HBS Faculty Comment on the General Motors Bankruptcy
Associate Professor
Professor Joseph Bower
Joseph Bower, Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration
Visiting Scholar Daniel Heller, Visiting Scholar All stakeholders must work together to make GM's bankruptcy filing a comma rather than a period in the storied history of this American corporate icon. The U.S. cannot afford to lose the thousands of middle-class jobs of GM workers and management, nor the cutting edge R&D that GM does with its suppliers and partner universities. GM faces a unique opportunity to transform its assembly plants and R&D centers into more nimble operations that can sustain its renewed brands far into the 21st Century. 
Professor Nancy Koehn Nancy Koehn, James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration What happened next was both pivotal in shaping the auto industry for much of the 20th century, and in the face of GM's bankruptcy announced today, terribly ironic. Beginning in the mid 1920s, GM staged an astounding victory against Ford Motor Company. Alfred Sloan, Pierre Du Pont, and other GM executives placed a series of important bets on what American consumers wanted (different makes, models and prices; cars that were status symbols and identity holders as well as transportation sources) and they did so with careful, consistent attention to what the competition was (and was not) doing. As company leaders rolled out this daring strategy, they also created an organizational structure and culture developed to support a multi-product, vertically integrated enterprise. By the mid 1930s, GM's market share had risen to 42% while Ford's had fallen to 21%. And General Motors had laid the groundwork for decades of industry dominance, offering "a car for very purse and purpose" and pioneering the multidivisional structure that became one of the signal achievements of the modern corporation. In this context, it is interesting to consider the root causes of General Motor's decline, which has been under way for 30 years. Although there are many factors that contributed to the company's long, slow bleed, the three fundamental issues are management's consistent failure to do the very things that made the business so successful initially. First, pay close attention to what is happening to consumers' lives in the context of the larger environment-not only their stated preferences, but their hopes, dreams, wallets, lifestyles, and values. Second, keep an equally close eye on the competition. And three, understand how a company's structure and culture relate to its strategy. Use all this understanding to place innovative bets. This is what the early leaders of GM did. And this is what several generations of executives-beginning in the 1970s with the first oil shocks and the entrance of Japanese imports-have consistently failed to do. It has been a failure of leadership as astounding and momentous (and ironic) as the company's early achievement. 
Professor Emeritus Malcolm Salter, James J. Hill Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus Last December the U.S. Treasury had no choice but to become GM's "lender of last resort." To have done otherwise would have been devastating for the U.S. and global economy. With today's bankruptcy deal, the U.S. government's role essentially changes from "reluctant" creditor to "reluctant" owner. And the UAW's role shifts to being an owner as well. Since no other private capital has been willing to step forward, these role changes are not necessarily a bad thing-as long as the Administration lives up to its pledge to keep partisan politics out of inter-firm competition by refraining to exercise the legitimate decision rights of equity holders. Ditto for the UAW. But the President left the door slightly open for selective intervention when he pledged non-interference "in all but the most important decisions." What could those decisions be for the government? For the UAW? Today's bankruptcy deal and presidential statement open a new chapter on the conduct of industrial governance and American capitalism. This chapter is being written more or less "on the fly." It is now up to Congress and the rest of us to monitor this highly incremental governance strategy before it is either unduly celebrated or castigated by the public and, more importantly, integrated without critique into the nation's industrial policy "play book." 
Assistant Professor Daniel Snow, Assistant Professor of Business Administration GM will emerge from this crisis with a dramatically weakened portfolio of both current and future products. Although much attention has been focused on electric cars, hybrids, and fuel cells, I believe that the key player in the carbon-conscious automobile market of the next ten years is the compact car, especially one powered by a diesel engine. With very clean emissions, 60 and 70 MPG fuel consumption, and lots of power, diesel compacts would provide stiff competition to hybrids. But GM has just lost its ability to develop small cars with the sale of its Opel subsidiary to Canadian auto parts maker Magna International and the German government. This is a great deal for Magna, but terrible for Chevrolet. GM's best small cars are engineered (and some are manufactured) by Opel in Europe. But it's not just about design and engineering. The supply chains and factory networks that provide these cars will need to be divided. GM's explicit strategy of the last decade has been to foster areas of specialization within its subsidiaries around the world - small cars in Europe, subcompacts in Asia, trucks and SUVs in North America - and this has started to yield great results. Now GM (of North America?) will be left with engineering competencies almost exclusively in those same large vehicles likely to be obsoleted by a new 35.5 MPG standard the Administration has promised to implement by 2016. 
Professor Dennis Yao Dennis Yao, Lawrence E. Fouraker Professor of Business Administration The threat of bankruptcy, by allowing the government and General Motors to negotiate important deals with GM's unions and a majority of creditors, went a fair distance toward achieving a restructuring that would make it possible for GM to emerge as a viable long-term player in the automobile industry. Unfortunately, the threat was not enough; hence the actual bankruptcy. In addition to the usual strategy, resource, and implementation concerns faced by a company emerging from Chapter 11, the "new GM" has an additional set of worries that arise while the primary owners are the U.S. and Canadian governments. While attention to business environment issues is important for all automakers, GM is more likely than most of its rivals to feel strong pressure to pursue public policy goals such as domestic employment that are not normally pursued by the private sector. Domestic employment, of course, is an important justification for the government bail-outs, but inflexibility with respect to employment and compensation has also been part of the original problem. Hopefully, the new GM will soon offer the type of products that will make employment a lesser concern. |
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