Some Problems of the Use of Material Incentives in Industrial Enterprises

This study is concerned with the use of incentives to guide the work of an industrial enterprise as a whole; it hence does not deal with problems related to individual remuneration or to the wage structure in industry nor with the specific features of agricultural enterprises. It begins from the standpoint that one of the most important conditions determining the efficiency of national economic planning is the consistency of planning targets with economic incentives: the central plan should formulate the targets which are optimal in the national context, but which can be realized by means materially satisfactory for the enterprises and the staff who implement the plan. The one link is necessarily connected with the other. A plan without fulfilment incentive is less than efficient, and the incentives unrelated to a plan target are not purposive. Abandoning the old notion that the plan is nothing but commands based on economic accounts, we are squarely faced with the need to ensure that the planned economy operates on the principle that: ‘that which is most useful for society must benefit the enterprise and its workers’.