Spark

While factories across the Midwest shutter their doors, Cleveland-based manufacturer Lincoln Electric has thrived for more than a century. In addition to being profitable and technologically innovative, through good times and bad, the company has fulfilled its unique promise of guaranteed continuous employment. Workers are viewed as assetsnot liabilities. Through flexible hours and job assignments, as well as a merit-based bonus system, Lincoln Electrics employment policies have proven healthy for the companys bottom line its employees and its shareholders. In Spark, veteran journalist Frank Koller tells the story of how this unusual and profitable Fortune 1000 multinational company challenges the conventional wisdom shaping modern managements view of the workplace. Through insightful storytelling and extensive interviews with executives, workers, and leading business thinkers, Koller uses the Lincoln Electric example to illustrate how job security can inspire powerful growth and prosperity in our communities.

ISBN 1586487957   Pages 272 ISBN13 9781586487959 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher The Perseus Books Group   Weight (grammes) 463 Imprint PublicAffairs,U.S.   Published in New York Format Hardback   Height (mm) 235 Publication date 02 Feb 2010   Width (mm) 155 DEWEY 331.2596   Spine width (mm) 27 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level General

Ch. 1		"Tossed Out on the Street Like Worthless Scrap"		1
Ch. 2		"If We Tried Harder, Could the Company Pay Us More?"		25
Ch. 3		"Understanding What the End Game Is All About"		55
Ch. 4		"The Proper Step Forward"		89
Ch. 5		"Layoffs Aren't a Big Deal Anymore"		117
Ch. 6		"A Terribly Nonoptimal and Inefficient Policy"		147
Ch. 7		"This Is Not About Altruism"		181
		Acknowledgments		215
		Notes		221
		Index		239

Norman A. Berg, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School "Frank Koller has done a remarkable job of presenting both an economic and a moral argument for the value to society of the unusual policies followed with great success by Lincoln Electric for over a hundred years. The book is excellent in both the historical overview and the numerous interviews with current and past employees. There is much that modern management can learn about the benefits to employees, customers, shareholders, and communities by examining the role of the 'old fashioned' culture of Lincoln Electric." Thomas A. Kochan, George M. Bunker Professor of Management and Co-Director, MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research"A timely book, well researched and well written. Business, labor, and government leaders would do well to read "Spark" as they search for more equitable and sustainable principles for rebuilding trust in management, and getting compensation once again growin

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