General Electric: SWOT, PESTLE, and 7-S Analysis

Abstract

General Electric deals with various products and sectors as well. These are such as renewable energy, automotive and the oil and gas industry. An analysis has been undertaken to identify certain issues that they may be facing as an organization. The tools employed in the study are SWOT and PESTLE, 7-S and a balanced score card. In this way, they have pointed on the capabilities of the company as well as their weaknesses. The SWOT analysis has shown that one of the weaknesses of General Electric is in their structure. The company uses a tall structure that tends to slow down their decision-making process and further leads them to incur high compensation costs. Furthermore, the process of innovation is also negatively affected due to the tall structure being employed. Furthermore, the 7-S has also pointed out that the tall structure is what is used by the organization. It has thus been proposed that General Electric should adopt a flat organizational structure that has less departmental levels or managers. In this way, the company will obtain various benefits and further enhance their performance.

Introduction

I had an opportunity to work at General Electric which is listed among the largest organizations globally with various active industries. It specializes in sectors such as power, aviation, renewable energy, oil and gas, transportation and connection of energy. The firm also operates in other sectors such as transportation, life sciences, automotive, engineering and development of software. The aviation part of General Electric deals with products and services such as replacement parts, jet engines, aerospace systems and equipment, and repair maintenance services. The oil and gas sector, on the other hand, concentrates on the supply of material through the downstream processing in refineries. Oil and gas industry partakes other roles such as the inspection and compression of pipelines as well as down streaming processing in refineries and petrochemicals plants. General Electric performs well in the market, and their gross revenue has even been listed among Fortune 500. In 2011 for instance, it was ranked sixty-eighth in America.

The paper will conduct an assessment of the organization. Various tools will be utilized in the process. They include a SWOT, PESTLE and 7-S analysis and a balanced scorecard. After these tools have analyzed the firm, their organization chart will be presented and assessed as well. A new organizational chart will then be displayed by changes that have been proposed to the management structure.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

General Electric has a diversified product portfolio. The portfolio is present in eight various business segments that include healthcare, power, and water, aviation, oil and gas, transportation and energy management as well as lighting and appliances. Also, the firm has a varied portfolio and attends to various markets with all their business varieties of goods.

They also have a steady revenue stream. The diverse portfolio of General Electricals is maintained with steady streams of income from all their businesses. This assists to reduce the risk of the business of becoming over-dependent on one business segment. The capital of General Electricals is also the largest contributor to the revenue accounts. This is about twenty-five percent of aviation, water, oil, and gas as well as healthcare.

General Electric also has an intense research and development. The arm of the investigation and development of the firm is referred to as GE Global Research that has a broad range of a set of technology that covers fields such as fluid mechanics, electronics, and others. On the other hand, the intense research and development enables the company to bring innovative products and thus maintain technological leadership in all their fields of operation.

The firm has operations in various countries and businesses all over the world. It has been observed that they operate in more than one hundred and sixty organizations. This depicts that they have a high revenue and hence are quite stable as well.

General Electric is also pointed out as one of the most innovative and green places. As such, it is observed to be one of the best places to conduct duties.

Additionally, General Electric also has more than 50% of their business operations outside the USA. This thus depicts that they have a great balanced business revenue model (Pride and Ferrell, 2015).

Weaknesses

General Electrics has been subjected to various legal proceedings. They are a strong brand and thus are usually targeted easily for litigation even on minor issues that can be resolved easily. This has increased the costs of compliance for the organization. Moreover, General Electric has also been observed to have various legal issues that are pending in different countries. This can thus have a negative impact on their position and financial condition in those countries as well.

The organization has a significant amount of debt that has been observed to affect their operations. It was pointed out that they have over 200 billion dollars that had been borrowed on a long-term basis. Besides, a significant amount of funds is also spent on paying interest on the borrowings that have been made by the organization.

