Review of Lincoln's incentive system

Abstract

Reviews the book, Lincoln's incentive system by J. F. Lincoln (1946). The President of the Lincoln Electric Company of Cleveland, Ohio, describes the achievements of his company and their experiences with incentives. The company was started in 1895 on a capital of $250.00 of borrowed money. Today it is the world's largest manufacturer of arc-welding machines and electrodes. A series of graphs shows decreased manufacturing and selling costs, increased take-home pay and stock dividends for some or all of the years 1917 to 1944. For control purposes, data from other companies and industries are shown on some of the graphs, and these indicate no such favorable picture. Mr. Lincoln correctly recognizes the reason for the success of the Lincoln incentive system and he repeats and reemphasizes this throughout the book. The reason is that his incentive system is a management philosophy and not merely a method of determining pay. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)