My Weeks With General Motors

Abstract

The overall management philosophy of General Motors Corporation is decentralization of operations with centralized policy control. To implement this concept, the Central Office Staff activities coordinate the development of Corporate policy while the 34 domestic and 54 overseas subsidiaries and joint ventures are responsible for day-to-day operations of the business. Thus, each Division is to a certain degree a separate business entity with its own financial, marketing, personnel, public relations, manufacturing and engineering organizations, which have "dotted line" responsibilities to their respective Corporate staffs. In addition to being provided direction and coordination by Central Office, the Divisions benefit from the services of centralized legal, government relations and environmental activities staffs, as well as corporate insurance and financing companies. Located on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Michigan, the General Motors Central Office was the site of my Senior Independent Project -- a 13 week unpaid internship with both the Marketing Staff (nine weeks)and the Financial Staff (four weeks). The experience consisted of involvement in the development of several written projects, each of whose purpose is outlined in the following pages. Included as attachments to this report are those projects, or portions thereof, which I developed and were felt by General Motors Management not to contain confidential material.