Ge Case Questions

GE Case Questions

1. While most companies have difficulty producing sufficient quality candidates for top management succession, how has GE been able to create a surplus? What philosophy, policies, and practices have made it a “CEO factory” as Fortune called it, and “easily the world’s best machine for churning out corporate talent” as The Economist described it?

2. How generalizable are GE’s management development policies and practices? How transferable across cultures? Across industries? Across companies?

3. As Jeff Immelt, is it time to tune up or even overhaul GE’s management development policies and practices? Specifically, how would you deal with proposals to change the vitality curve, MBA and international recruitment, and the executive bands?

4. What lessons do you take from this case? Reflecting on your analysis – positive or negative –of GE’s development of its management pipeline, what do you see as the key success factors in making talent management what Immelt claims is an important source of competitive advantage for the company?

Analysis Tools

• Map the value chain

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• Identify core competencies

The company operates through four segments: Energy, Technology Infrastructure, Capital Finance, and Consumer Industrial.

General Electric sells a multitude of products that span across several different industries. The company produces -- take a deep breath -- aircraft engines, locomotives and other transportation equipment, kitchen and laundry appliances, lighting, electric distribution and control equipment, generators and turbines, and medical imaging equipment.

General Electric offers several different services in the financial industry for individual consumers and business consumers. For their business consumers in every major industry, GE provides loans, operating leases, financing programs, equipment leasing and other services to support businesses and jobs around the world. For...