General Electric relies on raw materials supply. Furthermore, they rely heavily on multiple third parties, commodity markets and contract manufacturers for the supply of raw materials. As such, any form of disruption in the delivery of raw materials may result in their operations being put to a stop and thus affect the revenues received or anticipated (Giffin, 2015).

The firm has a tall structure that has been observed to pose various difficulties in management. Making decisions at the company has been seen to be quite slow hence resulting to ineffectiveness in the outcome or performance. Furthermore, they also incur high costs in compensation and other administrative duties for the various layers of management. The costs have been reflected in their financial records or statements that may otherwise be avoided or saved for other activities in the organization (Grant and Jordan, 2015).

Opportunities

The firm has strengthened their business operations through acquiring other smaller organizations across the world and conducting buyouts.

There is an increased demand for the commercial airplanes. It has been estimated that the passenger traffic would continue to grow at a rate of five percent per year. The growing demand for the passenger traffic can thus be taken advantage of by General Electric. This is as a result of their project inventory that ranges from shaft engines, jet engines and other related parts for replacement.

There are emerging economies that have also offered a vast scope. This is as a long as the infrastructure required to build the entire cities has been provided (Pride and Ferrell, 2015).

General Electric also operates in a significant number of countries around the world. One of the countries is China where General Electric has a lot of contracting opportunities. More than half of the revenues of General Electric are obtained from nations outside the United States. Moreover, they have also been projected to have contracting opportunities in India, Italy, Mexico, Japan and South Africa (DiChristopher, 2016).

Threats

There are strict government policies and environmental regulatory norms that have affected operations of General Electric. Most of their activities come under the authority of individual state local, federal and foreign environmental regulations. All these government bodies aim at monitoring the adherence to guidelines that are related to treatment, discharge, storage, and disposal of materials. For instance, in 2008, the firm incurred expenses of mandated remediation up to 0.3 billion dollars (Griffin, 2011).

General Electric also faces issues related to IT security that can pose a danger to their operations or activities.

The world economy has also been observed to be quite unpredictable. This is concerning the fluctuating currencies and economic recessions that have been seen to affect businesses in the world severely. It has resulted in a decline in demand among the consumers (Griffin, 2013).

PESTLE Analysis

General Electric is a significant and successful firm in the world market. However, it is usually affected by external and internal factors. Politically, the roles of the national government should be observed by companies undertaking business activities. General Electric is a large global firm and thus ha to deal with the political systems of a nation in a unique manner. Some of the difficulties incurred in the process entail tax regulations and policies as well as restriction. In all these elements, the firm has to adjust to the conditions of the service and requirements of the products for them to match the national markets. It is thus essential for the organization to consider these aspects since they will be under various governments and attain goals that have set for their clients. According to Saleem (2010), the political element may have an impact on the decision of a firm to invest in a new nation or market.

Economically, General Electric should be cautious of fluctuation in the national growth and fuel prices as well. Labor and operational costs should also be considered as well. It is vital for General Electric to deduce measures that will them to avoid the elements of inflation or deflation in the various countries that they venture. The reason behind this is due to the difference in economic growth and other external issues that will influence the organization. For instance, there is the impulsive situation that occurs from fluctuation of the currency exchange. The varying rate of currency exchange has an effect on the firm for it to anticipate an economic performance. The term of trade to comparing the import and export price is also another vital element that General Electric should put in mind. In this way, they will have ample knowledge on the balancing payments which may be a major issues in the currency exchange rate (Ghuman and Aswathappa, 2010).

The firm should consider the aspects of norms, religion, culture and social environment in the social aspect of the external environment. General Electric has always been sensitive to these factors before conducting investments to other external markets (Rao, 2016). Demographically, the products and services should be developed in a way that they can satisfy the market and individual customers fully. The consideration of the social welfare of a nation and the quality of life is important to ensure that the firm becomes successful in any setting (Bucifal, 2009).

Innovative products are among the main focus of General Electric. Technologically, their competitors employ more advanced forms of production an especially those that are upcoming in the market. The use of new business models by General Electric have also enabled them to compete in an effective way. In the environmental element, General Ele...