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The purpose of this paper is to address the overarching question, which was whether the incentives programmes formulated for the community have been found to be suitable to the aspirations and needs of the local residents.

This study has resulted from the authors’ experience through conducting a survey with the local residents in three locations, namely the Bukchon Hanok Village located at Seoul metropolitan city; the Hahoe Village, Angdong and the Yangdong Village, Gyeongju; both the latter are located towards the west of the Korean peninsula in the Gyeongbuk-do Province. This study has hopefully tried to analyse the residents’ perception of the effectiveness of the current incentives policy by using the Bennett’s programme evaluation method.

Results show that there was a divergent direction between the current incentives policy and the local aspirations between sites. In most cases, the cultural heritage conservation has been found to be a catalyst to fulfil a heritage tourism advantage rather than to cater to the local community needs.

The paper is the first insightful study of the historic villages which attempts to draw out the importance of the effectiveness of the incentives programme in guiding the conservation efforts for the local economic development.

Examines new directions company health and safety programmes are taking. Discusses new dealings with Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) which companies employ, stress management, and wellness or preventative health programmes. Considers employee participation in the implementation of safety programmes and various forms of safety incentives.

This chapter maps out and provides a rapid assessment of, the successes and shortcomings of key national interventions on youth employment in South Africa. It focuses on programmes intended for young people aged 15–34 years of age, considering the specific needs of 15–24 year olds as compared 25–34 year olds and the particular needs of young women, youth with different educational qualifications, youth from the rural areas, youth with disabilities as well as youth from varied socio-economic backgrounds and social issues. The conceptual framework underpinning this chapter informs the way in which the data has been categorised and analysed. The framework is underpinned by a core assumption, that, while unemployment is a national challenge in South Africa, there are particular challenges that specifically affect youth. This requires a youth employment strategy that addresses the needs of different cohorts of young people and specifically addresses the myriad of ways in which young people transition into the labour market. The chapter further proposes that we need to understand that enabling successful Labour Market Transitions necessitate a strategy that can overcome ‘failures’ with respect to both supply and demand as well as ‘failures’ of alignment between supply and demand.

This paper analyses the effect of a particular Active Labour Market Policy, the hiring incentives, on firms hiring policies. The effects of a programme on firms' behaviour have in fact rarely been evaluated.

The analysis is based on micro-data drawn from Rilevazione su Imprese Lavoro (RIL), conducted by Inapp in 2010, 2015 and 2018 on a representative sample of limited liability and partnership firms. The authors apply a policy evaluation framework to investigate the impact of the use of incentives in the short run. The authors infer the counterfactual policy scenario thanks to a survey question that asks about firms' behaviour in the absence of the incentives. The authors also control for firms' unobserved heterogeneity, including firm's fixed effects, and endogeneity issues, estimating a differences-in-differences model that exploit the longitudinal component of the RIL survey.

The authors find that the use of at least one incentive scheme in 2017 is associated with an increase in the share of newly hired of about 0.07 percentage point in the short run. Moreover, hiring incentives have a small positive relationship with the share of both young workers and temporary contracts. Finally, these results are robust to endogeneity issues.

The analysis provides an updated evaluation of the effectiveness of hiring incentives in Italy by focusing on firms' behaviour rather than on the evolution of individual employment. It identifies the impact by using a rich set of econometric methods as well as counterfactual analysis.

A marketing programme for the financial services industry is presented and, specifically a model developed which could be used to market trust services in the banking industry. A trust referral programme provides financial institutions with the opportunity to direct personal selling efforts at customers who have made a previous commitment to the bank. A properly structured referral programme will not only benefit the trust department, but also provide a higher service level for the financial institution as a whole.

Market development; market analysis; customer incentive programmes and segmentation.

Undergraduate Business and Management, MBA/MA Management.

The Singapore subsidiary of AHL Insurance Corporation (AHL) was trying to expand its customer base through a “recommend-a-friend” programme. Ideally, the incentives would encourage the top tier customers to refer more friends to help AHL further penetrate the market and expand its customer base. Instead, the programme worked the reverse on these customers and referrals from “Apostles” fell. Ray Stevenson had to find out why this was so and think of a way to rectify the problem.

This case will enable students to analyse a business decision which ultimately proved unsuccessful to the point of adverse market reaction. Students will examine the reasons for this poor market perception; conduct analysis of field test data and provide managerial conclusions and recommendations identifying the correct course of action.

Teaching notes.

The purpose of this paper is to show that new technologies have significantly changed the way that customers interact with their bank. Whilst a trip down to the local branch was mandatory in the past for a customer to do their banking, all that is required now in many situations is simply to send a text message or log on to the internet. However, the idea of exploiting customer competency with new technologies to create new distribution channels has become a double‐edged sword. Although the distance between the bank and its customer is shortened in that direct contact can be established within a matter of seconds with these new technologies, the impact on the customer's perceived relationship with the brand remains an issue of strategic importance that needs to be evaluated. In order to exploit the advantages of technology, a full understanding of the factors and processes involved in the customer‐brand relationship associated with use of self‐service banking channels is necessary.

