The Jack Welch Era at General Electric

In the case, “The Jack Welch Era at General Electric”, indicate that during the period of Jack Welch was a CEO at General Electric from 1981 to 2001, the company became remarkable profit. Earnings per share rose from $.46 in 1981 to $1.07 in 2001. GE is a company which has a very long history, and Jack Welch was the first working-class person that finally became the famous manager in GE history. He changed and built lots of rules to fulfill his ambition to make the company more wealthy such as eliminated workers, changed GE’s culture by promoting the notion of a “boundary less” organization, used identical 20-70-20 percent curve to manage managers, and reshaped GE stocks. The story of the Welch years has the elements of legend, however, within GE businesses his powerful manage strategy turned him into a very controversial person. The lead editorial branded Welch as a corporate titan opposed to rules of society and said that his actions were “disastrous” for workers and communities.
As a huge and historical company as GE, it has lots of social responsibilities. The definition of corporate social responsibility in chapter 5 is that the duty of a corporation to create wealth in ways that avoids harm to, protect, or enhance societal assets. Since GE paid a lot taxes, it contributed our society. From the view of economic responsibilities, GE clearly fulfilled it.
Although in the Welch’s era, GE Company received huge economic reward and engaged in a board range of philanthropy and community activities, it cannot be denied that the company against the corporate social responsibility at some time. Welch illustrates a very narrow view of corporate social responsibility closer to Friedman’s view that the only social responsibility is to increase profits while obeying the law.
The first thing is that mass layoffs as Welch remodeled GE. When he took over there were 404,000 GE employees; when he left, there were 313,000. In between, tens of thousands came and went. This