Opinion Neutron Jack
Legendary CEO, who has died at 84, reshaped the corporation for the 21st century and influenced world’s top managers.
The FIR against Rhea Chakraborty, Rajput’s friend and prime accused in the FIR filed in Patna, cites serious sections of the IPC, including abetment to suicide. 
A resource-strapped cricket administration has perfected the art of prioritising cricket development and fund allocation.
Jack Welch, the chemical engineer who rose through the ranks of General Electric and altered the nature of big corporates forever, has always elicited mixed reactions. But beyond doubt, in the 20 years at the helm since 1981, structurally and functionally, he created the modern corporation and prepared the ground for the Silicon Valley giants to come. An implacable foe of clutter, immediately after taking charge at GE, he dismantled the bureaucratic hierarchies which, as a young chemist, had urged him to quit. He favoured a small-company feel — a flatter, informal architecture, open to ideas from anywhere in the organisation. If a guy in a hoodie is acceptable as CEO of Facebook, the phenomenon owes something to Welch.
To cut the clutter, Welch innovated downsizing. He created a sort of productivity curve for people in an organisation, and pink-slipped the bottom 10 per cent in a routine culling process. It paid dividends in an overstaffed giant, increasing GE’s share value 30 times over during his tenure. Unfortunately, among his many imitators, downsizing has become a mania, is applied indiscriminately and ritually, and job losses have exacted social costs. Welch came to be called Neutron Jack, after the neutron bomb, which annihilates people but keeps value intact.
Perhaps Welch’s commitment to diversification was more remarkable. Diversity was innate in early commercial enterprises but the arrival of brands seemed to discourage suppleness in the interest of identity. But Welch took GE, identified as an electrical machinery and chemicals company, into the terra incognita of financial services and media. Of course, he also insisted that the company must dominate sectors it was present in. As he did himself, taking home the biggest severance package in corporate history.
Share
