Creation and Maintenance of the Business Culture at Lincoln Electric

In order to gain an understanding of the Business culture at Lincoln Electric, I will create a model describing how the culture was created and continues to be maintained. I will attempt to show also that Lincoln has a strong culture which affects the way the employees think and behave. There are several factors are involved in the creation of their Business culture:

Founder's Value (Carpenter, Erdogan, & Taylor, 2009) is the first factor and is exemplified through the philosophy of James Lincoln. He believed that you should treat others the way you want to be treated. James Lincoln believed that the customer's need is the reason for our existence. He believed that ultimately the worker and management have the same needs. Lincoln says that monetary incentive should be paid to employees according to what they accomplished. He also believed that the real incentive was the status or symbol of success obtained through money. He believed in the consultative process, therefore he encouraged the workers to form an advisory committee to meet with him. These founder’s values continue to influence the company culture today.

Industry Demands says Carpenter et al. (2009) is another factor in the creation of culture. The Lincoln Company controls a forty per cent share of the market. They boast a research and development expenditure that is less than 2 per cent of their sales and an advertising budget that is less than 0.25 percent of sales. Lincoln’s pricing has always been very stable when compared to its competitors. Welding and welding equipment continues to be in high demand, ensuring Lincoln Electric viability in the future.

The early values of the founders distilled throughout the company over time to help shape the Business opera...

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...f mutual respect, participation and the belief that the customer is priority number one, followed by the employees and the stockholders. After looking at the environmental aspects the organizational culture that emerged is a combination of a People-Orientated Culture and an Innovative Culture. Lincoln Electric from the very early days encouraged ideas and innovation among its workers and allowed employees to make suggestions in areas of familiarity. The People-Orientated Culture is evident in the informal organizational structure, the open door policy, the reward system and autonomous workforce.

Works Cited

1. Carpenter, Erdogan, & Taylor. (Ed.). (2009) Principles of Management. Nyack, NY: Flat World Knowledge, Inc.

2. Sharplin, Harvard Case Study Retrieved from http://my.uopeople.org/pluginfile.php/59758/mod_workshop/instructauthors/0/Lincoln_Electric.pdf