Rude Awakening: The Rise Fall and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors

Profiles the troubled automaking giant, detailing how it was victimized by its own poor management, the minimal impact of new technology, and how it continues to struggle

Investment analyst, financial columnist and PBS-TV panelist Keller here retells how General Motors, a long-dominant, complacent corporate giant, was jolted by the 1970s oil embargos and by foreign competition. These developments led to massive company reorganization in the '80s under ebullient GM chairman Roger Smith, and to the joint GM-Toyota production of the Chevy Nova using Japanese concepts of worker participation. In a straightforward but engaging style, Keller recalls the corporate thrashings, as success, lost in a maze of missed opportunities, kept eluding GM. Astonishing accounts of human failures emerge as the author spins this sorry industrial saga, which ends on a barely hopeful note.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Automotive analyst Keller's detached prose makes this chronicle of General Motors' management process read like a business school case study. As well as illustrating the already well-known arrogance of GM management, Keller also provides balanced, fascinating accounts of GM's watershed decisions, such as the partnership with Japanese makers, the acquisition of Ross Perot's EDS Corporation, and its involvement with the Saturn project. The future of GM, according to Keller, is not at all clear, and her analysis of the options is intriguing. More objective than Call Me Roger ( LJ 4/1/88), Albert Lee's vituperative analysis of GM CEO Roger Smith, this corporate history should be purchased.
- Joseph Barth, U.S. Military Acad . Lib., West Point, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.