Word: welched
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...understand what I'm trying to say?" demands John Francis Welch Jr. The embattled chairman of General Electric puts an arm around a visitor's shoulders and spreads out an improbable set of papers. One shows that GE, with 222,000 employees in 100 countries, has had only three criminal convictions in the 13 years that Welch has run the company. Another points out that the U.S. Justice Department, which has been hounding GE lately, has had 140 of its employees prosecuted for corruption or other on-the-job offenses just since 1992. Yet another shows that GE is headed...
...reason for this public relations offensive is that Jack Welch, perhaps the most admired corporate manager in America, is suddenly fighting for his honor as GE faces embarrassments from its outpost on Wall Street to its half- century-old engine division in Evendale, Ohio. Chief among the problems is the mess at Kidder Peabody, GE's money-losing brokerage unit, where head government-bond trader Joseph Jett concocted $350 million of phony profits over a 29-month period before he was fired in April. Jett now claims to have been acting with the knowledge of his superiors. The scandal...
...Welch also scoffs at the notion that his emphasis on winning might encourage employees to cheat or cut corners to meet corporate goals. "Joe Jett was thinking about GE's quarterly earnings sitting down there?" he asks rhetorically. "Anybody with an IQ over 70 would know that Joe Jett didn't , care about GE's earnings. He never thought about GE. He had a game going for himself." Besides, says Welch, he has no choice but to call upon his employees to push their limits. "How can you tell an organization, 'Run slower'?" he asks...
...Welch, who tried to sell Kidder to financial conglomerate Primerica in 1992 only to have the deal fall through, must first nurse the firm back to health before he can have any hope of finding a buyer. In the latest management shuffle at the brokerage, Welch brought in a new executive team headed by Dennis Dammerman, GE's chief financial officer, to restore Kidder's profits. "What I've got to do with Kidder is get it solidly grounded," Welch says. "Until Kidder gets stabilized, I don't have very many options to do anything...
Like Kidder, NBC has from the start been a bruising journey into uncharted territory for GE. Close observers trace the declines in ratings and morale at the network to Welch's decision to install Robert Wright, who had been president of GE Financial, to run NBC. Wright promptly slashed budgets, laid off workers and, critics say, treated the business of providing news and entertainment as if it were indistinguishable from making loans or refrigerators...