GE Korea chairman Lee Chae-wook addresses the launch of “ecomagination,” the group’s new initiative for future growth in Korea, on the company’s annual community day event held at Pyongchang, Kangwon Province, on Oct. 21.

By Seo Jee-yeon
Staff Reporter

It is common in Korea to divide corporations into domestic or foreign. This simplified classification, however, becomes meaningless in the era of globalization.
There are no genuine domestic players any more except a small number of companies which produce and sell products locally.

In terms of foreign shareholdings, a number of Korean INCs can be recognized as foreign companies, considering their share ownership. For instance, some people argue Samsung Electronics is not a Korean company any more as foreign shareholdings exceed 50 percent.

Others favor giving Samsung Electronics the nametag of a global company, because of its overseas sales. The world's largest memory chip maker generated more than 80 percent of its revenue abroad as of the end of September this year.

Despite their brand recognition throughout the world, people scratch their heads when asked if they think Korea's leading companies are multinational companies like U.S.-based General Electric (GE) or L'oreal, a French cosmetics giant.

What is a multinational company? When you look up the word in the dictionary, it is defined as a company that does business in more than one country, usually by setting up branch offices. What more is needed to become a globally recognized multinational?

``Creating corporate vision to do business globally with integrity is one of the most important features of multinational companies,'' GE Korea chairman Lee Chae-wook said.

He made the remark in a meeting with reporters at the ``GE Day'' event held in Pyongchang in Kangwon Province on Oct. 22 with about 700 executives and employees of GE's legal entities in Korea.

GE Day refers to an annual community day hosted by GE affiliates in different countries. It aims to share the corporate vision with GE family members all around the world. In some countries, the event includes clients and civic groups.

GE Korea has hosted a GE Day event since 2002 to share GE's vision with GE family members in Korea and seek unity in the vision.

On 2005 GE Day, GE Korea addressed the company's new future vision, ``ecomagination''.

``Ecomagination'' is a new initiative that GE chairman Jeff Immelt announced last May to give direction to the company.

GE, the world's largest company by market value, has had an impact on the world business community with concepts like ``workout'', a method for busting bureaucracy and attacking organizational problems and ``six sigma,'' a method for process innovation.

Ecomagination, which combines two words-eco and imagination, is a new GE initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that will help customers meet pressing environmental challenges.

``The initiative represents GE's firm will to seek growth based on environmentally-friendly technology products, while making the company further socially responsible,'' Lee said.

Under ecomagination, GE said it will double its investment in research and development in cleaner technologies to $1.5 billion per year by 2010, up from $700 million in 2004.

It will also introduce more ecomagination products each year, doubling its revenues from products and services that provide significant and measurable environmental performance advantages to customers to at least $20 billion in 2010 with more aggressive targets thereafter.

The company will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and improve is energy efficiency. Finally, it will keep the public informed about its progress in meetings these goals.

The communications department keeps GE employees updated to understand and learn the development of the corporate vision.

GE Day is a good tool to help employees grasp the corporate vision. A group of GE Korea employees from each legal entity in Korea staged a performance with the theme of ecomagination this year.

``As the world's most respected company, GE acts locally but thinks globally. The company respects the different cultures of each country where the company has a presence, but seek unity under the same vision,'' Lee said.

The company favors the talents of sharing the GE vision and implementing it with passion, according to Joh Byung-ryul, director of communications of GE Korea.

``To grow as multinationals, Korean companies need to learn how to create visions and implement them globally,'' Lee stressed, adding that one secret is to constantly learn from others with open mind.

``. GE continuously attracts the best business practices in the world. One of key task of GE management is to visit globally competitive companies, whether small or big, in person and study what we can learn form them,'' Lee said.

jyseo@koreatimes.co.kr

10-25-2005 18:58