General Motors and Teamwork

General Motors and Teamwork

  • Submitted By: lsutygr
  • Date Submitted: 11/02/2008 6:12 PM
  • Category: Business
  • Words: 2163
  • Page: 9
  • Views: 2

General Motors Approach to Teamwork
General Motors being one of the most successful organizations has been charged with the task of guiding the world's biggest car manufacturer, based on sales. General Motors (GM) is an expansive company consisting of automotive business with holdings in finance, insurance, locomotives and communications services. General Motors is the world's largest automotive corporation operating in over 70 countries with a presence in more than 200 countries, more than 260 major subsidiaries, and a total of 395,000 employees worldwide which translate into global opportunities that span the planet.
William Crapo Durant founded General Motors Co. in 1908 (Ferris, 1996). William Crapo Durant was formerly a member of the Buick Motor Car Co. (Ferris). General Motors start began with Oldsmobile and a few other not very stable operations. During the time of the first rollout of the Chevrolet Citation and the current mid sized SUVs that are being spit off the production line, the corporate change of GM has not gone unnoticed.
. Around 1987, General Motors started the progression toward the team approach (Ferris, 1996, p. 1). Creativity and empowerment is seen with employees when given the authority to stop the assembly line if a problem is seen and to initiate a process of correction (Davis, Marcotte, & Lucas, 1998), (Cyr, 1993). The attitude now is more of cooperation between labor and management, a teamwork mentality that empowers all employees to make quality decisions. A them vs. us attitude no longer exists. (May, 2001) Gone are the days of management and union labor disputes which have now been replaced with joint decision making processes. This vision is: “We will win by thinking and acting together as one General Motors team, focused on global leadership. Our strengths are our highly skilled people and our diversity” (GM.com) Thus, the “competitive resources” that General Motors used included the workers of General...

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