business report of GM

Business report of GM GM is the biggest car company in the world, Years gross industrial output value of $100 billion. The sign of GM comes from the first letter of the last two worlds of it's English name General Motro Corporation. GM was established by William Durant in America car city Detroit in 1908 in the foundation of Buick. Now it's headquarters is still in Detroit. GM is the biggest company among the five hundred biggest companies in America and the second largest industrial enterprise in the world. It has eight hundred thousand employees in the world,distribute in the world in 40 countries and regions. GM can produce as many as more than nine hundred thousand cars each year.General motors is one of the earliest largest enterprise using share-holding system and expert group management. The cars that GM produced typically show the luxury, wide, internal comfortable, fast of America car. Also the GM especially pay attention to the quality and new technology use. Therefore, GM has a great reputation among the customers. Here is the important time of GM: In 1909, GM soled 25,000 cars and trucks, acquired Cadillac at the price of 5.5 million and GMC and AC at the same time. In 1910, because of the low benefits increase and the debate crisis, Durant was removed form his office. In 1915-1916, general motors corporation was found and than Durant came back to the GM. In 1920, Durant retired and than died with his announce of bankrupt. In 1923, Fred's p Sloan was employed as the CEO as well as chairman of GM. In 1942, GM started to serve for the war and stop the production of civil car. In 1954, GM get the 54% car market of America and the fifty million car was produced in America. In 1956, Sloan retired. In 1988, the income of GM came to 123.6 billions and the profits came to 4.6 billions while the amount of employees down to 766 thousand. In 1991, GM lose the record of 4.45 billion benefits. The CEO Stempel announced that will close 21 factories in the following years and will layoff 9 thousand employees. In 1992, Stempel resign from GM because of the right cutting by the board of directors and Jack Smith became the CEO of GM. In 2000, Rick Wagoner took place Smith and became the CEO of GM. GM cut down 10% white collar in the same year. In 2007, deficit 38.7 billion include the unused 39billion tax credit. It was the highest lose in the history of car industry. In 2008, the price of oil increased to 4 dollars per gallon, truck sell meet the suffocating. GM announced that they will close four truck company and sport car company and cut down 8.4 employees. In the December, because of the financial crisis, GM told the congress that they need 18 billion the support it's operating. GM than get 13.4 billion bailout money and lose 30.9 billion. In 2009, Barack Obama became the president of America.on seventh February, GM announced that GM need 30 billion support. In 2009-2011, Dan Akerson became the CEO of GM,after a series of restructuring reform and government support, GM went out of the financial crisis and bankruptcy protection. As a company with a history of more than one hundred years, GM experienced all kinds of crisis, arise and booming, structural reform and the change of manager with the different style of management. As a large global company, like the change of each state power, it is almost impossible to operate the company with one model or with one style of management. The crisis of GM well affirmed this point. Therefore, the each change of the top manager played the significant role in the continue of GM. Alfred Sloan (1875-1966) is the first successful professional handler, the greatest CEO in the twentieth century. The first CEO of GM, the founder of division system structure and the representative figure in management and business model. He divided GM into 21 business division leaded by four manager. This fully reflect the rule of the separate between management and policy making. After his reform, GM experienced a fast development and became the biggest company in the world as well as the economic sign of America. The market strategy of Sloan is produce new cars to stimulate the customers change their cars constantly. To the daily operation, he strengthen the fine management control, make the aim, make forecast of the factories' investment, working capital, inventory control, sell and profit. He pay highly attention to the forecast, and he know well about the lose in the forecast. Therefore, he leave room in decision-making and keep adjusting. To the research and development, he know well that the technological advantage is the key of the company. Therefore, not only the headquarter but also the subsidiary has it's own research institute. Sloan is dislike the style of dictatorship. The first thing he did when he became the CEO of GM was encourage the employees to raise their objection, his goal is to make GM has a atmosphere of democracy to help him get the right opinions. Also he forgive and encourage these people who hold the opposite opinions. What he did make the middle managers dare to express their objection to the decision even when they meat the top manager of the company without the worry about be fired. Sloan hold three points about the listening of objections. The first one is encourage the team members exchange opinions. The second one is let the members know how to reflect their opinions. The third one is never punish those who present different opinions and behave very extreme. This three points contain a reliable system to ensure the top managers can get the different opinions. Sloan thought that the performance is the unique standard to comment the managers and the high sales volumes is the goal of the company. Sloan announced that his foundation concept is to produce the better car, better annex and make more reform. These style of management made GM get great success under the management of Sloan. In 1940, after 16 years' management by Sloan, GM produced 1.2 million cars and trucks and account 40% car market in America. It is only 7% in 1921. Sloan retired in 1946. After 1946, from 1946 to 2009, GM changed 11 CEO. In this period, GM experienced the booming in the taken from Sloan and then was the long time challenge from the many aspects, the world oil price change, the competence from the car companies of other countries, the financial crisis. However, GM did not win, it meat the setback again and again. GM is not the GM it before, it lose the position it has before. In this period, because of the decision mistake and weak workplace spirituality. GM went to the edge of bankrupt and it hope of the government. The reasons are the wrong brand organization, the wrong forecast of the customers preference, the bad management of the structure of the company, the less attention to the quality of the products as well as the strategy making when faced the competition of other car companies. In 2009, the new GM was build up and Daniel F. Akerson became the first CEO of the new GM. Akerson is a strong manager, he think that a good manager must be a good listener first, the participation in the discussion will help a manager to make a right decision. He want to let everyone has the chance to express their opinions, when the whole team confirm the decision, it must be well carried out, each one of the company must follow it. He also hold the opinion that each person has the particular t aspect hat he is good at and it is very important to ask the right to do the right job. Akerson is also a good strategy maker, the new and important strategy that he made is treat China market as the most important market in the world. After he became the CEO of GM, he increased the invest in China market and push-off many new style cars in China market. On the other hand, he value the working situation of the common workers. He went to the workshop and ask the them many questions. He