Lincoln Electric Student Example

Keys to High Performance In the assigned case study we see the history of Lincoln Electric and the success it has had with innovative leadership techniques found in companywide quality management, or Theory Z (Houser, 1995). Through the use of well executed human resource management practices (Schuler & MacMillan, 1984), Lincoln Electric has created a competitive advantage through the use of its people (Summers, 1994), which accounts for its high performance over the years. The way a company organizes and manages its workforce has increasingly become a source of competitive advantage (Summers, 1994), and for Lincoln it is no different. Lincoln Electric’s competitive advantage is their most positive aspect revealed in the assigned case study that is embodied through its rewards system and human resource management techniques, along with quality management techniques of value innovation and continual cost reductions to make Lincoln so successful, even through hard economic times. Competitive advantage has continually shifted over time. What is an advantage today may not be tomorrow; however, it seems that in the assigned case study that Lincoln Electric has created a system that makes the competition nearly irrelevant (Pfeffer, Hatano, & Santalainen, 1995). Competing in an industry that is highly price-competitive and where price variations on standard items amounts to only one to two percent it immediately creates a realization that to sustain continual high performance, Lincoln Electric must have a business model built on creating a continual competitive advantage (Lincoln Electric, 1994). A competitive advantage is formed when a firm can add value through a strategy that isn’t being simultaneously implemented by a competitor or is able to do so where another firm has failed to duplicate the benefits of such strategy (O’Shannassy, 2008). The human resource techniques used at Lincoln Electric are a major key to its success and are what has helped drive Lincoln

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