GENERAL ELECTRIC REMAINS AT THE TOP OF THEIR GAME 1
General Electric and Their Award
Winning Management Program
Adam Goodman
Southeast Community College
General Electric is one of the most popular companies in the world, and that is just in
regards to their leadership talent and succession management system. General Electric is rated as
the 26th largest firm in the U.S. by gross revenue and is the 14th most profitable. According to
Kleiner (2003, Paragraph 2), “GE CEO Ralph Cordiner established a new waves of scientific
management after World War II, in which every detail of management work, down to the
placement of pens on desks, was spelled out in elaborate “blue books.”” Then in the 1980’s, a
program called Work-Out, was launched by CEO Jack Welch. The program became known as an
infamous bureaucracy-busting productivity initiative. The program was a direct challenge to the
program already in place. This program demanded that executives be candid and fast on their
feet. It was a direct attack on the scientific management method by Ralph Cordiner. The best part
about the company at that time, was that the two CEO’s did hold the same core ideas about
