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MBA classrooms across the world will reverberate with lessons from the GM Bankruptcy for future MBA's. Strangely though,since MBA's starting working for GM in the 1970's the lessons were already there! For example, MBA's in the seventies knew that moving with changing customer needs was the simplest way to win. But fuel efficiency and smaller cars was a "no-no" for Detroit. Important stakeholders like the Unions clung on to expensive health and retirement as the sun set on US auto as the world literally turned and changed.
As an industry old timer told me, it was plain arrogance, complacency and the unwillingness of managers to speak up,in time. It was easier to deride the Japanese automakers ( ha imports) rather than emulate them, at least in part.
On the labor front the UAW is reduced to a shadow of its old belligerent self. This probably gives no pleasure to retired auto managers who were given such a hard time when they wanted to change things when there still was time.
This blog has been talking about the US auto industry for some years but academics have been writing about key problems for decades. US Auto is forever changed – the question is -will managers really learn in other industries?