Crotonville and General Electric - Essay Example

CROTONVILLE AND GENERAL ELECTRIC Crotonville and General Electric Management and leadership are the most important factors in the determination of the general performance of an organization. Every company therefore needs a good leadership to excel and attain a competitive advantage in the industry. General Electric (GE) is a technological, innovation and commercial corporation which usually deals with the manufacturing of electric products. GE established Crotonville, a learning and development center based in New York. This paper will discuss the purpose of Crotonville for GE, the leadership of Ralph J. Cordiner and how he used Crotonville in the management of the company. Crotonville is basically a business oriented university for GE Company. It is at times referred to as the John F. Welch Leadership Development Center (Nikravan, 2011, p. 38). It has attained a wide recognition over the past years due to its commitment to excellence in management and leadership development of employees. Besides, it is also known for sharing the best leadership practices and values throughout the world. Crotonville therefore enables organizations to look positively towards the future thereby making them to gain a competitive advantage. This is attained through the exchange of knowledge with consumers, suppliers and associates. Comparatively, Crotonville has been seen to improve the present and future managers. For instance, it has introduced a cultural diversity framework hence spreading the main corporate inventiveness all over GE. This also enables the managers to interact and gain more experience. The absolute mission of Crotonville is to “invent, detect and transfer organizational knowledge” (Fulmer & Goldsmith, 2000, p.60) in order to enhance the growth and competence of GE’s employees all over the world. From this, it can be ascertained that Crotonville has multiple duties and purposes to GE. First of all, it educates the employees. This is achieved through the provision of executive development programs which focuses on leadership, management, change, stigmatization and the company’s key initiatives among other aspects. Secondly, it is a tool or channel that GE uses to communicate and strengthen its values with the general stakeholders of the company. For instance, it offers programs and sessions with key customers that enable them not only to succeed, but to improve the customer relations as well. Examples of these programs could include customer briefings, change management, adaptation, and integration. Equally important, Crotonville acts as a link to transmitting the best GE practices from one GE Company location to another (Fulmer & Goldsmith, 2000, p.60). This ensures that the best practices will not only be carried in a single location of the company, but also throughout the other company’s branches. This is usually attained through the provision of a unique setting that usually allows the employees to freely interact across the organization through functions, seminars, transactions and hierarchies. Similarly, Crotonville has also provided indispensable skills by offering courses such as human resource recruitment, expositions, team building and project supervision. Further than offering organizational, leadership and management courses, Crotonville has also played an essential part in ensuring diversity at GE Company. Crotonville has also an efficient succession plan referred to as “Succession C,” that is designed to assess the employee’s readiness to making proper decisions and choices. This has enabled the GE Company to have adequate human resources at their disposal whenever there is a vacant position in any of the positions. It is therefore evident that without Crotonville, GE Company would not have attained the competitive advantage it presently enjoys. Ralph J. Cordiner played a huge role in the success of the GE Company. He was an American citizen who served at GE as the president as from 1950 to 1958, after which he took over the position of the chairman and chief executive officer (C.E.O) in the year 1958 to 1963. Cordiner used different managerial skills and strategies to improve and cement the competitiveness of GE in the industry. For instance, he established a decentralized type of structure for the management of General Electric. This organizational structure is still being used by the Company to date and it has frequently been mentioned as one of Company’s most important and treasured assets. The use of the decentralized management structure enabled Cordiner to attain top market value returns during his tenure as the chairman. The decentralized management system introduced new concepts of decentralization and professional management that enabled the firm to change its marketing strategy and operations. Cordiner used delegation decentralization to carry out the management. This Process of constitutes the delegation of duties, chores, obligations and authority from the top level management to lower level managers and subordinates down the line. After a strategic delegation of duties and the implementation of the decentralized structure, GE experienced positive growth and outcomes. The growth can be mainly attributed to the diversification that was fostered by Cordiner. During his term, there was an increase in sales, employees, and product lines among other organizational factors. Consequently, Cordiner educated and skilled the middle level managers (Gillen et al., 2011, p.14). He believed that both the top level managers and the lower level managers performed the same type of managerial work. This implies that regardless of hierarchical level of the managers, the tasks are usually similar. Cordiner therefore recognized the top level managers as the ultimate leaders of the organization but also placed an emphasis in educating the middle level and lower level managers since most of the organizational daily activities were being performed by them. Cordiner therefore preferred a bureaucratic type of governance where the top managers would set up and discuss the important actions needed to be taken whereas the lower level management would ensure its management. In addition, Cordiner also came up with a multi-divisional structure in 1951 (Gillen et al., 2011, p.14). This therefore caused a dramatic shift in the reporting channels since this structure uses a bureaucratic. This new reporting structure decentralized the operating departments’ three steps below the position of the C.E.O. In addition, they were separated from the company’s staff activities such as finance, accounting, research and marketing. The bureaucratic system commanded that the operating departments were to report to the divisions. On the other hand, the divisions were supposed to report to the Vice Presidents of the groups, who had a higher authoritative responsibility. The multi divisional structure therefore enabled GE to make appropriate decisions and increase the implementation of duties. Ralph J. Cordiner therefore, efficiently used Crotonville in the management and leadership of the GE Company. This made the company to become more competitive and stable thereby effectively gaining advantage over its rivals. Crotonville therefore plays a big role in the success of General Electric Company and any organization that requires an effective and efficient pool of employees should borrow this strategy and structure. References Fulmer, R. M., & Goldsmith, M. (2000). The leadership investment: How the worlds best organizations gain strategic advantage through leadership development. New York: Amacom. Gillen, D., Geoghegan, W., Raj, S.P. (2011). Organizational Design as a Dynamic Capability: The Case of General Electric. Miami: Syracuse University. Nikravan, L. (2011). In practice selling health care, building leaders. Chief Learning Officer, 10(10), 38. Read More