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    GE and Tungsram Hungary Case

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    Satish Kulkarni
    General Electric acquired a 51% stake in Tungsram, a Hungarian lighting manufacturer, in 1989 as Hungary shifted from communism to a market economy. GE expected this transition would create business opportunities but underestimated how difficult and costly it would be to reform Tungsram's Soviet-era culture and practices. It took laying off half the workforce, $440 million in new investments, and retraining remaining employees for Tungsram to become profitable under GE's management by 1997.

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    GE and Tungsram Hungary Case

    Uploaded by

    Satish Kulkarni
    911 views2 pages
    General Electric acquired a 51% stake in Tungsram, a Hungarian lighting manufacturer, in 1989 as Hungary shifted from communism to a market economy. GE expected this transition would create business opportunities but underestimated how difficult and costly it would be to reform Tungsram's Soviet-era culture and practices. It took laying off half the workforce, $440 million in new investments, and retraining remaining employees for Tungsram to become profitable under GE's management by 1997.

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    GE and Tungsram Hungary Case study

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    General Electric acquired a 51% stake in Tungsram, a Hungarian lighting manufacturer, in 1989 as Hungary shifted from communism to a market economy. GE expected this transition would create business opportunities but underestimated how difficult and costly it would be to reform Tungsram's Soviet-era culture and practices. It took laying off half the workforce, $440 million in new investments, and retraining remaining employees for Tungsram to become profitable under GE's management by 1997.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    911 views2 pages

    GE and Tungsram Hungary Case

    Uploaded by

    Satish Kulkarni
    General Electric acquired a 51% stake in Tungsram, a Hungarian lighting manufacturer, in 1989 as Hungary shifted from communism to a market economy. GE expected this transition would create business opportunities but underestimated how difficult and costly it would be to reform Tungsram's Soviet-era culture and practices. It took laying off half the workforce, $440 million in new investments, and retraining remaining employees for Tungsram to become profitable under GE's management by 1997.

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    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    GENERAL ELECTRIC IN HUNGARY In the heady days of late 1989 when Communist regimes were disintegrating across Eastern

    Europe, the General Electric Company (GE) launched a major expansion in Hungary with the $150 million acquisition of a 51 percent interest in Tungsram. A manufacturer of lighting products, Tungsram was widely regarded as one of Hungary's industrial gems. GE was attracted to Tungsram by Hungary's low wage rates and by the possibility of using the company to export lighting products to Western Europe. Like many other Western companies, GE believed that Hungary's shift from a totalitarian Communist country with a state-owned and planned economic system to a politically democratic country with a largely free market economic system would create enormous long-run business opportunities. At the time, many observers believed that General Electric would show other Western companies how to turn enterprises once run by Communist party hacks into capitalist moneymakers. GE promptly transferred some of its best management talent to Tungsram and waited for the miracle to happen. The miracle was slow in coming. As losses mounted, General Electric faced the reality of what happens when grand expectations collide with the grim realities of an embedded culture of waste, inefficiency, and indifference about customers and quality. The American managers complained that the Hungarians were lackadaisical; the

    Hungarians thought the Americans pushy. The company's aggressive management system depended on communication between workers and managers; the old Communist system had forbidden this, and changing attitudes at Tungsram proved difficult. The Americans wanted strong sales and marketing functions that would pamper customers; used to life in a centrally planned economy, the Hungarians believed that these things took care of themselves. The Hungarians expected GE to deliver Western-style wages, but GE came to Hungary to take advantage of the country's low wage structure. In retrospect, GE managers admit they underestimated how long it would take to turn Tungsram aroundand how much it would cost. As Charles Pipper, Tungsram's American general manager, says, "Human engineering was much more difficult than product engineering." GE now believes it has turned the corner. However, getting to this point has meant laying off half of Tungsram's 20,000 employees, including two out of every three managers. It has also meant an additional $440 million investment in new plant and equipment and in retraining the employees and managers that remained. By 1997 the investment finally seemed to be paying off. Despite a 50 percent cut in the workforce, production volume is now double the 1989 level. Although some large Eastern European customers are no longer on Tungsram's books, many of those were themselves poorly run state-owned enterprises.

    Sources: J. Perlez, "GE Finds Tough Going in Hungary " New York Times, July 25, 1994, pp. Cl, C3; C. R. Whitney, "East EuropVs I lard Path to New Day," New York Times, September 30, 1994, pp. Al ,'A4; and T. Agassi, "Hungary for Capitalism," The Jerusalem Post, June 18, 1997, p. 8. http://www.ge.com Case Discussion Questions 1. What does GE's experience in Hungary tell you about the relationship among economic systems, political systems, and national culture? 2. Given the problems GE experienced with Tungsram, in retrospect might it have chosen a better strategy to attack the Western European lighting products market? 3. How important to the economic development of Hungary are investments such as GE's? What are the benefits that GE brings to Hungary? 4. If Tungsram had continued under local ownership, what do you think would have been its fate?

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