Roger Smith (executive)

In order to transfer the land to GM for the construction of a new factory, the city condemned the homes of 4,200 residents as well as numerous churches, schools, and businesses, including the original Dodge assembly plant opened in 1914 by John and Horace Dodge for their then new 1915 Dodge Brothers car ("Dodge Main").

Although the deal predated Smith's tenure as chairman, he subsequently used the construction of the new Poletown factory, along with plants on a greenfield site in Lake Orion Michigan, and one in Wentzville, Missouri (an identical twin to Orion) to showcase the technology he felt would lead GM into a new era.

Unfortunately, the factories failed to live up to their promise and since they were duplicates of existing GM factories, unable to flexibly produce different models, were ultimately panned by critics as obsolete on the day they opened.

When Smith took over GM, it was reeling from its first annual loss since the early 1920s.

Its reputation had been tarnished by lawsuits, persistent quality problems, bad labor relations, public protests over the installation of Chevrolet engines in Oldsmobiles, and by a poorly designed diesel engine.

GM was also losing market share to foreign automakers for the first time.

Deciding that GM needed to completely change its structure in order to be competitive, Smith instituted a sweeping transformation.

Initiatives included divisional consolidation, forming strategic joint ventures with Japanese and Korean automakers, launching the Saturn division, investing heavily in technological automation and robotics, and attempting to rid the company of its risk-averse bureaucracy.

However, Smith's far-reaching goals proved too ambitious to be implemented effectively in the face of the company's resistant corporate culture.

Despite Smith's vision, he was unable to successfully integrate GM's major acquisitions and failed to tackle the root causes of GM's fundamental problems.

In the 1920s, chairman and CEO Alfred Sloan, Jr. had established semi-autonomous divisions within the corporation, each designing and marketing their own vehicles (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac).

Roger Bonham Smith (July 12, 1925 – November 29, 2007) was the chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation from 1981 to 1990, and is widely known as the main subject of Michael Moore's 1989 documentary film Roger & Me.

Smith seemed to be the last of the old-line GM chairmen, a conservative anonymous bureaucrat, resisting change.

However, propelled by industry and market conditions, Smith oversaw some of the most fundamental changes in GM's history.

This was considered a crucial factor propelling GM past market leader Ford in the 1930s.

He served in the United States Navy from 1944 to 1946.

Smith earned his bachelor's degree in business administration at the University of Michigan in 1947, and his MBA at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business in 1953.

Smith began his career at GM in 1949 as an accounting clerk, and had become the company's treasurer by 1970, and vice president the following year.

In 1974, Smith was elected executive vice president in charge of the financial, public relations, and government relations staffs.

By the 1980s however, that autonomy (also including Fisher Body division producing the car bodies, and GM Assembly division building them) were seen as representing a dated business model that had led to needless large scale redundancy, infighting by the divisions, and a bloated internal bureaucracy.

Smith took on the massive GM bureaucracy with disastrous results.

He ascended to GM's chairmanship in 1981.

In 1981, mayor Coleman Young and the city of Detroit won a notorious landmark decision in the Michigan Supreme Court, Poletown Neighborhood Council v. City of Detroit that allowed the city to use its eminent domain power to raze an existing immigrant neighborhood in neighboring Hamtramck.

Smith began the reorganization of GM that would define his chairmanship (see below), with the 1981 creation of the worldwide Truck and Bus Group, consolidating the design, manufacture, sales and service of all trucks, buses and vans under one umbrella.

1982 saw the creation of the Truck and Bus Manufacturing Division, which combined all truck manufacturing and assembly operations from their former divisions, but still a separate bureaucracy from that of the Truck and Bus Group.

In 1982 Smith negotiated contract concessions with the United Auto Workers and cut planned raises for white-collar workers.

After unveiling a more generous bonus program for top executives that provoked an angry response from the union, Smith was forced to back-pedal.

Relations with the UAW, management, and stockholders remained strained.

Profits improved in 1983 and Smith began unveiling his vision for reorganization, diversification, and "deindustrialization."

One of the most controversial decisions made during Smith's tenure was the partial elimination of divisional autonomy in 1984.

A sea change in how GM would market and build cars in the future, the 1984 reorganization was intended to streamline the process and create greater efficiencies; the reverse actually occurred.

Combining the nameplate divisions, Fisher Body, and GM Assembly into two groups, C-P-C (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Canada) to build small cars and B-O-C (Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac) to build large cars, the effort was subsequently criticized for creating chaos within the company.

Longstanding informal relationships which had greased the wheels of GM were severed, seemingly overnight, leading to confusion and slipping new product programs.

The reorganization virtually stopped GM in its tracks for 18 months, and never really worked as intended, with the CPC division building Cadillacs and BOC building Pontiacs.

The reorganization added costs and created more layers of bureaucracy when the new groups added management, marketing and engineering staff, duplicating existing staff at both the corporate and division levels.

Almost ten years elapsed before the 1984 reorganization was unwound and all car groups were combined into one division.

A controversial figure widely associated with GM's decline, Smith's tenure is commonly viewed as a failure, as GM's share of the U.S. market fell from 46% to 35% and the company lapsed close to bankruptcy during the early 1990s recession.

Smith and his legacy remain subjects of considerable interest and debate among automotive writers and historians.

Smith spent virtually his entire professional career working for General Motors.

He was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Besse Belle (Obetz) and E. Quimby Smith.