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The authors address a two-dimensional (both customer acquisition and retention) incentive in a decentralized service chain consisting of a risk-neutral brand and agent (or averse). 

The authors focus on the relationship between acquisition and retention, that is, retained customers (repeated purchases) are based on and come from the acquired (new) customers in the former period. The authors also design a two-period separate incentive on both dimensions.

The authors found that a targeted incentive strategy should be applied for achieving more revenue when the incentive intensities are relatively small. Otherwise, the brand needs to adjust the targeted incentive strategy into incentivizing the opposite dimension, particularly on acquisition. Under the optimal contract, the brand needs to be very careful with deciding the fixed part of the incentive salary and the incentive intensities on both dimensions. For example, the fixed salary initially decreases and then increases in the incentive intensities. For the optimal incentive policies, the brand should incentivize acquisition but outsource retention if the agent is risk-neutral. When the agent is becoming risk-averse, the brand should lower its incentive intensity as the risk degree and variances become larger. Interestingly, the brand may benefit from introducing risks.

The study contributes to the literature by considering the following points. First, the authors extend the principal-agent incentive model by considering two-period decisions of customer acquisition and retention. Second, based on the two-period principal-agent problem, the authors design separate incentive intensities on acquisition and retention, respectively. While, most of the literature focused on acquisition incentives. Third, different from other works focusing on either risk-neutral or risk-averse environments, the authors consider both and compare the cases of risk-neutral and risk-averse to analyze the impact of risk on the optimal decisions and the brand's expected profit.

Career interruptions of employees imply important issues for both firms and individuals, including a possibly lower compensation after returning to a job. Different compensation components are explored, as bonus payments frequently complement fixed salaries for many employees, making various channels of lower compensation possible. This paper aims to discuss this issue.

This study is based on a yearly salary survey among a rather homogeneous group of professionals and middle managers from the German chemical sector, which contains detailed information on compensation components next to individual and job characteristics. The incidence and duration of past career interruptions act as the most important independent variables. Mincer-type wage regressions are complemented by estimations on wage increases.

The results show that career interruptions are more related to lower subsequent bonus payments than they are to fixed salaries. Furthermore, interruptions caused by unemployment are associated with higher interruption pay gaps than those resulting from other reasons such as parental leave. The results even hint for catch-up effects following parental leave with regard to higher wage increases compared to individuals without interruptions. Career interruptions are more prevalent for female managers offering an explanation for a considerable part of gender pay gaps. Wage losses after career interruptions are more pronounced for male employees than they are for females, though.

This study extents the literature by disentangling the relation of career interruptions and different compensation components, bonus payments next to fixed salaries in particular. The role of interruption type and gender are also taken into account so that the paper deepens the understanding of the role of past career interruptions for employees’ remuneration.

Cost behaviour classification and cost behaviour structures of manufacturing companies. The purpose of this paper is to determine the cost structures of companies that formed part of an empirical investigation. Further aspects were investigated to determine why manufacturing companies classify cost behaviour into fixed and variable components and to determine how these companies classify specific cost items. It was found that there is a significant negative relationship between the fixed cost of a company and its degree of technological development. This means that labour intensive companies have more fixed cost as part of total costs and therefore a higher operating risk than technologically developed companies. It was also found that manufacturing companies classify cost items differently and this study provides some guidelines how to manage cost behaviour.

This paper focusses on on-demand food delivery (ODFD), i.e. the delivery of freshly prepared meals to customers' homes, enabled by the use of online platforms. In ODFD, a key process is represented by last-mile deliveries (LMDs): they directly affect customers (the delivery price influences their purchase intention), riders (the compensation drives their willingness to perform deliveries) and platforms (deliveries are very expensive). In this context, this work aims to investigate the economic performances of ODFD LMDs.

This study adopts a multi-method threefold process. First, it develops a model that – after the generation of customers' demand and the assignment of deliveries to available riders – identifies incomes and costs faced by an ODFD operator. Second, the model is applied to a base case in Milan (Italy). Third, sensitivity analyses are performed (on daily demand and riders' salary).

The analyses allow – besides the identification of significant values associated to ODFD profitability – to draw general insights about delivery price (e.g. free delivery is not economically sustainable), daily demand (e.g. greater demand values do not only improve positive results but also worsen negative ones) and fixed/variable wage mix (e.g. increasing the variable wage enhances the profitability for platforms).

