The Golden Style 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.

With the years going by, Lincoln Electric Company, despite its excellent performance in production, has been growing in a very steady speed, and never really grew to a large scale 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).

Lincoln Electric’s foundations are based on values of trust, overt nature to management, self reliance, righteousness, commitment, answerability and inter-collaboration. These beliefs and moral code formed a powerful base of Lincoln’s culture and management regularly providing the rewards to deserving employees. Pride of workmanship and feelings of

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

In this case analysis I will be analyzing and summarizing my understanding of the organizational culture of the Lincoln Electric Company, based on key pointers and a Harvard Case Study by Arthur Sharplin. In my analysis I will be using the framework from chapter eight of the textbook “Principles of Management” by Carpenter, Bauer and Erdogan to discern aspects of the company’s culture. The company is said to have a distinctive management culture and manufactures welding equipment. It is located near Cleveland, Ohio USA. Lincoln Electric Company is considered to be one of the best managed manufacturing companies in the world.

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.

Over the decades and since it was first created, the ongoing guidance and encouragement of the management towards their employees made Lincoln’s expansion possible to a global level. The ideas and philosophy of the founders are still at the core of the organizational culture because they strongly supported the company in its initial stages and helped distinguish it from others. “Thus, by providing a competitive advantage, these values were retained as part of the corporate culture and were taught to new members as the right way to do business.”

Lincoln Electric was founded at the end of the 19-th century by John C. Lincoln. He was a talented engineer who invested 200 dollars in his product electrical motors. Soon he was replaced by his younger brother James F. Lincoln, and the founder of Lincoln Electric dedicated his time to engineering activities and inventions. James F. Lincoln was a different type of inventor. He was a good manager with the nice strategic point of view over manufacturing. At the beginning of the 20th century, the company started manufacturing welding machines which become their iconic product. That is not the only thing Lincoln electric became famous for. The incentive management plan was one of a kind at that time and was the first step of creating company culture with a high focus on the employees, something unheard among the other manufacturers at that time of the century. Both Lincoln brothers were inventors and this was crucial for the earlier company development. Both were pioneers and the vision and the mission that was integrated especially from James Lincoln played a major role in the dramatic company development during the World War II.

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.

In 1895, engineer, inventor, and businessman John C. Lincoln started Lincoln Electric Company. His brother James would join him shortly, in his business endeavor, starting in 1907 (Sharplin, A 1989). James managerial style would most closely be described as people-oriented. He once said “Labor and management are properly not warring camps; they are parts of one organization in which they must and should cooperate fully and happily.” (Sharplin, A 1989) Early on, he created the Advisory Board, a committee made up of both employees who were elected by their peers and upper management, including the chief executive officer. The Advisory Board continues still to this day, meeting bimonthly to discuss employee policies, working conditions, etc. Though these meetings, employees have gained such things as health benefits, life insurance, paid vacation time, retirement pension plans, stock incentives, continued on and off site education, and much more. (Sharplin, A 1989)

Lincoln Electric (LE) is a worldwide leader in production of welding equipment with more than US$1 billion in sales and 6,000 workers. John C. Lincoln designed and made an electric motor with a $200 investment in 1895. Today, members of the Lincoln family own more than 60 percent of the stock.

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.

Lincoln Electric was founded by John C. Lincoln, an engineer and inventor, and was then managed later by his brother, James F. Lincoln, starting in 1907. James applied his christian principles to business management and how the company would be run as a whole. The core of these business practices revolved around honesty and service to the customer and employee. The assumption that he had about his employees was that they required a steady income just as much as the business did, and that the employee and manager should work as a team to be most effective. The employee does not wish to support shoddy work, just as management does not want to pay for shoddy work, and that customers want the best possible value. This translated into the mindset that customer satisfaction is the top priority, employee satisfaction is the second priority, and that stockholders are the third priority.

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.