General Electric and It's Social Response

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Incorporated by inventor Thomas Edison in 1892, the General Electric Company is a multinational corporation centered in Fairfield, Connecticut, although the company's main offices are located at the iconic 30 Rockefeller Plaza building in New York City. The fact that GE's headquarters are in such a famous location gives us an idea about the public image that this company has built over the last 120 years.

Today, General Electric is made up of five large business entities; Capital Finance, Consumer & Industrial, Energy Infrastructure, Technology, and Infrastructure. Together these "businesses" employ more than 300,000 employees worldwide. GE has had a place on the Dow Jones Industrial Average since its inception in 1896 and its stock is the most widely held in the world. This all goes to say that General Electric is a very well established, very large multinational company with a vast number of stakeholders. This amazing growth could not have occurred without a strong commitment to its consumers, whose investment and support allowed General Electric to absorb, sustain and grow such a variety of businesses.

The public and the government's general view of General Electric's acquisition and control of entire industries threatened to overshadow the groundbreaking innovations that the company was creating. The United States government invoked antitrust laws, and as such, the company was pressured to leave the power generation business in 1924. Fifteen years later, GE was forced release the patents to its fluorescent light bulb and sell off its interests in radio company RCA under the same monopoly accusations. General Electric's and the government later quickly made amends due to GE's specialty in nuclear and jet engin...

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...an-up orders and that any negative consequences of the order were not caused by the order itself, but by market reactions to it.

The Supreme Court decision and its associated negative public relations effect was not disregarded by General Electric. In the light of these recent events and the possibility of negative fallout, GE publicly acknowledged that scientific understanding and regulations have changed significantly in the last 130 years of their operation . They also assert that they must address the "legacy" environmental issues that the company has played a part of in the last century.

General Electric is a company that has shown that it is not afraid of taking on some of the toughest problems that the world faces. They have shown that they are a company committed to a forward thinking business model, while not ignoring the company's past.

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