Organizational Culture at Lincoln Electric

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.

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).

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.

Organizational culture is the summation of the underlying organizational values manifesting as collective assumptions, attitudes, beliefs, expectations and norms.  Grounded in the customs and

Organizational culture can loosely be defined as the shared assumptions, beliefs, and "normal behaviors" (norms) of a group. These are powerful influences on the way people live and act, and they define what is "normal" and how to sanction those who are not "normal." To a large degree, what we do is determined by our culture.

The idea that stuck out the most about the Lincoln Electric Company is that they obviously have a strong culture that all levels of employees are proud to be a part of. According to Carpenter, Taylor, and Erdogan (2010), “culture is a more powerful way of controlling and managing employee behaviors than organizational rules and regulations” (pg. 193, para. 2). The Lincoln Electric Company encompasses facets of multiple types of cultures instead of adhering to only one.

As stated in the assignment profile, Lincoln Electric is considered one of the best managed companies in the world. I believe this to be partially attributed to their hiring process. Lincoln Electric has strict requirements to weed through unqualified candidates who will not buy in to the company culture of excellence. This is an especially important aspect of their hiring process particularly due to the fact of leadership – a trait that plays a vital role in implementing and sustaining a company’s culture.

Organizational Culture is the key values, beliefs and attitudes shared by the members of an organization. Organizational culture includes an organization 's expectations, experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together, and is expressed in its self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and expectations for the future. A key source of organizational culture is usually its founder. It can be sustained by creating and spreading organizational stories and organizational heroes.

The Lincoln Electric Company is indeed a success story. It remains the world’s leading welding machines and electrode manufacturer. Notably, estimates indicate that the company may be controlling about 40% of arc welding equipment market. It has two factories in US and 3 more factories abroad with a combined workforce about 3000 excluding field sales staff. However, the immense success the company has registered in its operations is tied to its long-standing management style. This essay discusses the Lincoln Electric Company’s culture and how impactful it has been in maintaining a motivated workforce.

The success of a business is intimately tied to the success of its culture. To understand better how organisational culture is created and maintained we will examine one of America’s most successfully managed companies, the Lincoln Electric company. We will examine many aspects of the company that contribute to its culture, such as the influence of the company’s founders, the golden rule, the incentive management plan, the performance appraisal system, the merit pay plan, the bonus plan, the way people communicate within the company and the management style. In analysing these we will reveal a strong people oriented culture formed and maintained for over a century.

James F. Lincoln founded The Lincoln Electric company and he died in 1965. Based on

The case study for Lincoln Electric Company located near Cleveland, Ohio USA, shows a company with a distinctive organization culture of people oriented and team culture. The founder of welding products and equipment (machines and electrodes), with more than two thousand four hundred (2,400) workers in two us factories and six hundred (600) factories in three (3) global factories. It is considered to be one of the best managed manufacturing companies in the world.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE, or CORPORATE CULTURE, comprises the attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of an organization. It has been defined as "the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.

Another definition of organizational culture is a set of values that help organization members know which is acceptable and that which is unacceptable within the organization (Ojo, 2010). Thus , in our opinion , organizational culture is values which involve in beliefs, norms and perspectives within organization which it help shaping the member's behavior and perceive what is right and wrong within the organization .

Chapter eight in our text talks about how “culture, or shared values within the organization, may be related to increased performance” (Carpenter, M., Taylor, B., Erdogan, B. (2009). Principles of Management. Nyack, NY: Flat World Knowledge, pdf page 192) and how those cultures can make or break a company. It is these shared values from those who lead that allow their employees to know acceptable and unacceptable behavior. There is also mention of how a leader’s style can motivate and inspire employees, or it can make employment uninventive, humdrum and cause the employee to be unimpressed and bored. The text also tells us how business culture is invisible, but it is extremely powerful. It sounds to me that James Lincoln, younger brother of John Lincoln who was the founder of Lincoln Electric Company, had the right culture for their business. Right from the start James Lincoln was determined to improve his older brothers small company and help it grow.