Analysis Of Lincoln Electric Company Of Cleveland Ohio Usa ' S Organizational Culture

The founders of the Lincoln Electric Company left a legacy of an organization culture that promotes high productivity through sound management policies which have stood the test of time. The exponential growth of the company after the death of James F. Lincoln was a direct result of the establishment of a rich culture mix based on values that were widely shared and accepted by the members of the organization. Management empowered employees to become part of the decision making process through the contribution of ideas through the Advisory Board which was elected by the employees from amongst themselves. Reward management systems and all the other artifacts of the Lincoln Electric’s distinguished strong organizational culture will be analyzed in greater detail in this essay.

Every organization has values and beliefs that define what they do and how they do things in the organization. These values have significant influence on how the employees behaves and the general performance of the organization – it is these set of values and beliefs, rooted deep in the company’s organizational structure that depict the “dos”, “don’t” and the “hows”, of the organization and these unequivocally represents the culture of the organization. This concept became popular in the 1980s when Peters and Waterman in their book: “In search of Excellence” presented the profound argument that, the success of any organization is inextricable linked to the quality of its culture. (Carpenter, M., Taylor, B., Erdogan, B. 2009 p183). The purpose of this paper is an attempt to analyse the impact diverse cultures played in the success of the Lincoln Electric Company.

According to Mclean and Marshall (1993) organisational culture is defined as the collection of traditions, values, policies, beliefs and attitudes that contribute a pervasive context for everything we do and think in an organisation. (ie) this means that these factors actually determine how we think as well as act and react not only to people from within the same organisation but also to anybody on the outside who has some sort of interaction with the organisation. As can be seen with the part-structure in Figure 1, this organisation (WHD) has various levels of management. There is quite

The founder, James F. Lincoln used his Christian upbringing as the basis for his vision of how he defined entrepreneurial success. The customers ' needs are first priority, the employee second, and the stockholders are last. Quality and cost efficiency are the two most important factors considered in their product engineering and manufacturing. The hierarchy is stringent, however, the culture of the company is greatly people-oriented. This company has a strong culture that is instilled in new employees from the beginning and continuously practiced by every member of every facet in the organizational structure.

Though, in reading the Lincoln Electric Company Harvard Case Study by Arthur Sharplin, add up to what I learned from chapter eight this week, I can realize the that the organizational culture is the cornerstone for the growth of any organization. The success of Lincoln Electric Company is due to the environment that is previously established by the Lincoln’s family. If we look at in the introductory of the Harvard case study, Arthur Sharplin states that “The Lincoln incentive management plan has been well known for many years. Many college management texts refer to the Lincoln plan as a model for achieving high worker productivity.” (pp. 1). This is to say that they have already set some policies to make the company what it has always been since its creation.

3. Lincoln’s culture could not be imposed but must be nurtured. “Willis retained the existing managers of most of the acquired companies to take advantage of their local knowledge, but directed them to implement [underlined by author]Lincoln’s incentive and manufacturing systems [p 6].” While Willis appreciated the benefits of implementing Lincoln’s systems, he did not consider James Lincoln’s caveat that “All those involved must be satisfied that they are properly recognized or they will not cooperate – and

Before anyone can truly understand and respect Lincoln Electrics’ culture values (which has one of the finest corporate cultures), we must look at how the company has evolved to become what it is today. In the early 1900s, the company transitioned leadership from John Lincoln, the original founder, to his younger brother, James Lincoln. John turned management and leadership to James Lincoln in order to pursue his ingenuity through inventing for the company. One of the first orders as General Manger was to assemble and advisory group that would report to him. He did so by requesting the employees from various departments to elect a representative to be on the committee that would meet with management – to this day the advisory group meets two times per month.

