September 28, 1998
Welch, who became CEO of GE in 1981, has been upheld by many as the quintessential corporate chieftain, a reputation he gained by steadily increasing GE's sales, earnings and stock price. But O'Boyle argues in this scathing examination of Welch's tenure to date that GE's growth has come with a heavy price--especially to the company's employees. According to O'Boyle, an 11-year veteran of the Wall Street Journal and currently assistant managing editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Welch compares business with war: any tactic is permissible as long as it leads to higher profits. This philosophy, O'Boyle explains, was used to justify Welch's rounds of downsizing as well as his demands that all GE division managers meet quarterly financial targets or risk being fired. In such an atmosphere, the author contends, it isn't surprising that Welch's GE has been implicated in scandal and questionable business practices, such as the company's role in the price-fixing of industrial diamonds with DeBeers, the falsification of profits at one-time GE subsidiary Kidder Peabody and GE executives' involvement in defense contract fraud (known as the Dotan affair). O'Boyle describes the ruthless way GE fought whistle-blowers who exposed, among other things, GE's repeated violations of Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules in its nuclear plants. Ultimately, O'Boyle believes that GE and Welch will be footnotes compared to visionary companies such as Motorola, Intel and Microsoft. Pictures not seen by PW. 75,000 first printing.