Country-Compatible Incentive Design

Today's managers are facing challenges that stem from overseeing a workforce in foreign countries. The question arises how to compensate and motivate employees in different countries effectively and efficiently.

Based on an empirical study among employees of a multinational corporation (MNC) in Germany and the USA, Marjaana Gunkel shows that the employees in these countries have different preferences regarding incentives and that incentive plans designed for one country are not always effective in others. Money is an important motivator in both countries, but the motivational effects of non-monetary rewards differ greatly. In addition, the author presents an explorative study of employee groups in China and Japan and gives advice for designing appropriate compensation schemes for employees of MNC in different countries.

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Dr. Marjaana Gunkel's book opens a series of works published in cooperation with Deutscher Universit/ats-Verlag and Gabler. Ute Wrasmann and Claudia Splittgerber were very helpful initiating and organizing the series on the publisher's side. Anita Wilke was in charge of Marjaana Gunkel's book. Their support and cooperation is highly appreciated. The series ,,International Management Studies" aims at circulating insights from - search projects on international corporations. Most of the contributions published here will be characterized by the following features: The New Institutional Economics p- vides the theoretical framework, there is some empirical analysis - mostly based on primary data generated for the respective research project-, and the language of pub- cation can be English. All the contributions published in this series will be written in such a way that not only peers and experts in narrowly defined research fields can be reached but everybody who might be interested in learning about the topic at stake. Readers from other academic disciplines and practitioners are welcome contributors to a discourse that we want to share broadly. Also, the submission of publishable works that could contribute to this series is more than welcome.