al. supports that employee contentment results in higher products quality and it regulates customer contentment directly which eventually lead to financial gains. They provided certification to the important links of employee contentment and profitability. In addition to employee contentment, Lincoln took care of the organization hierarchy very well. He never let a organizational chart to develop. Open Door Policy is adopted by the company which encouraged people to direct difficulties and problems directly to the persons who will solve them most efficiently and have capability. It is believed that this increased qualitative nature and involvement of the Lincoln workforce and thus a continuous direction on the employees was not necessary. Klein’s (2012) studies about the company proved that Open culture at Lincoln was very crucial to company’s success in very hard times too. Beliefs and moral values of the company lead to hard work and dedication and by every employee from top to bottom in hard times due to which company survives even the hardest of the times. Although the line between managers and employees is stated finely, managers appreciate the skills of production workers and respect their share of work to many characteristic of the business. The company has an open-door policy for all top executives, middle managers, and production workers, and regular direct communication is promoted. The stockholder not involved at the moment will also get his/her share. At

The atmosphere directly controls in part the behavior of the employee. The culture that has been created and cultivated at Lincoln Electric is very intentional. There are a variety of different company profiles that can be created. To use the language from our text book in my opinion this company profile has characteristics from two of the possible seven profiles from the text. Stable culture. Stable culture is described as a company culture that is not quick to change with the times and trends of every day, it has a centralized management system. Stable cultures can be desirable when a winning business model is chosen early on in the game. Investors seem to like them, in that they can often predict how the company will react to changes in the marketplace. Stable culture is only in part true, one of the main characteristics that is missing is large bureaucratic departments within Lincoln Electric.

The Lincoln Electric Company, a manufacturer of welding equipment and supplies, was founded in 1895 by John C. Lincoln as a manufacturer of electric motors. In the early years of the 20th century, James F. Lincoln joined his brother’s company and by 1914 replaced John as the company head, allowing the latter to concentrate his efforts on scientific investigations.

The case study for Lincoln Electric Company located near Cleveland, Ohio USA, shows a company with a distinctive organization culture of people oriented and team culture. The founder of welding products and equipment (machines and electrodes), with more than two thousand four hundred (2,400) workers in two us factories and six hundred (600) factories in three (3) global factories. It is considered to be one of the best managed manufacturing companies in the world.

There have been many examples of organizations that have maintained a competitive advantage as a result of their culture. One such example can be found in the Lincoln Electric Company. A case study on the Lincoln Electric Company, prepared by Arthur Sharplin (1989), gives us keen insights into the relation between culture and productivity, the influences that founders have on organizational culture, as well as how certain cultures manifest themselves in organizational policies, communication, and management styles.

Organisational culture became popular in the 1980’s after the publication of Peter and Waterman’s best-selling book “In search of excellence”. It was made evident that company success had a strong correlation with organisational culture, thus competitive advantage for business. The concept of organisational culture is vastly growing in management and a subject of various research. According to the “Business dictionary” Organisational culture is defined as “The values and behaviours that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organisation.”

There are plenty of reasons why Lincoln Electric Company (LEC) is successful, and a big one that people usually credit the success to is the way it’s managed. While reading the Lincoln Electric Company Harvard Case Study by Arthur Sharplin, we learned a lot about the echo of the founder’s philosophies still very present in the company, we looked at the highly rewarding merit pay plan, and we learned about LEC’s authoritarian management style. There are plenty more reasons why LEC has been so successful over the years but these three are mostly responsible for the productivity, efficiency, morale, and overall satisfaction of the factory level employees and all the way up to the President’s office.

Chapter eight in our text talks about how “culture, or shared values within the organization, may be related to increased performance” (Carpenter, M., Taylor, B., Erdogan, B. (2009). Principles of Management. Nyack, NY: Flat World Knowledge, pdf page 192) and how those cultures can make or break a company. It is these shared values from those who lead that allow their employees to know acceptable and unacceptable behavior. There is also mention of how a leader’s style can motivate and inspire employees, or it can make employment uninventive, humdrum and cause the employee to be unimpressed and bored. The text also tells us how business culture is invisible, but it is extremely powerful. It sounds to me that James Lincoln, younger brother of John Lincoln who was the founder of Lincoln Electric Company, had the right culture for their business. Right from the start James Lincoln was determined to improve his older brothers small company and help it grow.