The Lincoln Electric Company's Culture

The Lincoln Electric company, under the leadership of James F. Lincoln saw a major shift in the way business was to be directed and operated with visionary mind-set emulating companies like Ford, Wal-Mart, Merck, 3M as focus was towards the customer’s needs and employee’s compensation. Philosophically customer needs become critical as the reason for being in business and the employees also being the vehicle in achieving the needs of the customers as the case study by Sharplin, A (1989, p.3) clearly positions the companies aspirations. James Lincoln places much importance on the relationship with employees that is guided by mutual respect and individual effort.

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.

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.

Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling are the four basic management functions. These four functions serves as a general guiding rule for every organization or company towards the attainment of desirable leadership style. Executives’ drive the company pursuant to its mission statement, employees should have mutual respect to one another, and the company should offer an acceptable compensation. Thereby working as one community for a crystal clear vision. Having read the Lincoln Electric Company Harvard Case Study by Arthur Sharplin, I would like to contextualize my evaluation into different perspectives. These perspective includes: Continuing influence of the founders, the golden rule, compensation schemes, open communication, and management style. Continuing influence of the founders of the company "The actual is limited, the possible is immense.” With this slogan that the company has, it actually reflects how profound the influence of the founders to the current people living in the company. It was very clear to my understanding that Lincoln treated everything and everyone as associates. Lincoln’s did not only focus on the profitability he could gain with his product nor the productivity that the employees could offer, the founders had an exquisite realization of building relationship with their product, customers, employees and business partners. The influence that Lincoln’s as founders created paved way through an inevitable inspiration that up until today, people

order to provide health benefits and social activities to employees. This association is still active

His vision of “the customer 's needs as the raison d 'etre for every company” was a key to a better growth of his organization; it remains at the center of everybody’s attention and “is reflected in Lincoln’s policy to at all times price on the basis of

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.

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 founded by John C. Lincoln is known as the world’s largest manufacturer of welding machinery and electrodes. The Lincoln electric company, is one of the influential and leading manufacturers of welding machines and electrodes as compared to other companies located around the globe that are known for the manufacturing of welding machines and electrodes. This company has several outlets in different countries that also engage in the same production of the electrodes and the machinery.

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 was founded upon a strong foundation of competitive logic, using many levels of synergy in its manufacturing process to create the highest quality welding equipment and the lowest costs. Through the company’s unique management system and vertical integration strategies, they have created and maintained a strong competitive advantage in the welding industry. Lincoln has outlasted and defeated multinational competitors to become the world’s leader in welding technology and equipment.

“An organization’s culture may be one of its strongest assets…,” (Principles of Management p. 184). Culture at the Lincoln Electric Company exemplifies this statement, and has since 1914. The Lincoln brothers’ attitude towards the employee has helped skyrocket this once small company to the powerhouse that it is today. Examining this outcome oriented company yields a perfect example of how a strong culture can add to the overall bottom line.

Although he died in 1965, the organisational culture he established regarding shared assumptions, values, and beliefs are still evident today. His founding philosophy was broken down in to four areas. The first is the company’s attitude towards the customer; Lincoln said, “When any company has achieved success so that it is attractive as an investment, all money usually needed for expansion is supplied by the customer in retained earnings. It is obvious that the customer 's interests, not the stockholder 's, should come first” (Lincoln. J. 1961). The current President, Mr Willis, still ranks the customer as Lincoln 's most important constituency (Sharplin. A. 1985).

Through my reading about LINCOLN ELECTRIC COMPANY I can see that organizational culture played an important important role in success of this company. All main elements that form Oranizational culture represented in THE LINCOLN ELECTRIC COMPANY, that what made this company prospered and thrived in its activity through the applying The P-O-L-C Framework effectively. I can discern the aspects of influence of oraganizational culture in manging this company towards higher levels in output through the following the principal elements that Organizational culture includes.

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