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Lincoln Electric Venturing Abroad Essay

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Lincoln Electric Executive Summary Michael Gillespie, The Lincoln Electric Company’s new president for the Asia Region, was “encouraged to develop plans to open welding consumables factories in several Asian countries” by the new CEO, Anthony Massaro, and Gillespie had specifically “turned his attention to plans for Indonesia [O’Connell,[1] main reference, p 1].” We worked with Gillespie to prepare for the September 1996 meeting with Massaro and the presidents of the other worldwide regions. We analyzed Lincoln’s current capabilities and its past experiences and prepared a transformative plan based on business concept innovation [Hamel[2], ch 3], documented by this report, with a three pronged approach for the Asia Region. The first …show more content…

2. Lincoln needed continued organizational development just as Lincoln’s equipment needed continued maintenance to remain viable. James Lincoln was a principled visionary and an organizational development innovator[d]. However, he did not prepare successors for assuming the critical role that continued organizational development. Neither of his successors, first William Irrgang and later Georges Willis, had contributed anything of note in developing the organization to meet Lincoln’s changing environmental demands. In particular, during Willis’s tenure, Lincoln did not even practice organizational maintenance: “By 1992, nearly all of the newly acquired plants, plus France, were operating in the red [and corporate executives] paid little attention [p 7].”Lincoln needed to develop the Asian organization and to develop the entirety ofLincoln as a wholly integrated organization in order to meet the demands of its expansion effort. 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

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