A Comparative Analysis of the Incentive Systems Under Taylorism and Fordism

Lliterature on Taylorism has surprisingly ignored the role of its payment systems, while the results achieved on Ford's five-dollar day programme appear contradictory and sometimes isolated from the organisational change simultaneously undertaken. I seek to fill these theoretical gaps. I provide a historical analysis of the relevant features of Taylorism and Fordism and analyse a simple agency model with a linear compensation scheme to account for the observed differences in payment systems between Taylor's performance-related pay and Ford's fixed wages. I show how the ex-post observed divergence may be interpreted in terms of technology-related differences in i) responsiveness of effort to incentives and ii) responsiveness of proceeds to effort