Lincoln Electric 's Winning Organization

Lincoln Electric Company has a very strong culture based on shared assumptions values and beliefs. This is evidenced by the attitudes of both the company management and employees towards the organization. The unchanged policies, practices and products point towards a very strong corporate culture. High employee performance and productivity over the many years of the company’s existence is also another indicator of a strong culture.

Organization culture which is a system of shared assumptions,values,and beliefs showing people what appropriate and inappropriate behavior can best be analysed in the Lincoln Electric Company from the P-O-L-C Framework as below.

Primary features of the Lincoln Electric business model and employment system are displayed through the company’s overall strategy, philosophy, compensations and benefits policy, leadership, and communication within and outside the organization.

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.

The Lincoln Electric was founded in 1895, and is the world leader in the design,

Their highly profitable products have also permitted the company to be generous to its employees by the invention of their Lincoln incentive management plan which has been well known for many years. Their Golden rules: are their guiding principles, at Lincoln they believe and have seen the true evidence that you have to work for what you are paid.

James Lincoln, one of the founders of the company, accepted a plan that gave their employees a bonus at the end of each year. The bonus that they gave was 25% of what they had earned that year. Today, they still have a yearly bonus. Lincoln also evaluated workers productivity and decided what their base pay would be from that. The way that Lincoln showed respect for his employees rewarded his company with increased profits and productivity. That inspires the company to do the same today because they know that rewarding their employees for their hard work pays off in the end. Lincoln was a Christian and was proud to have strong ethics and morals. “The actual is limited, the possible is immense” is their company motto. It shows how Lincoln had large goals and hopes, which still shows today through the company. A company’s culture has so much to do with the founders original goals and values and that is what shaped such a great culture for The Lincoln Electric

Lincoln Electric was founded by John C. Lincoln in 1895 in Cleveland, Ohio and has remained one of the most prominent and successful American manufacturing companies over a century later. Lincoln’s place in the world of welding machines and electrodes was not done by accident or attributed to luck. It was built by vision and design. John was more of the scientist, preferring to focus on being and engineer rather than managing a company. That’s when James, his brother took the reins (along with a typhoid illness that kept him away from the plant). James Lincoln had a vision for the company that reflected his Christian values, though those values were not imposed on his employees. He used his values as a guiding force as to how to encourage and empower the staff at Lincoln Electric to invest one hundred percent of their efforts into creating the strongest, and most stable manufacturing company in the world.

Even though John started the company, James Lincoln had the biggest impact on the management style and practices. He created an advisory board that still to this day meets twice a month in order to listen to employees who may have ideas or suggestions. The board is made up of each department in order to allow every person in the company to have a voice. He also helped start an in house welding school that still trains new employees to this day. He helped create the Employees’ Association to help provide health benefits and plan social events for employees. He helped create a pension plan and a revolutionary incentives plan that is still used as one of the best benefits of working for the company. He started allowing employees to buys stock in the company as to inspire them to work harder. Finally although he never publicly stated it or pushed religion he said believed a company should operate with Christian values, and that the priority in the business would go first customers, second employees, and third stockholders. These values and priorities still hold true in the company even today.

Once Mr. James F. Lincoln steps in as the Vice President and General Manager we start to see some incisive management decisions made. These decisions have truly built an amazing organizational culture whether The Lincoln Electric Company claims to have a company culture or not.

The Lincoln Electric Company Since 1895, located in Cleveland, Ohio, the Lincoln Electric Company “ the world’s largest manufacture of welding machines and electrodes” was able to create the ideal organization throughout several aspects of the company’s culture. Its founders, first John C Lincoln and James Lincoln, who later joined the company as the General Manager, had one duty to get done; to ask his employees to elect a committee that would give him advice in regards to the company’s operations. Since then, an organization structure was performed. Lincoln Electric Company separated itself from the competitors for its innovative policies.

An example from Sharplin’s research is Lincoln’s policy to “at all times price on the basis of cost and at all times keep pressure on our cost…” Clearly, this is giving the customer what they wanted. Another example from Sharplin’s research is the fact that the Lincoln Electric Company hasn’t had a layoff since 1949! Lincoln identified early on that, “The greatest fear of the worker… is lack of income.” By providing job security and great wages, Lincoln was able to give his employees what they wanted. Even stockholders, despite being listed by James as least important, still benefited from James’ strategy because taking care of customers and employees first naturally increased the company’s profitability. Increased profitability is what every stockholder wants.

Lincoln Electric was the result of two exceptional siblings, John C. furthermore James F. Lincoln. John, the organization author, was a creator and visionary who had minimal enthusiasm for everyday administration. John was additionally at first pulled

The Lincoln Electric Company was founded in 1895 by John C. Lincoln. The initial investment to get the company off of the ground was $200, and it was not until a few years later in 1907 that they manufactured their first welding equipment.

In the Harvard case study from 1985, Arthur Sharplin gives us a great overview about the history and governance of the Lincoln Electric Company. The company was founded by John C. Lincoln at the beginning of the 20th century and he was later joined by his brother James F. Lincoln (Sharplin, 1985, p. 1). We can already see that John C. Lincoln had a strong desire for his company to succeed because he continually looked at how he could improve the company. This is shown in his opinion that worker input is important (Sharplin, 1985, p. 2). In the book, Principles of Management, Carpenter, Taylor, Erdogan (2009, p. 187 – 189), introduce us to a variety of profiles of Organizational cultures. The first impression from reading the early history of the company from the Harvard Study could be that the Lincoln Electric Company is an “aggressive” company, however, a person would err in their conclusion. The Company actually is “outcome” oriented. What does that mean? It means that a company, in this case the Lincoln Electric Company, has a culture that is geared towards accomplishing goals (Carpenter, Taylor, Erdogan, 2009. p. 188), this is due to the people that first ran the company John and James Lincoln.