Only one company can make the claim that one of their employees became president of the United States, and even more assert that they changed this individual political philosophy. The company is General Electric
In my latest book: The Secret to GE’s Success, I describe how and why Ronald Reagan converted from being a liberal, union loving Democrat to a highly conservative Republican.
Ronald Reagan was hired by GE to host the very popular GE Theater, as well as to become the company spokesman. Reagan toured all of the GE plants and addressed GE employees at all levels. He worked for Lemuel Boulware, who was the architect of an anti-big government / anti- big labor strategy and policy that became known as Boulwarism.
The underpinning of this employee and community relations philosophy and strategy was that Big Government and Big Labor, independently and in an alliance, were dedicated to take away management’s rights and make the company a socialist state. Even though GE had been pro-labor and pro-government in the pre-war years, under Gerard Swope and Owen Young, the GE leadership, under Wilson and then Cordiner took the opposite view.
Under Boulwarism, GE management studied the needs of the employees and communities and balanced them with needs of the company to be competitive and profitable and decided on “fair but balanced” offer prior to the union negotiations. They presented the offer before the union talks and were willing to take a strike, rather than do was not right for all of the major stakeholders. Further they told the communities that if they could not operate effectively and profitably in the current locations they were ready and willing to move their production to more company, non union, locations. Obviously, these practices were not popular with the unions, the government and the traditional GE communities, but GE did what it said and divided and conquered the unions.
Reagan, though he wrote his own speeches, became a missionary for Boulwarism and he ultimately concluded that the message was right and so he changed his own socio/political philosophies. This conversion led to his running and winning the office of Governor of California and then the US Presidency.
In my latest book: The Secret to GE’s Success, I describe how and why Ronald Reagan converted from being a liberal, union loving Democrat to a highly conservative Republican.
Ronald Reagan was hired by GE to host the very popular GE Theater, as well as to become the company spokesman. Reagan toured all of the GE plants and addressed GE employees at all levels. He worked for Lemuel Boulware, who was the architect of an anti-big government / anti- big labor strategy and policy that became known as Boulwarism.
The underpinning of this employee and community relations philosophy and strategy was that Big Government and Big Labor, independently and in an alliance, were dedicated to take away management’s rights and make the company a socialist state. Even though GE had been pro-labor and pro-government in the pre-war years, under Gerard Swope and Owen Young, the GE leadership, under Wilson and then Cordiner took the opposite view.
Under Boulwarism, GE management studied the needs of the employees and communities and balanced them with needs of the company to be competitive and profitable and decided on “fair but balanced” offer prior to the union negotiations. They presented the offer before the union talks and were willing to take a strike, rather than do was not right for all of the major stakeholders. Further they told the communities that if they could not operate effectively and profitably in the current locations they were ready and willing to move their production to more company, non union, locations. Obviously, these practices were not popular with the unions, the government and the traditional GE communities, but GE did what it said and divided and conquered the unions.
Reagan, though he wrote his own speeches, became a missionary for Boulwarism and he ultimately concluded that the message was right and so he changed his own socio/political philosophies. This conversion led to his running and winning the office of Governor of California and then the US Presidency.
Bill Rothschild...author of "the Strategic LEADERSHIP Library"
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