General Electric Crotonville ampus - Case Study Example

Q1. The stages that management science has brought forward that management science are scientific management, administrative management, behavioural management, management science and finally organisational management. General electric has followed these stages in the evolution of management since in the 19th century when Edison founded the organisation, scientific management was being used, in 2008 GE was awarded the INFORM prize which is given to organisations that effectively use management science. In recent years, GE has embraced organisational management with a program such as the one they are sponsoring firms to come up with efficient and clean energy for America. Q2. GE management innovation where it centralized its decision-making in the 1950’s drew towards a classical management approach and adaptation of the six-sigma approach to management drew a lot on behavioural management theory. In a bid to increase their efficiency and output, GE has adopted a contingency perspective where they approach issues from different angles, they have used techniques such as six sigma to ensure all departments operate at their optimal level; in addition, they have a training facility to train their employees in order to increase their output. Q3. GE has been successful in integrating the management science in its operation due to training of their employees especially in management, the training made sure that the employees were already operating near optimal points therefore it was much easier for them to implement management science approaches such as the six sigma Q4. Developing new leaders is the key to sustainable growth according to GE. Leaders who are passionate about giving their clients the best, who know their products and market well, as well as being innovative. In view of this, general electric has set up a training facility in Crotonville where about 9000 of its employees are trained on leadership annually in order to improve their leadership skills. Q5. GE’s Crotonville Leadership campus General Electric Crotonville campus otherwise known as John F Welch leadership development centre was founded in 1956 as the first corporate school in the world. It is located at the hamlet of Crotonville in New York and hosts about 10,000 employees of General Electric every year, these employees range from entry-level employees to the top management of the firm globally where they learn a lot in leadership (Durett 26). The Crotonville campus offers a wide range of courses for their clients that include leadership courses for new managers focusing on development, business impact and external focus, customer programs including executive briefing, change management and integration. Other courses are executive courses in leadership, innovation, strategy and manager development and critical skill such as presentation, hiring, team building and project management. In addition to offering the management leadership courses, General Electric Crotonville campus encourages intercultural and interracial interactions between its employees with the courses having more than half of the population coming from outside the United States of America. Other affinity groups of Crotonville campus also offer opportunities that encourage diversity for instance the ‘leading and learning’ summit that is hosted by GE women’s network invites more than 150 women to interact where more than two thirds are customers and suppliers of General Electric. In order to reach their global leaders and customers in the whole world, General Electric has spread the Crotonville experience to the rest of the world with special global courses in the various parts that include sharing best experiences in Asia. Others include management development in Europe, learning in Abu Dhabi where General Electric has collaborated with Mubadala Development Company, growing teamwork in Asia and on the ground in Africa (Stefanovich 64) The structure at the General Electric Crotonville campus is divided into three categories that are; leadership, skills that is driven by functions such as finance skills etc and the third is business. These training programs are channeled to meet the specific needs of the various industries that General Electric is involved in since its formation and the longest of the courses takes three weeks down from thirteen weeks it usually took when the program was initiated in 1956. The main purpose of these structures to General Electric is to inspire, connect and develop leaders that will go back to their respective places of work and replicate the same to the employees who work under them thereby creating a multiplier effect. The organization has several other global research centers in Munich in Germany, Shanghai in China and Bangalore in India, these facilities are used to train the General Electric employees from the various regions of the world, however training also occurs in other parts of the world although they are done in hotels in those regions. The only residential training centre is the Crotonville in New York United States of America but in other training centers, the trainees spend the nights in nearby hotels. Due to the different cultural backgrounds of the employees of General Electric, the classes in different regions are structured in such a way that in the designing of the curriculum to be used to train the employees will involve representatives from the various regions of the globe therefore there is a global input from the beginning. Representatives in the various regions that General Electric is carrying out training of its employees ensure that the sessions are taught with the appropriate cultural overtone without changing the fundamentals of leadership (Starkey 24). While General Electric acknowledges that face to face interaction in learning is the most suitable to advance their objective of inspiring, connecting and developing since interactions between people from different regions of the world share experiences, they also integrating technology into the learning system. The management of the leadership training in General Electric has prepared podcasts that it encourages its employees in all parts of the world to download them and listen to them. In addition, several facilities have been built in the Crotonville such as telepresence, which enables a leader to give talks to the trainees from another region of the world, there are also virtual collaboration rooms that ensures the people in Crotonville are able to engage and work with people in other regions of the world. With the incoming of the young generation, General Electric has been forced to change its mode of learning to adjust to this population; there has been an increased online interaction. In every class, the trainees have to rank the speakers and give their feedback on what they want and what they do not want and the company adjusts appropriately. The leadership development program of General Electric runs throughout all the professional levels in the organization which is a population of about 150,000 people (half of the total number of employees of General Electric globally). Half of these professional employees are located in outside United States of America; in reaching this audience, the management uses a step approach. In the first case, some materials are provided for on demand through the internet where they have established a vendor to supply the materials that deal with a wide range of topics and the employees are encouraged to download and learn using these materials. Secondly, there are 13 essential skills that are taught, they include presentation skills, project management skills and finance among others. In imparting this knowledge, the management uses the Train the Trainer approach where the people that train the employees in the various businesses of General Electric globally are trained and certified in order to maintain the integrity of the training program. The next stage is the cornerstone stage where the trainees have to be physically present at the Crotonville and the courses in this stage take about a week to complete, there are four courses in this level. The first one is the foundation of leadership that happens in the early phases of the trainees career, the second course is the leadership development course, the third is the new manager course and the fourth is the advanced manager course, these courses are estimated to take an average of ten years to complete. The other stage is those courses that are offered to the executives and which take about three weeks to complete, these courses are only offered at the Crotonville facility, they include manager development course, business management course, and the executive development course and the final course that is offered is for the various teams in General Electric (Welch 29). In setting up of the Crotonville facility, General Electric intention was to equip its employees with leadership skills in order to ensure smooth transition between different leaders and the organization culture and objectives are strictly followed since the management would have familiarized with the operations of the company before joining the management ranks. Promotions within General Electric is internal and any entrance of new employees they mainly do so at the junior management levels and progress through the ranks. The detailed curriculum and the training program at Crotonville is usually kept confidential by General Electric and only the top management have access to how the leadership development programs are carried out, this is to ensure that its rival companies do not imitate the model of Crotonville and therefore reduce the leverage that General Electric had in training its managers. The leadership development program by General Electric is one of a kind that has seen the organization maintain its market share and revenue despite spending close to 1 billion dollars annually in the program. The uniqueness of the structure and how the classes are conducted adding on the accessibility of the program to employees at all professional can be used by other organizations to improve the efficiency of their employees. Works cited Durett, J. "GE Hones Its Leaders at Crotonville GE's Leadership Center at Crotonville Marks 50 Years of Turning Out Top Leaders-Both Inside the Company and Out." Training New York Then Minneapolis Then New York. 43(5) (2006): 25-27. Print. Starkey, Ken. How Organizations Learn: Managing the Search for Knowledge. London: Thomson, 2005. Print. Stefanovich, Andy. Look at More: A Proven Approach to Innovation, Growth, and Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011. Print. Welch, Jack. Jack: Straight from the Gut. London: Headline, 2003. Print. Read More