Culture Of The Lincoln Eclectic Company

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.

Lincoln electric’s approach to management contributes to its employee’s high motivational rate. According to (Draft, 2010), Lincoln electric motivates it’s staff with “strict performance goals to achieve pay, precisely defined task and a powerful incentive control program which is based on a piece-rate bases and merit-pay which is based on performance”(p.562). Other motivating factors are annual bonuses and stock purchase plans which all employees are offered (Draft, 2010). Another contribution to its success is their organizational culture which is “based on openness, trust, shared control and an egalitarian spirit” (p. 562-563).

After analyzing the story of Lincoln Electric Company I’ve come to the Conclusion that their organizational culture they practicing is People-oriented culture. Because the company values fairness, supportiveness and they respect individual rights. There is a greater emphasis on expectation of treating people with respect and dignity.

After taking the chance to read the Lincoln Electric Company Harvard study case, it is interesting how they viewed taking care of their employees throughout multiple decades, while business today focuses more on outcome-oriented cultures, where employees tend to not have that many benefits, or any benefits at all. The Lincoln Electric Company started poor, but as they took excellent care of their employees, they flourished into a successful entity in the world of business in America. With the enactment of a variety of programs such as health benefits, annual bonuses, paid vacation and a suggestion system that paid workers for great ideas, it is clear that their team-oriented system has paid off in the long run and kept their turnover rate at an all-time low.

Lincoln has grown in size due to its management style such as how its leadership has been structured and company ethos never being compromised. The founder James F Lincoln and his family members that followed after him, have always tried to maintain the morale and productivity of the company through innovative leadership and organisational skills.

The Lincoln Electric Company was created by John C. Lincoln in 1895 after being forced out of the Elliot-Lincoln Company. The Lincoln Electric company would go on to become the world’s largest manufacturer of welding products and machines. This all came to be due to the business culture instilled by the founders and continued up to the present. A Harvard case study done by Arthur Sharplin, shows the organizational culture within Lincoln Electric is unique to any single ordinary business culture. There is evidence that points to the use of all seven OCP (Organizational Culture Profile) principles, in order to maintain one of the world’s most successful and efficient companies.

What is the right culture to choose for your business? Do you want to be team oriented, innovative, aggressive or outcome oriented? For a business, this decision, of choosing a work culture often dictates unforeseen outcomes. But why choose one? The Lincoln Electric Company decided to use many of the of the seven work culture profiles to create their own unique business culture. It will be the goal of this essay to understand the seven different work cultures and discover which work culture the Lincoln Electric Company resembles best. The seven different work cultures that will be reviewed are innovative, aggressive, outcome oriented, stable, people oriented, team oriented and detail oriented.

The success of a business is intimately tied to the success of its culture. To understand better how organisational culture is created and maintained we will examine one of America’s most successfully managed companies, the Lincoln Electric company. We will examine many aspects of the company that contribute to its culture, such as the influence of the company’s founders, the golden rule, the incentive management plan, the performance appraisal system, the merit pay plan, the bonus plan, the way people communicate in the company and the management style. In analysing these we hope to understand not only what the culture of Lincoln Electric is, but also how it was formed and how it is maintained.

With the Lincoln company,its attitude toward customers is very clear and very important as James F.Lincoln saw the customer’s needs as the d’entre for

Aside from it, this essay will enumerate the golden rules of the company, which I believe the core of its success. This will base on the Case Study of Arthur Sharplin from Harvard University in 1989. In the concluding part, I will describe based on what I learned from this case study about the kind of management style does Lincoln Electric Company

When Mr. John C. Lincoln left his then employer, the depressive Elliott-Lincoln Company, to start his own venture, it seemed that the unpleasant working experience at the former employer had instilled the initial thought of creating a worker-friendly working environment for his business. This laid the foundation of the company’s culture – to treat its employees well. Furthermore, John’s senior brother, James F. Lincoln joined the company in 1907 and became the active head in 1914. James, as the son of a Congregational minister with Christian philosophy at the center of his business philosophy, helped facilitate the setup of an Advisory Board that would advise him on company operations, a reflection that the company Lincoln Electric engages employee to create a more open atmosphere and a flat-to-some-extent structure. The two founder’s personalities, background and

James F. Lincoln was the founder of The Lincoln Electric Company that is well known all around the world now. Of course, the company’s organizational culture was not established by just one person but with efforts of many coworkers. Values of the founder were a guiding light for all workers and the managerial staff. When Lincoln died in 1965, the employees of the company were frightened that old system of the founder would not work as well as before, but since the company had its long history and it was an already formed organizational culture, they successfully gone through the death of the great founder and succeed. The values of the man are still alive. The founder was a great believer and he had the golden rule that sound as following “The program that Christ announced, ‘As ye would that others would do to you do ye even so to them’ is the complete answer to

The aim of this essay is to analyze the Lincoln Electric Company’s aspects of the company’s culture. All aspects will be considered on the basis of study case prepared by A. Sharplin.

Lincoln Electric’s management style is, for one, progressive and employee-oriented. When James F. Lincoln became the active head of Lincoln