Lincoln Electric Update

The 1975 Harvard Business School case study on the Lincoln Electric Company proved to be a perennial best seller and served as the mainstay of many business school courses. The Harvard researchers described a plucky little Cleveland company that had been able to dominate the welding business against formidable competitors such as General Electric and Westinghouse. However, much had changed in the thirty years since the Harvard researchers wrote their study (see Exhibit 1 for timeline). By 2006, Lincoln had weathered a number of crises and changed dramatically in many aspects. Had the new developments fundamentally altered the character of the company?