Lincoln Electric Essays

Examples are a sophisticated trainee program for sales and engineering trainees, constant vocational trainings for experienced workers and regular work certification programs (Bjorkman & Galunic 2003).These actions aim at supporting and maintaining the superior efficiency objectives creating core competences compared to industry rivals and a competitive advantage.This is in line with common relationship and social network oriented selection practices in China (Warner 2005).

In the US, Lincoln employs a highly compensated piece-work system which is linked to individual employee performance based on a multitude of work-related factors (Bjorkman & Galunic 2003).

The reward system is able to motivate employees for achieving commitment through a remuneration which is at the top of its industry (Bjorkman & Galunic 2003).

Payment system possesses clear management commitment and is seen as the key for achieving outstanding employee commitment leading to advantages in costs, productivity and quality (Hastings 1999).

Group collaboration within the company is created through specific bonus pools which are allotted to work group performance.

Thirdly, critics like Milkovich and Newman (2002) argue that best practice HR lacks direct linkages with organizational strategies and is minted by the belief that outstanding high performing human resources will influence strategy.

By making HR policy precede corporate strategy an organization risks prescribing standardized sets of "one size fits all" best practice approaches which will not support the particular needs of employees and be detrimental to overall strategic objectives (Maloney and Morris 2005).It is based on developing HRM policies according to business strategy.Strategy involves planning future activities, performances objectives, and policies towards reaching the corporate aims.The bonuses are then distributed to the members of that group according to their quantified relative performance on the semi-annual merit rating based on factors like idea generation, quality, reliability, dependability and output (Milgram & Roberts 1995).Employees are closely bound to the organization through a long-term stockpurchase plan as part of their remuneration making them entrepreneurs at their workplace (Bjorkman & Galunic 2003).Based on concepts from expectancy theory (Vroom 1964, Lawler 1971) best practice HR will result in higher levels of quality, productivity and low rates of absenteeism and wastage (Guest 2000).The best practice approach suffers from a series of limitations.The best practice approach claims that certain bundles of HR activities exist which universally support companies in reaching a competitive advantage regardless of the organizational setting or industry (Redman and Wilkinson 2009).Best practice models imply a close connection between HR practices and organizational performance and are often associated with high commitment management (Paauwe & Boselie 2003).In the international management Lincoln made the mistake of relying too much on inexperienced U. managers from within and only after the disaster of the international subsidiaries started to move from its unitary strategy towards a more responsive best fit approach to external environmental by hiring more internationally experienced external managers in China and Europe which fits the international expansion strategy (Hastings 1999).In its Chinese recruitment it adapts to the Chinese labor market by personally promoting and introducing prospective employees through senior management to identify personalities who can live up to performance, education and quality requirements applying a best fit approach (Bjorkman & Galunic 2003).