1. What internal resources and assets does General Motors have to help counter the external forces?
2. What competitive strategy does General Motors use, and how might it position itself for future growth?

In January 2015, CEO Mary T. Barra stated her intention to continue with the commitment to build the best cars GM had ever produced. General Motors had finally begun to rebound from a decade-long slide in worldwide market share, and was recovering from a series of safety problems that had lead to the recalls of more than 30 million cars in 2014.

In 2013 GM had finally emerged from the government control mandated due to its 2009 bankruptcy, only to be faced with the gravest safety crisis in the company’s history. Barra had acknowledged the lack of responsibility and accountability that lead to 42 deaths due to defective ignition switches, and promised that this neglect of safety issues would never occur again. However, many wondered if this was possible given the depth of dysfunction within the firm. Barra was not the first CEO who had attempted to turn the company around.

Ex-CEO Richard Wagoner, originally hired in 2000 to start major restructuring, had been fired in 2009. Wagoner had carried out three major restructurings, eliminated dozens of plants and tens of thousands of jobs, and jettisoned hundreds of dealers. His replacement, Frederick Henderson, lasted only five months before being replaced by interim CEO Edward Whitacre, Chairman of GM’s board of directors.

Although Henderson had initiated steps to negotiate with bondholders and the union for concessions in an attempt to reduce GM’s bloated cost structure and had restructured senior management, the board felt that only someone without ties to the old culture could bring a fresh approach. Whitacre was replaced in 2010 by Daniel Akerson, another board member, who was appointed to run the firm for the longer term.

In addition to cost problems, worldwide, GM had been hampered by its multiple divisions, multiple nameplates or brands, each doing its own design and marketing. To cut costs, GM began to share designs and parts across divisions, leading to some loss of distinctiveness between the different brands. To improve its ability to revamp its product line on a regular basis, the firm finally decided to cut the GM brands down to four: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC. Hummer, Saab, Saturn, and Pontiac were sold, spun off, or shut down.

Since cutting down its brands, GM had been able to reinvent Chevrolet as a global mass-market brand. Its new small, fuel-efficient cars had been successful, with 60 percent of Chevy sales coming from outside the U.S. The higher-profit luxury Buick and Cadillac divisions were being refocused in an attempt to update these “refined luxury” brands.

GM was also attempting to address its product development process bottlenecks by pushing designers and engineers to work together to address inefficiencies and listen to customers, while reducing the number of executives overseeing a vehicle program. These new approaches were intended to lead to faster, more successful decision making. Unfortunately, these changes came too late to prevent the poor decisions that led to the delay in recalling the vehicles with faulty ignition switches. There still appeared to be deep underlying problems with the GM culture: shifting responsibility for problems to others was deep in the firm’s DNA.

In January 2014, GM was finally able to move past its bankruptcy as government-appointed Ackerson was replaced by Barra, who had worked her way up within the firm and became the first woman to ever run a big automobile company. She had been a rank-and-file engineer, a plant manager, the head of corporate human resources, and, most recently, the senior executive overseeing all of GM’s global product development. She had inherited a firm with a stagnant market share and a real need for continuous improvement. Did GM finally have leadership that would be able to rebuild the company? Could GM be reborn as a winner?