Talk:Rockwell International
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"Colins Radios were fitted to 80% of the free world's airliners"
Hey, I didn't know you didn't have to pay to travel during the cold war - or is this a little Povie!!! Harry Potter
Can the author/s of this article shed some light, as to why Rockwell International was blown to smithereens, the way it was (as described in the article)? It just seems like its new owners chopped it up and kept selling it to pocket the cash. Was that the reason for Rockwell's untimely demise, good old greed?
Thanx for your info.
- I'm not an author of this article, nor am I a business expert. And although greed may have been part of it, I think index funds and the core competency concept are the major drivers. Rockwell International was a very diverse company, involved in lots of basically unrelated businesses. At least some of these businesses were usually profitable at any given time, which appealed to stock holders. When index funds started to appear in the late 1970's, they attracted the kinds of investors that would otherwise invest in companies like Rockwell. But I imagine that when the core competency concept was introduced in the 1990's, Rockwell's executives had a hard time figuring out what their company's core competency really was. And that, more than anything else, was probably what led to Rockwell's "demise".
- This is really outside my area of expertise, so I'm not putting these speculations into the article. I'll leave it to someone else to verify the facts and update the article with the results. --Rick Sidwell 18:16, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The major reason the company broke up is because West won the Cold War. The US reduced its military spending, so there was less of the 'pie' to go around. After the Cold War, viable companies in the defense/space/avionics markets had to either: 1. Get bigger, to easily attract and hold contracts, or 2. Get merged, so you can have access to a steady stream of contracts.
Examples of 'get bigger' during this period are Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed, Honeywell, etc. Rockwell International decided it didn't want to or couldn't get bigger, so starting selling off attractive pieces, leaving only a shell of the former company behind. Galvinfranks 18:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)Galvin Franks
