ABSTRACT
Although readers of behavioral literature might conclude that interest in pay for performance issues is of recent origin, that conclusion would belie that fact that substantial investigations of performance pay have occupied researchers and practitioners for the better part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For example, Mitchell, Lewin, and Lawler, writing in Blinder (1990), point out that Charles Babbage (1832) discussed a system whereby workers would be paid on the basis of their individual work, thus improving the profit of the individual and the firm, and eliminating the need to adjust wages periodically. Then they documented a variety of pay schemes proposed and implemented up to the present time.
