A Comparative Analysis of Flexibility Practices in Two World-Class Companies-General Electric and Cisco

Business Environment is undergoing a rapid change. Companies are finding more and more difficult to cope up with the fast-paced changes in technology, customers preferences and the diminishing barriers. Competitors may appear from nowhere and globalisation may yet challenge the local inefficiencies and the manner of doing business. In such an uncertain environment, new business philosophies and paradigms are appearing froom time to time, to deal with these changes successfully. In effect, we are living in an age of experimentation. Flexible systems management offers one key approach to deal with business issues. Practical experience suggests that companies which have kept their systems flexible, be it in manufacturing or finance or in information systems or at the level of strategic dimension, have been better able to cope with the sudden changes in the market place. Here an analysis of two world-class companies is undertaken to show how these two companies with their flexible management styles were not only able to cope up with sudden twists and turns in a volatile market, bw also create wealth. Between the two, GE has been beller able to weather the effects of a slowdown in the economy, while, Cisco because of its not-so flexible approach, has been hit the worst, since the technology slump began. Once the icon of the ‘new economy’, Cisco is today, standing at an edge and only the future will tell whether its past policies played any role in its not-so-stellar performance. A comparative analysis brings out the flexibilities in various dimensions of the two companies and how the management styles of the CEOs of the two companies played a vital role in shaping the company's growth.