The methodology is an empirical study using bank customers as participants, which was conducted to examine the impact of salient relationship norms on customers' perceptions of their relationship with their bank.

Based on the experiment data, the paper establishes the relevance of the concepts of communal and exchange relationship norms in the study of customer‐brand relationships in a business context.

The implications from the findings provide insights into the importance of relationship theory in explaining customers' perceived relationship with brands, specifically that of their bank.

The purpose of this paper is, first, to examine the factors that impede SMEs in their internationalization process; second, to analyse the effectiveness of the government support and development programs of the SMEs; and finally, to examine the networking efforts by Malaysian SMEs at the industrial level.

This study is descriptive in nature. Secondary data are the main source of data collection. Data were obtained from reliable and authoritative sources such as SME Corp, government agency publications, newspapers, international business journals and other related periodicals. A meta-analysis technique was used in this study where results from previous and current studies on similar topics were critically reviewed.

This study found that Malaysian SMEs faced external and internal impediments in their efforts of expanding their operations internationally. Externally there is a lack of skilled workers available in the domestic labour market; increased competition in the domestic market due to the regional economic agreement among neighbouring countries; lack of physical infrastructure allocated to the SMEs; and government assistance offered does not reach SMEs due to high level of bureaucracy and poor communication. Despite the impediments encountered by SMEs, they still obtained benefits from various policies, programmes and incentives provided by the government.

Meta-analysis conducted on the challenges of Malaysian SMEs in its internationalization process might be inadequate as it is limited to the availability of the current and previous studies. Additionally, quantitative data obtained from the secondary source was not raw data thus statistical testing could not be further conducted and analysed. Data obtained from the local authoritative sources detected different problems and challenges from those found in previous and current studies.

This study indicates several implications for managers and policy makers. Malaysian SMEs need to evaluate its capability before embarking into new geographic locations and engage internationally. With diverse programmes offered by the government, SMEs have a wide range of choice when involving the whole value chain activities, either through marketing their products in the market or manufacturing and supplying the products to large firms or MNCs. Involving international markets is not only about expanding the market but also for seeking lower costs and resources as well as operating with management efficiency.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge of international business and entrepreneurship literature in three ways. First, research on SMEs from emerging countries involved in international market tend to be limited in literature, most of them are concentrated in the developed countries; thus this study would extend the understanding about the internationalization process among SMEs. Second, this study focused on the impediments of SMEs in their implementation strategies which represent the practicality of the phenomenon thus bridging the gap between theories and realities. Third, this study brings to light the significance of networking relationships in international business and entrepreneurship primarily among SMEs due to their size limitations. Finally, the meta-analysis technique which is seldom used in the international business and entrepreneurial literature is adopted in this study. This technique provides another approach for the researchers to examine and address the issues in the field.

Many companies in the USA have corporate wellness programs but are having trouble encouraging employees to take part in these programs. Even with monetary incentives, many employees do not join. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether timely reminders combined with monetary incentives improve participation in health benefit programs.

Employees of a large manufacturing company across multiple facilities were encouraged to enroll in a messaging service. Once a week, members received an SMS or e-mail reminder to complete a Health Risk Assessment (HRA) and Health Action Plan (HAP). The authors segmented employees based on prior year health insurance plan choice and HRA participation to analyze current HRA and HAP completion, with and without intervention.

The intervention increased completion rates 6 percent for subgroups that completed the HRA in the prior year and 34–37 percent for those that did not.

Corporate wellness programs should develop good communication channels with employees. The effectiveness of such programs will depend also on employee engagement.

With better communication, companies could raise participation in corporate wellness programmes and potentially reduce some of the monetary incentives that they currently offer.

The challenge facing human resource/compensation professionals in the people‐intensive, high‐technology industry, will be the development of a model and strategy intended to respond to the specific needs of unique professionals engaged in high growth organisations. This article examines the complex purposes of compensation, including the eight factors contributing to the determination of compensation levels, while considering constraints and contingencies. Job‐based evaluation and person‐based systems will be examined together with individual and group incentive plans as they impact upon growth cycles of high‐tech firms. The innovative nature of high‐technology organisations can be directly linked to compensation strategies for management. These high growth firms utilise a most unique compensation approach which is fundamentally different from normative organisations. They: (1) use annual incentives, but emphasise the longer term; (2) emphasise stock rather than long‐term cash plans; (3) use stock options where the manager benefits only if stock prices increase; (4) use a much larger proportion of stock than typical firms provide; and (5) encourage much wider use of stock among a broad employee group. Compensation occupies as significant a niche as articulate strategies and leading edge innovativeness, for high‐technology organisations.