Organizational Evaluation Culture at General Electric

ORGANIZATIONAL EVOLUTION
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Introduction
Increased competition and globalization in the market place are the main reasons why organizations are constantly changing. Many organizations have either improved on or changed their products and services – through innovation - in order to remain relevant in today's intensively competitive and globalized markets. In almost every organizational case study, creativity has been touted as a major contributor for successful innovation and change (Cooper, 2009). Among organizations that have been at the forefront of innovative change in the recent past is General Electric Company, simply known as GE. General Electric is currently considered one of the most innovative companies in the world. Its innovative story, however, has been one of tackling tough challenges within its industry in order to transform and creativity into real innovation.
It is a fact that organizations' life cycles have been shrinking; the shrinking in organizations' life cycles have been coupled with a correlated shrinking in their products and services. In the face of such shrinking organizations and products or services, culture is largely ignored. However, it is organizational culture that holds the most important part of an organization. When an organization is seen to be shrinking alongside its products or services, the life cycle of the organizational culture also gets shorter. Therefore, there exists a correlation between organizational culture and growth and development of an organization.
Organizational Culture at General Electric
The current wave of innovation that is evident at General Electric trickles down to one factor – the organization's culture. For over 130 years of GE's existence, the company has had numerous challenges and threats in equal measure. Though it was started on an innovative platform, the company's over-reliance on one product and in one country had contributed to the freezing of organizational culture. Culture is objectively contextual. For example, what is appropriate now for a sizable company will be sufficiently inappropriate in 20 to 30 years to come. Culture is, therefore, an always changing element of the organization. The organization must change with it if is to achieve growth and success in the market.
For GE, considerable success has been achieved by the constant change of its organizational culture. At its inception, GE concentrated only on one product and in one country: the United States. However, recent constant changes in its organizational culture have seen the company venture in 175 countries across the world. This has been a magnificent jump considering GE's humble beginnings. However, their evolution has been as a result of constant reengineering of the company's operating models, business portfolios, and culture.
The shifts in culture that GE has had to make in the last couple of decades represent decisions made within the company's respective eras in the world of business. For example, GE made a major cultural shift in the 1990s. This shift in culture was inevitable because the industrial business world demanded operational excellence at that time. Companies in the indu...