General Electric Case Study

Globalization and Technology

General Electric (GE) has manufactured and sold products that span from a small household appliance to health care equipment, and also jet engines for years. They are a business that has a solid footprint in the global markets and technology growth. Growing demands for new technology remains just as strong as ever. GE has combined technology and globalization by taking their state of the art products around the globe and they are in 130 countries (Directory, 2016). In January 2015, GE Ventures (Geventures, 2015), a division of GE, has partnered with Rethink Robotics, which designs and makes robots for dozens of industries that use robot applications to help build and assemble products (Collaborative, 2008-2016).

“An industrial organization is a field of economics dealing with the strategic behavior of firms, regulatory policy, antitrust policy and market competition” (Industrial, 2012). The I/O model helps a business understand it has outside forces or external environment such as opportunities in the market and also any threats that are important to be aware of. The Model includes: The External Environment, An Attractive Industry, Strategy Formulation, Assets and Skills, Strategy Implementation, and Superior Returns (Hitts, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2003, p. 15). The I/O model follows Michael Porters Five Forces but adds the additional

“We work regularly with hundreds of customers, regulators, non-governmental organizations, academics, government bodies and other partners to identify emerging issues and develop collaborative solutions” (Sustainability, 2016). GE says; “their employees are the closest, at all levels of the organization, to their customers, partners and communities as part of their work responsibilities and volunteer initiatives” (Sustainability, 2016). This makes all the different stakeholders valuable at different levels. There are internal and external stakeholders which can be; individual stakeholders that might be investors, shareholders, or any consumers with a nonmonetary or a monetary status involved with the company. Direct stakeholders are attentive to the everyday activities of the business such as people who are working for the business and indirect stakeholders would be people such as customers who might purchase products a company produces. For example; a hospital that might purchase an MRI machine from