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This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the motivational incentives driving franchising choice from the franchisee's perspective and, in particular, to investigate a comparison of single and multiple unit franchisee incentives.

A qualitative methodology was adopted to gain a clearer picture of the salient issues influencing an individual's evaluation of franchising options. Both single and multiple unit franchisees within the McDonald's restaurant chain were interviewed.

Major contrasts were identified between single and multiple unit franchisees with regard to their motivations for entering franchising. In addition, franchisees who were previously employed were found to be different from those who were self‐employed.

Because it is difficult to identify potential multiple unit franchisees prior to joining a franchise, it was necessary to interview existing franchisees for this research. It is possible that their post‐hoc rationalisations may restrict the value of the research. In addition, motivational disincentives were not examined within this research. However, on balance, the reflections offered by the participants provide a rich and valuable source of information about their motivations.

Franchisors need to consider upfront whether they wish to recruit franchisees who remain single unit holders, or select and groom franchisees who show potential for managing multiple units. Thus, franchisors may need to redesign their selection strategies and communication methods to ensure the recruitment of suitable candidates who have the capacity to activate franchisor goals and promote a harmonious franchising relationship.

Whereas previous research has investigated motivations for entering franchising, this paper supplements that literature by comparing single and multiple unit franchisee incentives.

This study seeks to explore the perceptions of scientists regarding the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that motivate them and the role of management in enhancing and maintaining motivation with the purpose of identifying practical recommendations for managers to improve the productivity of scientists.

A total of 18 semi‐structured interviews were undertaken with randomly selected (stratified sampling) scientists working at a government research institute in the UK.

The scientists interviewed were typically motivated by the ability to do high quality, curiosity‐driven research and de‐motivated by lack of feedback from management, difficulty in collaborating with colleagues and constant review and change. Extrinsic motivators such as salaries, incentive schemes and prospects for promotion were not considered as motivating factors by most scientists. Promotion was not a motivator for most of the scientists and many thought that they would never get promoted again. Efforts should be focused on addressing the hygiene factors (i.e. removing the negatives) rather than introducing new incentives.

The sample size was relatively small (18) and a larger study will be required in order for comparisons to be made with scientists employed in industry or universities.

The results from this study suggest that the current incentivisation schemes based on financial rewards have little impact, and that alternative methods of motivating scientists should be considered. Rewards that may be more highly valued could include, time and resources to pursue own research interests; funds to attend international conferences and investment in physical resources (e.g. laboratory refurbishment, new equipment, etc.). The recommendations to motivate scientists could be applied to other highly‐trained specialists.

This is the only study that has been conducted with scientists working at a government research institute in the UK. It is important in providing an insight into the motivation of a diverse and under‐researched group of employees.

WHY is it, may we enquire, that so few work study technicians write about work study?

Lean projects seek to optimise the project rather than its parts and to maximize value to the customer. To better align the behaviour of project participants with a Lean project delivery model, the purpose of this paper is to argue for compensation structures that better address the economic and non‐economic motives that impact project performance.

Social science research increasingly shows that non‐economic human motives play a key role in job performance and that they interact in complicated ways with economic incentives. By reviewing and extrapolating from relevant literature, this paper explores certain key non‐economic human motives and their impact on project performance, how these non‐economic motives interact with economic incentives, and strategies for structuring effective incentives.

The paper identifies certain contract incentive principles that the authors believe should promote non‐economic motivation.

The paper provides a starting point for further research regarding compatibility of incentives with non‐economic motives on Lean projects. In particular, more research is needed on the applicability of the social science findings to corporate entities.

The paper suggests that traditional compensation systems are ill‐suited to project‐optimised behaviour.

This paper provides important insight into the problems of traditional compensation systems for construction projects and offers both concepts and strategies that could better align economic incentives with project‐optimised behaviour.

Prior literature has found that as uncertainty in a firms information environment increases, optimism increases in equity analysts’ earnings forecasts. The studies suggest an economic incentive explanation, commonly called the management‐relations hypothesis. However, there is conflicting evidence that managers would prefer pessimistic forecasts and encourage analysts to “walk‐down” their forecasts to prevent negative earnings surprises. To test these contradictory findings, this study uses an experimental setting to remove economic incentives from the analyst’s decision process and isolate the cause of observed bias in analysts’ reports. The results of the experiment show that an increase in the perceived uncertainty of the forecasting task results in significantly lower relative optimism in analysts’ earnings forecasts. This finding is consistent with a negativity hypothesis and the managementrelations hypothesis extolled in the empirical research. The findings also show that relative forecast optimism bias is positively related to the level of analysts’ buy/sell recommendations consistent with more recent findings that suggest that analysts use motivated reasoning (the tendency to process information in a manner that supports one’s goal) in their judgments of forecasted earnings and recommendations. Together, these results suggest that analysts consider and use financial information differently depending on their decision goal.

This study examines the mediating effect of effort on the relationship between performance incentives and audit judgment performance under different levels of task complexity.

Using an experimental research design, subjects are randomly assigned to three performance incentive groups: control, financial and feedback. Each subject is required to perform two experimental tasks of two complexity levels (low and high).

Results indicate that performance incentive variables are positively related to audit judgment performance. Hierarchical regressions of moderated‐mediation analyses support the hypotheses that the mediation effect of effort on the relationship between performance incentives and audit judgment performance occurs under low task complexity and not under high task complexity. In other words, the positive relationship between effort and audit judgment performance is weakened under high task complexity.