let the workers to tell him what he can do to help them enhance the efficiency, what can be changed in the production. When he face the top managers of GM. He will ask them many questions carefully, query and discuss the decision made or offered by them. He strongly control the capacity of GM to ensure that each dollar will express it's value. The management style of him is strong, pay attention to the thinking of others, hold the each chance that ever appeared and pay attention to what the customers need and give them what they need. After the right leading by him for three nearly three years, GM get booming again and win the market percent that it lost before. As a company has 104 years' history, GM has taken shape of it's unique enterprise culture. It contains the management culture, organization culture, workers culture, and the most important brand culture. GM has many subsidiaries in the world, so, how to coordinate the relation between the subsidiaries and the headquarters is a great challenge to GM. In GM, the subsidiaries must obey the need of the produce department as well as the future development of the company. For example, the research department should keep the speed of new technology researching to keep the advantages to other competitive companies. The design department may be the most department of the company, it should always stand in frond of design industry. The organization culture is the most complex culture of GM. As a global big company, GM has many big organization, the coordinate between each organization is sometimes decide the future of the company. The booming and downfall of GM is greatly influenced by it. Although one mold of organization style can help the company develop steady in a specific time, it can also downfall the company in a specific period. Therefore, the organization culture of GM changes with the time. The worker culture of GM is stable reversely compared to other cultures. GM is a company has about 260,000 employees, the working attitude is greatly influenced by the style of the top manager as well as the operating situation of the company. The worker culture of GM experienced the deferent style of positive, sluggish, and positive. When the company's operating result is bad and the managers decided to lay off employees, the employees will become more positive to avoid being dismissed. The brand culture of GM is strong since the company has a clear position to each brand to let them compete the explicit brand. Therefore, the brand culture is the most strongest in GM. However, the enterprise culture of GM is weak relatively. GM is a big global company, in the early stage, it just a big company in America, but, with the strength of it, it became the big global company in the world as well as the biggest tax income of America government. The old GM has 14 brands in total. It is the biggest individual employer in the world, the largest amount of employees it has is 853,000. GM has many factories in the world, not only the factories in the developed countries like America, German, France, Britain and Korea but also the developing countries like Argentina, South Africa India and China. GM has a clear and different strategy to each different market in the world. It always keep and strength the advantages and competitiveness in each market. After the birth of new GM, North America and China became the most important markets of GM besides the native market. The new vision technology research and development center outside America is another sign of global company. Its goal is to meat the different demand of what the customers need in different countries. With is downfall of native market, the development of abroad markets will become the major factors of GM. In the twenty first century, the managers of GM will meet the greatest challenge that they never meet before. The managers will face the structured and unstructured problems at the same times. The traditional management like organization management, culture management and production management may be familiar to the managers. However, the dealing with the competitiveness and the new style cars would be a great challenge to them. Energy crisis and the environmental problems in the twenty first century will take the reformation to car industry. Therefore, the research and design of new energy cars are the decisive factors in the competition. It is true that GM has the advantage in the design area, however, the new technology use is the most important. Although GM has many technological advantages on the traditional cars, it can not keep the advantages any more since the key of new cars is the dealing with the new energy use. Therefore, the management on new technology research will be the important challenging task to the managers. Besides the products research, the competitivenesses that come from other companies is also hard to deal with to the managers especially in the China market. With the great increase on economic and technology development, China is becoming the country which has master the core since and technology in the world. Therefore, the state enterprise in China will get great advantages on the product research. Not only the challenge of Chinese state enterprise but also the the car companies come from Japan, Europe, the UK are also the strong competitors to GM. Therefore, how to treat the markers with intense competition will be a great challenge to the managers of GM. The top managers of the new GM has a series method to deal with the open system model. First of all, they replace the old management and production model since they can not meet the demand of the market situation any more. Then, the top managers made a series market strategy. One of it is the establish of vision technology research and development center in major markets to deal with the reformation in car industry. Also the GM managers has made the current and futures goals to enhance the competitiveness of GM. All of this are belong to the value-based management. The green management approachs of GM have changed after the corporate restructuring. Firstly, they made the strategy to reduce the liabilities. It will ensure them can have a high profits and keep invest in the economic downturn. This long term plane is very important to the new GM. Besides, this will enhance the competitiveness of new markets and consolidate traditional markets. The important decision that the GM directors made is to employ the tough head manager. This will change the workers' working attitude as well as the staffs working attitudes and this will make the company has a higher competitiveness. The organization's mission statements of GM are greatly reflected by goals. The current goals of GM is to remodel the GM and occupy the market leading position again. To realize the goals. GM has made five strategy. The first one is to improve the utilization rate, the second one is to optimize the cost structure, the third one is reduce the liability of inventory, the forth one is to establish more technology research and development center, the fifth one is to improve the quality of the brand competitiveness. According to the management history, the each CEO change are mainly because of the management performance. If the CEO did not finish or reach the expect goal, he mill be fired. Not only the CEO, but also the principle of each department. Therefore, the finish of the expected goal is the decisive factor to judge the managers' management performance and decide whether fired him or not. In conclusion, GM is global company with weak culture, value based management is the core style management, the have timely and effective coping mechanism to answer the market change as well as the flexible ways to deal with the structured and unstructured problems they meet. All of this are executed to finish the goals the expected. 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