ED.--As with
all other discussions of any part or form of Traditional Management,
the discussion of the incentive under Traditional Management is
vague from the very nature of the subject. "Traditional" stands for
vagueness and for variation, for the lack of standardization, for
the lack of definiteness in knowledge, in process, in results. The
rewards under Traditional Management, as under all types of
management, are promotion and pay. It must be an almost unthinkably
poor system of management, even under Traditional Management, which
did not attempt to provide for some sort of promotion of the man who
did the most and best work; but the lack of standardization of
conditions, of instructions, of the work itself, and of reward,
makes it almost impossible not only to give the reward, but even to
determine who deserves the reward. Under Traditional Management, the
reward need not be positive, that is, it might simply consist in the
negation of some previously existing disadvantage. It need not be
predetermined. It might be nothing definite. It might not be so set
ahead that the man might look forward to it. In other words it might
simply be the outcome of the good, and in no wise the incentive for
the good. It need not necessarily be personal. It could be shared
with a group, or gang, and lose all feeling of personality. It need
not be a fixed reward or a fixed performance; in fact, if the
management were Traditional it would be almost impossible that it
would be a fixed reward. It might not be an assured reward, and in
most cases it was not a prompt reward. These fixed adjectives
describe the reward of Scientific Management--positive, predetermined,
personal, fixed, assured and prompt. A few of these might apply,
or none might apply to the reward under Traditional Management.

REWARD A PRIZE WON BY ONE ONLY.--If this reward, whether
promotion or pay, was given to someone under Traditional Management,
this usually meant that others thereby lost it; it was in the nature
of a prize which one only could attain, and which the others,
therefore, would lose, and such a lost prize is, to the average man,
for the time at least, a dampener on action. The rewarding of the
winner, to the loss of all of the losers, has been met by the
workmen getting together secretly, and selecting the winners for a
week or more ahead, thus getting the same reward out of the employer
without the extra effort.

PUNISHMENT UNDER TRADITIO