On the academic side, this word enhances extant literature about ODFD, proposing a model – with multidisciplinary implications – to strategically investigate profitability conditions of LMDs. On the managerial side, it provides support for (logistics/marketing) ODFD practitioners since it allows to evaluate the potential impact of significant decisions on profitability.

This article examines some of the recent innovations in rewarding employees arising from the changing needs of organisations in a competitive global economy. The necessity for reward strategy to be congruent with business objectives and the consequent movement towards greater flexibility and variability are considered together with the important and growing concept of broad‐banded basic pay systems. A case study is described of a multinational pharmaceutical company which has travelled down some of these routes, changing from a centralised and over‐rigid pay control system to one that more closely meets the requirement of the European marketplace.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare the impact of the minimum wage order from the perspectives of two different stakeholders, namely, hotel managers and employees, in the Malaysian hotel industry.

For the study, qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews from three managers and three employees from hotels in West Malaysia.

From the managers’ perspective, minimum wage implementation has resulted in managers adopting the best payment structure to reduce labour costs for the operators, deciding to reduce the service charge allocation to employees and having to deal with minimal improvement in employee productivity and motivation. In contrast, the positive impact from the managers’ perspective is lower turnover intentions and social justice for foreign workers. From the employees’ perspective, there is a rather negative impact – minimum wage policy has resulted in a minimal increase in the salary. From a positive perspective, employees said that they have experienced an improvement in living standards.

This research presents current responses from hotel participants regarding the latest wage increase impact, some six years after its implementation.

Cost management is essential in every organisation, especially in an increasingly competitive environment (Jain & Yadav 2006:352). The management of distribution costs has become increasingly important because of the rising fuel costs in recent years (Gaffney 2008:40). Delivery routes should be optimised in order to reduce distribution costs. This article presents a comprehensive segment margin approach model for determining the financial viability of delivery routes. A specific bakery (henceforth referred to as Bakery A) was selected as a case study, and the use of general management accounting principles in determining the financial viability of delivery routes was specifically investigated.

A strong and repeating theme in sales force automation (SFA) tool research is perceived usefulness. When salespeople perceived high levels of SFA tool usefulness, they report higher intent and actual use. The authors aim to apply agency theory to the concept of perceived usefulness (from the technology acceptance model) to explain why salespeople adopt some forms of SFA and reject still others. A set of hypotheses are proposed and tested revealing that salespeople will decide to use a SFA tool because they perceive it to be useful to themselves (i.e. PU_sp) and to their management (PU_sm).

Based on responses from 105 salespeople, the SFA tools they used were categorized as either outcome‐based (i.e. helping salespeople achieve their selling outcome goals) or activity‐based tools (i.e. helping management monitor selling activities/behaviors). Regression analyses were used to test six hypotheses relating salespeople's usage of each category of tools (the dependent variable) to the salesperson perceived usefulness constructs (both PU_sp and PU_sm – the independent variables).

The findings confirm that SFA tool use (either outcome‐based or activity‐based) is a function of both forms of perceived usefulness (i.e. PU_sp and PU_sm). Furthermore, when PU_sp is high, the salesperson is more likely to use outcome‐based (versus activity‐based) SFA tools over a longer period of time.

The paper validates agency theory as a useful paradigm for understanding salesperson SFA tool adoption. Salespeople will use SFA tools that they view as useful to their productivity and that the sales manager's influence over the salesperson's use of SFA tools may not be as important. To encourage use, firms need to emphasize how a SFA tool can meet salesperson needs.

The paper is the first to hypothesize and test the relationship between perceptions of SFA tool usefulness and actual usage by considering salesperson perception of usefulness to themselves (PU_sp) and perception of usefulness to their sales manager (PU_sm).

Publishes more than sixty abstracts on various aspects of higher education, from 1996 journals. Ranges over technology, quality, business‐education links, financing higher education, gender issues, learning and assessment, learning organizations, educational change, and the place of research in higher education.

In 1988 the Government of Israel appointed a Commission of Inquiry (of which the authors were members) to examine the state of its health‐care services. Although relating to Israel, some of the problems contributing to the crisis in the health services are shared by other industrialized nations. In 1991 the findings and recommendations of the Commission were adopted by the Government. They related to the major problem areas analysed by the Commission: poor standard of service to the public; health ministry structure and performance; funding and budgeting; poor labour relations in the public health sector; surplus of physicians; mix of public and private health care; shortage of qualified health‐care managers. The main recommendations adopted were: legislation for compulsory health insurance (due to be effective on 1 January 1995), establishing a National Health Authority, running of hospitals by autonomous corporations and reform in salary structure.