please provide references as well.

Question 4. - Week 9. What advantages and disadvantages General Electric international cooperative strategies would bring? - (7 marks) YKKKKH The world has many very large corporations. Wesfarmers, which started as a farmers cooperative, is relatively small by world standards but owns an array of significant business units, including the Coles empire (Coles, BI-LO, Liquorland etc.), Bunnings, Officeworks, Kmart, a range of industrial chemical firms, some fertiliser firms, some industrial safety firms, and a few other units as well. It is extremely well regarded as a diversified firm. General Electric (GE) is much larger; it would be easier to list business areas in which it does not compete than to list those in which it sells products. GE competes in 16 different industries: appliances, aviation, consumer electronics, electrical distribution, energx entertainment, finance, gas, health care, lighting locomotives, oil, software, water, weapons and wind turbines. As one can see from this list, these industries are quite diverse Yet there are similarities among several of them. In fact, GES businesses are grouped in four divisions: GE Capital, GE Energy GE Technology Infrastructure and GE Home & Business Solutions. In recent years, more than 50 per cent of GES annual revenue has come from its financial services businesses. Thus, it could be labelled a services company with a strong industrial component. In 2015 GE was ranked the eighth-largest corporation in the Fortune 500. It is the only company that was ted in the initial Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896 that remains on it today. For the last 119 years, GE has achieved an average annual increase in its stock value of 58 per cent. These data suggest that GE has an impressive history and has experienced a significant amount of success. It is one of only a few widely diversified firms to achieve such success. GE is a highly influential global corporation. Its CEO Jeffrey Immelt, was selected by US President Obama to chair an advisory group on economic and job creation concerns. However, GE has experienced some bumps in the road' along the way. This is to be expected because it is difficult to manage a large, widely diversified set of businesses. For example, it has been criticised for its control over media it owns, such as US television network NBC GE has restricted NBC reporters from reporting on certain These General Electric wind turbines in France each produce 15 Source. Many Stock Photo Dennis Chang-France content that is critical of GE. Additionally in the past GE was criticised for the poor environmental records of some of its businesses. Finally, it had reductions in stock value during the first decade of the 21st century GE has bounced back from these problems. It has worked hard to overcome and correct its environmental problems. Today it is a major player in the clean energy industry such as wind turbines and solar power GE is also beginning to experience strong growth from its investments in emerging economies such as China and Brazil. In both of these countries, GE has made major business investments working with local partners and has developed R&D centres as well A common strategy to achieve growth and diversification) for GE over the years has been mergers and acquisitions. For example, in 2011 GE acquired a French company Converteam, for US$32 billion. This company will provide support equipment for GEs wind turbine business. The years 2014 and 2015 were also lively for GE. In this period it acquired French firm Alstom for US$17 billion, announced it would sell its property portfolio, and sold most of its finance units and also is health care finance units Source: Wikipedia, 2015. General Electie, hepa/les.wikipedia GeneralnieCesenal Electric, 2015 Pesert, bly.com/