General Motors Case Analysis

1. Introduction

With recent economic upsets many American corporations are finding it harder to keep their doors open. General Motors is just one of these corporations. The purpose of this report is to provide information on how the General Motors currently operates and to propose changes for the future. First, the report beings with a short overview of the company’s history and then transitions into the current performance of General Motors. Following, there is a report on the analysis of company’s current strategy and the proposed strategic changes they need to consider.

1.1 Brief Corporate History

General Motors was founded by William Durant in 1902. Durant was am outstanding business man who realized that times were changing and that cars were the thing of the future. Beginning as a “holding company for Buick” General Motors grew as it acquired Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Oakland and Elmore (Berg). Much like today there was a stock market scare in 1907 that put many companied into a panic. Durant, who used this crisis to his advantage started to acquire the smaller car building companies along with car parts and accessory makers (Berg). In 1908 all of these acquired companies joined together and formed the General Motors.

In 1910, Durant became to cocky and put the company into “financial distress” as we are seeing now banks had to step in to prevent the collapse of GM (Berg). After this Durant title was removed and the company started making real progress and in 1911 they were able to not only sale cars in the United States but also in Canada (Berg). This was not the end of Durant though because after General Motors he went on to build Chevrolet and in 1915 “came back to power at GM” (Berg). When the country his another recession in 1920, Durant was once again striped of his title (Berg). Since 1920 GM has been on the success roller coaster. At one point GM was the largest employer in the world with really high returns but recently GM has hit a low point and...