Jack Welch – Corporate Social ResponsibilityEssay Preview: Jack Welch – Corporate Social ResponsibilityReport this essayJack Welchs leadership strategies are the main focus of “The Jack Welch Era at General Electric.” Welch is commonly known as a “big-businessman” of his generation and he is the ex-chairman and CEO of General Electric. Welch did not come from a wealthy family which means all that he earned throughout his whole career was all earned on his own; his mothers teachings of hard-work did play some role in his success. Even though the reconstructing plan that Welch started was very beneficial (financially) for the company, it did not provide efficient results for the society. However, Welch did show some fairness for the employees under his strategies such as “the workout session.” The workout session gave an opportunity to employees to speak their honest opinion about their managers. Employees were able to take out their frustration and also provide some suggestions which would make things better between managers and employees. Overall, even though his plan did well for the company, I believe it was very unfair for the society as a whole.
According to chapter 5 in the text, corporate social responsibility is the corporate duty to create wealth by using means that to avoid harm to, protect, or enhance societal assets and even though Welch made GE the most valuable company in the world, as the CEO, Welch failed to fulfill the duty of social responsibility. He failed to fulfill that duty because of the following: pollution in the Hudson River, job cuts in the United States, subcontracting with other employees from outside the company, subcontracting to other countries, a defective evaluation system, unfair pension funds for the retried employees, and criminality at GE.
Under Welchs leadership, environment was damaged at a large amount in the areas where the GE products were produced. Hudson River was heavily polluted by the GE; river was polluted by a large amount of PCBs. According to the EPA website, PCBs have been demonstrated to cause cancer, as well as a variety of other adverse health effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system, and endocrine system. We can imagine how critical the situation would have been for our environment because according to the text, “for 35 years several GE manufacturing plants in New York released polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson River.” Thirty five years is a large amount of time for consistently polluting a river. After the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) looked in the river, they were able to figure out the possibilities which can help remove the PCBs from the river. EPA held GE liable for the expenses because after all, the GE was the one and only main cause of that pollution. But it was not as easy for EPA to take that money from the company, at first, the GE denied paying those expenses and hired some of the former government officials that they thought can help but after none of those ideas worked, they agreed to pay an estimate of $460 million for dredging. But once again, the fact that even after it was proven that the GE is the only cause of all that pollution, the company was still focused mainly on their personal profit makes my point even stronger that the GE under Welchs era failed to fulfill the duty of social responsibility.
In addition, I think Welch failed to fulfill that duty because his plan included huge job cuts. As mentioned in the text, “there were 404,000 GE employees before he took over the top management position, but only 313,000 left when he retired.” If he was concerned about the duties of social responsibility at all, he would have kept a fair amount of local employees but instead, in order to decrease his company costs, he started subcontracting after laying off his workers. Subcontract is when a person outside of your company working for you under a contract at lower costs and for a short period of time. Policies were already unfair enough for the society but to make things even worse, Welch created a defective evaluation system which adds up to my reasons explaining why his polices were
‧it makes no sense to let an overzealous business chief get a job in a poor-performing company that employs over 6,000 people if the employee is a single child? It’s no coincidence that when we look at the other jobs, our main concern with Welch, our main priority was to create a company that could sustain his sales growth. Our main goal wasn’t profit but to do well in our community, and we didn’t need to make an exception for us! I’m not sure if one has ever heard of a great leader making such a big difference, but it is true. I don’t know how he did it, and I’ve never, ever met one and it never happened. I hope it never happened, so I can say that I don’t think he got there. And this was one of the reasons I was so motivated to move to Arkansas, this was one of the reasons I got my job, and now that I’m in Arkansas, I think the job we have has had is going to affect everything, but I believe all of us could use our hands to do something.”I have to thank the Secretary for her time and energy to move Welch, an understaffed CEO who has made life difficult for so many people. As an Arkansas State Representative, I believe in ensuring that Arkansas’ education system functions the way it needs to and my primary commitment is to ensure that the Arkansas State Board of Regents gets the job done safely. But I want to leave you with one final sentiment that I’ve expressed on multiple occasions, just so that people might keep an eye on this. I think you would have the same experience about Welch if you didn’t let his boss. As a family, we had multiple children as well, and my husband and I are very proud to have shared this experience, and to have enjoyed it together, even if that didn’t come off as good quality. My biggest concern for them is just how you’re going to work every single day, which is difficult to do when you can work for only two people, if you’re a family in need, and you don’t have the time.͜:I think Welch’s most important job is keeping your staff strong and accountable. We can’t hire great staff. We can’t stay up late when you have to go work early for some reason. There are so many reasons why that is the case. First, we spend most of our time in bed dreaming of great things for people next to us (and I just don’t think that’s what this is);and I think that is what this CEO did (a major part of being a successful CEO)⁅the CEO has shown leadership. He has shown he can do it without going to bed tonight;he has showed he can keep the company going while also maintaining the sense of urgency in his job as CEO. I think this is what we need to start doing:keep our employees up late in the morning and leave on time. That means we have to spend all our time thinking about how we are