But more and more criticized: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Man-Who-Broke-Capitalism/David-Gelles/9781982176440
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Welchism exemplifies what is wrong with corporations around the world today. His disciples have turned companies into their personal cash cows through outright dishonesty, cronyism, "yes-man" shenanigans, and treating human beings as disposable commodities. All in the name of greed and ego. Bob Dylan said in his song Masters of War, "all the money you made will never buy back your soul". The world is a much better place without Welch. And it will be even better when his disciples are gone and nobobdy else wants to take the supertrain to he-l.
Thank you for mentioning this book. It shows how we inherited the gigantic mess that we are dealing with today. I wasn't aware of how the dots were all connected until I got to this paragraph about "GE University":
"In GE, Welch had the perfect apparatus to disseminate his new ideology. For much of the twentieth century, the company was a pioneer of organizational design and executive training. That continued under Welch. Not only did his underlings study his ways, parroting his mannerisms and internalizing his maxims, but they also went to what was known as GE University, a leafy campus where budding titans were sent to learn the ropes, and where Welch infected a new generation of business leaders with his values. In time, those executives went on to lead dozens of other major companies—including Boeing, 3M, Honeywell, Chrysler, Home Depot, Albertsons, and many more—where they seeded new clusters, spreading Welchism across the whole of corporate America. At the time of Welch’s retirement, sixteen public companies were run by men who had studied at his knee. Several more would appoint his pupils in the years that followed. At each of these corporations, the arrival of a CEO from GE was met with great fanfare, investors believing the board had appointed a leader who possessed the Midas touch. Sometimes, the executives were able to engineer short-term gains. Yet inevitably, whether in months or years, many of them failed."
Excellent that these one-time heroes are being exposed as charlatans who offshored much of the economy.