Jack Welch and the End of Stakeholder Capitalism

Chapter 5 of The Common Good

Friends,

Between 1981, when Jack Welch took the helm at GE, and 2001, when he retired, GE’s stock value soared from $14 billion to $400 billion. Welch accomplished this largely by slashing American jobs.

I want to focus on Jack Welch today because Welch represents a stunning change that occurred in American capitalism in the 1980s, whose repercussions le…