The Legacy Of The Lincoln Electric Company

Lincoln Electric Company was founded by John C Lincoln in 1906 starting with a start up business in a one room, 4th floor factory to a bigger building and started to expand his workforce to 30 people and had a great expand in their sales as it grew over $50,000 a year. He was humble, preferably to be an engineer and inventor rather than sitting around being labelled as manager. The company also gave each of their employee as paid-up life insurance policy in the 1915. After 2 years, welding schools are introduced. A year after the success of forming a welding school, employee bonus plan was attempted.In the 1919 's, Lincoln Electric 's employees association are formed to introduced some social activities and health benefits to care for the workers. After becoming General Manager, in 1925; a purchase stock plan are enable for all employees. Lincoln bonus plan was finally accepted as a trial by the Advisory Board in 1934.

But to have an insight on how a company reached its current level of success

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.

Lincoln Electric had a unique organizational strategy with numerous creative ideas. First, to keep and better motivate its employees, the company implemented a special incentives system which effectively distributed profits inside the firm. These incentive “were expressions of mutual respect for each person’s importance to the job to be done” (Lincoln, 1961, p. 11).

The Lincoln Electric Employees' Association was formed in 1919 to provide hearth benefits and social activities.This organization continues today and has assumed several addittional functions over the years.

Established in 1895 and specialized in producing and selling electric motors, Lincoln Electric Company rapidly developed after the movement to welding equipment and consumable welding products in the USA. By 1995, this company first hit $1 billion in sales and became the world largest company in welding industry. With the differentiate strategy by providing premium -price -products , this company got 60% sales in the North American and expanded internationally since the period of 1986 and 1992. Although this company is facing problems in global expansions, its overall strategy as well as practices in human resources, marketing, technology development, and international expansions is a useful lesson for other businesses.

In conclusion, this incentive system was crucial for Lincoln Electric Company’s success. However, it is difficult for the others to copy because it is based on the culture of competition and justice, which was set up in the very beginning. In the future, the effects of this system might be comparatively lower because machines, which don’t have incentive, are replacing workers in production. However, it still has advantage as there are people in the company, and their innovation in production line design will also benefit the company for long.

Elements of Lincoln Electric’s management system that made it so popular in the U.S. such as piece-rate work, bonuses, and

Founded in 1895 by John C. Lincoln, the Lincoln Electric Company is a high-quality manufacturer of welding machines and welding equipment based out of Cleveland, Ohio. Lincoln Electric is founded upon a strong foundation of competitive logic, using manufacturing to create the highest quality welding equipment and the lowest costs.

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 Lincoln Electric Company is the world’s largest manufacturer of welding machines and electrons. Lincoln employs 2,400 workers in two U.S. factories near Cleveland, OH and approximately 600 in three factories located in other countries. (The Lincoln Electric Company p. 1.)

The Lincoln Electric Company is one of the largest manufacturers of welding machines and electrodes in the world. With about 2,400 employees in the USA and near 600 workers in other countries. The Lincoln management plan is well known for accomplishing the highest worker productivity. His founder Mr. James F. Lincoln died in 1965, leaving a profitable and reliable company. As a president of the business, he invigorated a committee that was confirmed by representatives elected by employees. This committee called the Advisory Board met with him twice a month to advise him on the company operations. The Advisory Board was the pioneer of personal policies to provide benefits to their employees including the reduction of hours from 55 hours to 50 hours a week. In 1915 the workers received a paid-up life insurance. Two years after, the company opened a welding school that is still operating today. In 1919 The Lincoln Electric Employees’ Association was created to offer Health benefits and social activities to their employees.

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.

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.