The external validity of this study is limited since the audit case contains less information than the real audit environment. This study contends that the expectancy theory can in fact be used to generate empirical prediction on audit judgment performance. The reliance on expectancy theory to supply theoretical mechanism by including the moderating variables provides explanation on when effort should and should not have positive effects on audit judgment performance.

Audit firms need to be careful on the performance incentives offered because incentives affect job output quality. Performance incentives may reduce job turnover and job tension among auditors. In addition, audit firms should ensure that the auditors have proper training to increase their skills and knowledge to help auditors to carry out various job complexities.

This paper can enhance knowledge and understanding on how motivational and environment factors influence audit judgment performance.

The purpose of this work is to test several incentive strategies for attaining new customers via electronic referrals, or e‐referrals. The paper aims to examine: the roles of both the magnitude of the incentive offered to the sender and the magnitude of the incentive offered to the receiver; and the effect of equity versus inequity of financial incentives for the two parties.

The study consisted of a large‐scale field experiment conducted with 45,000 members of an online mall. The participants were divided into eight conditions in an incomplete two‐factor 4×4 between‐subjects design, where not every combination of incentive magnitudes was utilized and the magnitude of the incentive offered the receiver and sender varied in size such that sometimes rewards were equal, sometimes receivers of the e‐referral had larger rewards, and sometimes senders of the e‐referral s received more. Dependent measures included the number of e‐referrals sent, the number of those e‐referrals that lead to a new customer registering, and the number of new registrants that converted to buyers from completing a purchase.

The results demonstrate that both the magnitude of financial incentives, and the relative magnitude of the incentives for the senders and receivers both influence e‐referral rates. Specifically, it was found that offering higher incentives to senders and receivers led to an increase in referral invitations sent, new member sign‐ups and new buyers. It was also found that the disparity between incentives offered to senders and receivers affected e‐referral rates and that inequity should favor the sender to enhance results.

This paper offers marketers valuable insights as to how different combinations of financial incentives to receivers and senders can affect e‐referral rates. The findings suggest that potential referrers respond not only to referral incentives but also to the disparity between their incentives and the receivers' incentives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of how far costly transfers of economic benefits to others, often understood in economics as instances of (behavioural) altruism, can be motivated by individual group status concerns, i.e. without the common reference to other‐regarding preferences.

Results from both economics and social psychology are reviewed and spliced together so as to obtain a more comprehensive picture of group status‐based aspects of behavioural altruism. A more formal argument is provided in order to highlight specific effects. Applications (e.g. migration and workforce motivation) are discussed to support the argument and to illustrate its practical relevance.

The reviewed literature indeed supports the argument that individuals care about the status of the groups they belong to and are willing to trade this against economic benefits. Accordingly, certain altruistic acts can be motivated by the individual's (selfish) concern for group status. However, the effect apparently depends on the degree of the individual's identification with the respective group which opens ways to influence its strength.

The argument may help policy makers, chief executive officers, and people in similar positions who have to design decision environments, i.e. institutions, in a way that motivates the eventual decision makers to transfer economic benefits (e.g. donations, taxes, effort, …) to the respective institution.

The paper adds to the discussion about the driving forces behind altruistic behaviour. In particular, it points out the potential importance of group status concerns in connection with aspects of social identity for individual decisions to transfer economic benefits to others. The relevance of the effect in view of the design of institutions is discussed.

As a pioneer of both scientific management and industrial psychology, Lillian Gilbreth was ideally equipped to extend scientific management into the service sector in the 1920s. When her husband and partner Frank Gilbreth died in 1924 and she encountered sex discrimination among industrialists and engineers, she volunteered her consulting services at Macy’s department store, a work site rife with gender‐based conflict, coordination problems and inefficiency. This paper describes her work with Eugenia Lies, Macy’s director of planning, to revamp both the motions and psychological atmosphere of occupations within the store between 1925 and 1928. By uniting an industrial relations approach with personnel management techniques, Gilbreth and Lies made the Gilbreth brand of scientific management useful for the field of retail management.

Virtual communities of practice (VCoP) are seen as effective means to facilitate knowledge building among professionals. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between system quality, attitude toward incentives and knowledge sharing in a VCoP. Additionally, individual and collective effect of system quality and attitude toward incentives on knowledge sharing are also examined.

This is an empirical study that targets a major community of practice in human resource management (n=366), utilizing a survey questionnaire distributed on the internet as the data collection instrument to test the relationship among the three dimensions.

The results indicated that: system quality and attitude toward incentives individually have demonstrated a significant effect on knowledge sharing behavior in a VCoP. Collectively, only factors within the attitude toward incentive dimension have demonstrated significant influences on the community participants' knowledge sharing behavior.

This study provides managers of VCoP with valuable information which aids in improving community members' knowledge sharing. That is, a successful VCoP is an online environment which provides a variety of social exchange opportunities for the members to interact, as well as challenging topics or tasks enabling the members to practice or gain professional knowledge and skills.

Regardless of the fact that knowledge sharing processes are becoming increasingly complex and diverse, providing various kinds of incentive is still crucial in eliciting people's engagement in knowledge sharing. Only reinforcing social exchanges and providing opportunities of self‐growth will enhance knowledge sharing behavior.

Knowledge sharing is a complex process. Literature indicated that some factors, such as motivation, attitudes, and individual preferences, are considered double‐edged factors to knowledge sharing among individuals. The present study adds value by examining the individual and collective effects of these factors (i.e. the members' perceived VCoP system quality and attitude toward incentives) on knowledge sharing.