidance of Jack Welch.
However, the strategies implemented by Jack Welch during his tenure pertaining to the incentive
structure focused upon short-term profitability and financial benefit based on employee performance
instead of focusing upon value creation in terms of product services. GE should be able to put more
amount of focus on the present position of the firm by focusing on the reshaping of the policies for the
business by way of the setting up of the health care facilities, energy sector, and broadcasting and
entertainment facilities. The positioning strategy further includes the different types of strategies
implemented for providing an exit process for the slow-growth areas in the business and the reallocation
of these resources for the implementation of the different types of growth strategies to enter into new
business ventures. Perspective applied by the company for the positioning is further based on creating a
way for the growth platforms for the purpose of the new business policies.

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