Spark

How Guaranteed Employment Drives Lincoln Electric and How It Can Help American Business

By: Frank Koller

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

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 assets—not liabilities. Through flexible hours and job assignments, as well as a merit-based bonus system, Lincoln Electric's employment policies have proven healthy for the company's 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 management's 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.

©2010 Frank Koller (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Informative but bias viewpoint company

The narration was decent but nothing to write home about. The book presents an unapologetically bias view on the company. This was overall a good way to learn more about Lincoln Electric as a company, which was my intent with listening to this book.

Worst narrator ever heard

What didn’t you like about Richard Davidson’s performance?

Awful. I thought the basic facts in the book about Lincoln Electric were interesting. The author, however, is very biased and presents an unsupported personal view. He also comes acrossed as ignoring or deriding the many experts in the field who almost unanimously disagree with his conclusion. That said, I think the book could be worth reading for people interested in the topic. The performer, however, is AWFUL. The reader sounds like a verbal version of a National Enquirer reporter. His biased, overly dramatic and affected attack on business, academics and anyone who questions whether businesses should guarantee lifetime employment made it hard for me to finish the book. I have listened to a very large number of audible books. I have never before been compelled to warn others. I recommend to all but the most interested to simply order the Harvard case to learn about this interesting company -- perhaps read the book, but avoid this audio performance.