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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
No contemporary business leader has been so widely acclaimed as Jack Welch of General Electric. Welch's transformation of GE into one of America's most profitable and valuable companies has been chronicled already in several other books, most recently Jack Welch and the GE Way by Robert Slater. Now comes journalist Thomas F. O'Boyle to take Welch down a notch--or two or three. Where other books wholeheartedly endorse Welch's gung-ho style of leadership, At Any Cost finds much to abhor.
No contemporary business leader has been so widely acclaimed as Jack Welch of General Electric. Welch's transformation of GE into one of America's most profitable and valuable companies has been chronicled already in several other books, most recently Jack Welch and the GE Way by Robert Slater. Now comes journalist Thomas F. O'Boyle to take Welch down a notch--or two or three. Where other books wholeheartedly endorse Welch's gung-ho style of leadership, At Any Cost finds much to abhor.
O'Boyle, an editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, holds Welch personally responsible for various scandals over the years at some of GE's multifarious appendages, from contract fraud in its defense business (later sold) to faked crash tests of GM trucks on Dateline NBC. Welch's single-minded devotion to winning drives his subordinates to cut corners, O'Boyle suggests, though the author offers little evidence to implicate Welch in these or other lapses by a few of GE's 276,000 employees.
O'Boyle is actually more interested in nailing Welch for many of America's social problems. He believes that mass layoffs at GE in the 1980s made downsizing fashionable. GE's success in enriching shareholders encouraged other corporations to curry favor with Wall Street while ignoring their impact on the rest of society. The results have been catastrophic for many families and communities. So even in good times, American workers are plagued by a sense of insecurity. O'Boyle implies that Welch's pernicious influence can be seen in the divorce rate and even in the paranoia that produced the bombing of the Tulsa federal building.
Yet O'Boyle is not a class warrior or know-nothing populist. He recognizes that the drive and ruthlessness of people like Jack Welch have saved America from the economic stagnation of a Germany or Japan. Thorough in its reporting and finely written, At Any Cost is a plea for a kinder and gentler corporate capitalism, one mindful of its social consequences. O'Boyle does not have all the answers, but he raises important questions. --Barry Mitzman
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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