Lincoln Electric (LE)

Some of us participated in the recent 3/15 case competition. I want to share my contribution because this reflects my personal ethics around respect for differences, from micro to macro. Prahalad’s article resonated with what I was trying to articulate in my desire to generate creative recommendations.

I do not want to minimize the two other students’ contribution from Accounting and Economics. Theirs were the central core of what the judges wanted. Mine was also important. My major contribution was the importance of HR management as a strategic partner in our team’s recommended strategies. What follows is a smaller part of what I addressed.

(For those not in this loop of the case study presentations on 3/15, the Lincoln Electric (LE) case challenge was to argue whether or not this company should expand to the Indian market. LE already has a firmly established presence in Western and Eastern Europe, and China along with one or two locations in quite a few other countries. They also have started construction in S. India for a manufacturing and educational center.)

LE has had enough significant failures in global expansion so I argued for two strategies. The first was to invest in research using a “positive deviance” model. This approach looks at individuals or small sectors in the company who “get it right”, in this case, their history of global expansion. This research is expected to discover processes that blend the best of LE’s processes to generate competitive information on their social capital going forward.

The second strategy, equally important, was to go into India as “new learners” and gather research from multiple forum groups within the local community as well as academic, business, trade, political, and farming communities, etc. The recommendation was to use the two research projects to co-create new processes to set the stage for LE’s success in India.

As mentioned by Prahalad, I wanted to stay away from “old and tired” solutions. I wanted to generate inclusion and involvement as successful strategies to co-create future successes. But I missed the economic importance of the BOP market potential and thought his argument against dominant assumptions was powerful. Think of dollar store chains, Target and Walmart.

I also liked Maitland’s longer range perspective around how systems correct themselves as well as, on relative merit, how cultural perspectives vary from time and place. What he did not do is address the importance of hindsight and reflection of the many gross inequities of the past that have devastated or dramatically delayed a culture’s economic progress, resulting in lost opportunities for the whole. These results can be apparent for years, decades, and centuries.

Holding of paradoxes makes ethical thinking difficult. Our competitive advantage over others in the animal kingdom is our ability to reflect. Well, maybe it is also a competitive disadvantage when used to interfere with natural processes? Back to: “it depends!”!