Introduction
General Electric Company (GE) is a public corporation established in the US in the last decade of the 19th century and has ever since grown into a giant multinational and a key Wall Street figure and player. Incorporated in 1892, and headquartered in Boston, MA, GE is a giant digital industrial conglomerate dealing in a wide a range of products and services spanning from aircraft engines and parts, medical imaging, financing and power generation to industrial products, and oil and gas production (Reuters, 2019).
It has more than half a dozen segments and is indicated to have been reaching out to customers in over 180 countries worldwide by close of 2016 (Reuters, 2019). GE’s vision and mission statements have been formulated to orchestrate progress and competitiveness for the business. GE’s corporate vision shows the desire of the firm to be a leading digital industrial firm that is to be the world’s best digital industrial company (Murray, 2016; Thompson, 2017).
The firm’s mission statement outlines the strategies the firm intends to use or is using to achieve its vision that is to invent the next era of industry, to build, move, power, and cure the world (Thompson, 2017). General Electric Company is in this proposal because it is perhaps one of the most renowned, most read about, or probably most talked about public corporations in the United States. Furthermore, GE is a giant multinational and an influential player at the New York Stock Exchange.
Analysis
Most public corporations are always involved in competitive strategizing to remain unbeaten in business. From a strategy perspective, Ismail (2016) postulates that corporate strategy is about a firm’s selection of an optimum set of business and making decisions on how the activities the company has chosen get meshed with the corporate whole. A corporate strategy offers long-range guidance to the entire organization. The strategy has to do with selecting and deciding the markets in which a firm should operate.
From a strategy perspective, an operations strategy is the totality of pattern decisions that give shape to the long-term capabilities of any given operation by way of reconciling market requirements and operations resources (Anwar, Subroto, Alhabsji, & Djumahir, 2014). An operations strategy is the way and means by which the firm defends and reaches its chosen competitive position and type of business to do.
The operations strategy that GE has chosen is that of product differentiation through innovation. Technology changes, especially in IT and the overdependence of transactions on the Internet as well as the automation of production, have featured dramatically in GE. Within the decentralized and distributed R&D centers, engineers, scientists, and researchers work in collaboration as unified virtual teams courtesy of technology (Mullock, 2016).
These collaborations have been seen to advance productions in the areas of Power Electronics and Composite Material Designing amongst other fields. Furthermore, technology changes have significantly bolstered crucial knowledge functions, like non-standard software development in India (Mullock, 2016). Technology changes have also been the force that has facilitated the establishment of new divisions and head offices in foreign countries by GE.
Conclusion
GE’s mission statement relates significantly to its operations strategy. GE sees and positions itself as a significant force of industrial development influencing, to a great extent, other industrial players. The mission and vision statements are the tools that managers at GE use to formulate strategies that guide business operations at the firm (Thompson, 2017). From the reign of Jack Welch to Jeff Immelt as CEOs at GE, the firm has been in pursuit of being a truly global company (Murray, 2016).
GE has had to outsource its manufacturing plants to developing nations, establish research and development centers outside US borders, shifting company divisions and head offices to foreign lands, as well as focusing more on exports (Mullock, 2016). It is inarguable then that most of these developments and turns at GE have come by as a result of the enormous impact and inducement provided by technology changes.
References
Anwar, Subroto, B., Alhabsji, T., & Djumahir. (2014). The relationship between operations strategy and competitive strategy in improving firm performance: A literature review. International Journal of Business and Management Invention, 3(7), 05-12. Web.
Ismail, H. (2016). Preferences in business and corporate strategies: The role of personal values. Contemporary Management Research, 12(1), 25-46. Web.
Mullock, H. (2016). Impact of globalization on General Electric (GE) policies. Web.
Murray, A. (2016). GE’s Immelt signals end to 7 decades of globalization. Web.
Reuters. (2019). Company profile: General Electric Co. (GE.N). Web.
Thompson, A. (2017). General Electric’s (GE) Vision statement and mission statement. Web.