Balanced Scorecard Toolkit for Crisis Management

General Electric is a multinational conglomerate with headquarters in New York, United States. The company has five major divisions, Energy Infrastructure, Consumer & Industrial, Technology Infrastructure, NBC Universal, and Capital Finance. GE is ranked fourth in the Fortune 500 companies. Several decades ago, the company used polychlorinated biphenyl hydrocarbons, termed as PCBs for manufacturing transformers and other electrical equipment in the plants of GE located along the Hudson River.

Substantially large quantities of PCBs got mixed into the Hudson waters and remained as its bottom sediments. Only in the 1970s, the knowledge of the harmful health effects of PCBs was realized by the government and environmentalists. The government immediately banned the use of PCBs and GE also complied with the ban. However, the PCBs had remained in Hudson River as sediments near the GE plants until now. Litigations ensued and costly dredging and cleaning plans had been formulated.