General Motors company overview and operations

General Motors

Discuss how General Motors has evolved over the years. Particularly how they have transformed from a national company into a global company.

General Motors was founded in 1908 in Flint, Michigan. However, it was not until the 1920s that the company began to develop a model for corporate success that would eventually rival the then-dominant Ford Motor company's expertise in manufacturing and advertising. GM, then lead by Alfred Sloan, did not try to compete with Ford upon costs, or speed of manufacturing, but upon quality. Now that the automobile was becoming a ubiquitous part of American life, Sloan realized that "Car buyers no longer wanted the cheapest and most basic model -- they wanted style, power and prestige, which GM offered them" ("General Motors," 2008, Histomobile).

Alfred Sloan also introduced the concept of borrowing upon credit for automobiles. He sniffed the moralistic views of Ford, and believed Ford's personal morality often colored Ford's business decisions regarding Ford employees and consumers. "Thanks to consumer financing, easy monthly payments allowed far more people to buy GM cars" ("General Motors," 2008, Histomobile). GM was also an early mover in the field of motorized public transportation. The company created the Greyhound bus lines that came to rival train travel as the most common method of interstate transportation, as more and more Americans sought to expand their travel horizons cheaply and efficiently.

GM's prosperity reached its height in the 1950s and 1960s, where the phrase that what was good for GM was good for the country became a popular slogan about the economic decisions. The company's large, flashy vehicles celebrated postwar American prosperity and the new abundance of wealth and raw materials. The Chevy and the Cadillac symbolized American's dominance of the world during these critical Cold War-era decades ("Explore GM history," 2008, General Motors Website). But the company's largesse, passed onto employees in the form of generous benefits and pensions, also meant that when the company began to falter it became "engulfed by obligations way beyond its ability to pay" former employees, and created a drain upon its bottom line. (Loomis 2006:1).

Even in 1990s when sales of American-made SUVs were high, GM "flirted with bankruptcy in 1992 and then reacted sluggishly as local rivals Ford and Chrysler capitalized on the SUV boom" (Loomis 2006:1). When the sales of all American SUVs began to plummet as the price of fuel escalated, GM was the hardest-hit of all the Detroit-based auto manufactures. In 2006, GM recorded the second-largest loss of any corporation in U.S. history ("General Motors, 2008, Histomobile). On December 21, 1955 it was the first American company to make over one billion dollars in a year ("General Motors," 2008, Histomobile).