Despite the financial crisis and recession, Mr. Immelt has kept investing for the long haul. Research and development spending increased last year to $3.3 billion, and will be still higher this year. “It would have been easy to say times are tough and we’ll pull back on research spending and long-range projects, but he didn’t do any of that,” says Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a former consultant to G.E. “Jeff Immelt really held onto his technology-led-innovation agenda.”

G.E.’s management traditions emphasize patience and its leaders typically have long tenures. Mr. Welch was at the helm for two decades, and Mr. Immelt, 54, has been in charge for nearly a decade. A winter or two of discontent is not cause for dismissal. But the stock price, which closed at $16.78 on Friday, is less than half its level when Mr. Immelt took over in 2001. The stock has barely budged in the last year, as G.E. slowly climbs back from the financial crisis.

There is no indication of a restive board. Yet shareholders are waiting to see better days from the battered stock of G.E., long the bluest of blue chip companies. Under Mr. Immelt, the company has pared its offerings  the plastics business was sold off, the majority stake in NBC Universal is being sold to Comcast, and, of course, GE Capital has been whittled down.

THE near-term prospects for G.E.’s stock seem to depend, if not on financial engineering, then at least on financial moves that might lift the dividend back toward its pre-crisis levels. The NBC sale to Comcast could bring $8 billion in cash. And negotiating with Mr. Buffett to buy back his $3 billion in preferred stock, which pays a 10 percent dividend, could free up $300 million in yearly fees. Those steps could clear the way to raising the dividend and making the stock fetching again for investors.

“That’s the fulcrum for G.E. stock until the economy strengthens and the industrial business really gets rolling again,” says Nicholas Heymann, an analyst for Sterne, Agee & Leach.

Mr. Immelt observes that G.E.’s stock, which climbed above $40 in 2007 before the crisis kicked in, has mirrored how investors have viewed financial services over the last decade. That’s a perception Mr. Immelt hopes to change as he re-emphasizes G.E.’s manufacturing prowess and reins in the financial operation.

“As we come out of the recession, we’re going to see if the moves to streamline the portfolio will pay off,” says Steven Winoker, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “We haven’t seen positive results yet.”

For his part, Mr. Immelt is an optimist. “We’re going to be one of the companies that comes out of the crisis stronger than we went in,” he says. “I think that is something that is ultimately going to be good for employees and investors.”