General motors in an age of corporate restructuring

Abstract

General Motors’ achievement during much of the twentieth century was built on a foundation of some aspects of Fordist production and an organisational structure developed by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Sloan served forty-five years at GM, first as an executive and then on its Board of Directors (Sloan, 1990). Following unevenness in its early years, the company attained fairly consistent prosperity. This success continued until the early 1970s. After that, however, GM alternated periods of profitable operations with periods of serious financial losses. Furthermore, the company’s market share in its home market has been declining for years.We argue that General Motors’ problems stem partly from relying too long on Fordist production and also flow from not maintaining some of the valuable aspects of Sloan’s structure. We also contend that the company has been hampered somewhat by its slowness in modifying the Sloanist structure to match it more fully to GM’s growing international operations.