Leadership and job motivation in international corporate governance

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Sciences Wildau (Wildau Institute of Technology), course: Aviation Management 2012, language: English, abstract: For today's globalized companies, the problem of how to effectively motivate staff is becom-ing more and more vital. During the last decades, a vast number of incentive schemes and bonus plans have been developed by researchers and are applied in daily business. By now organizations have realized to appropriately view employee rewards as a kind of key investment, rather than one of their largest expenses. But why do people put so much effort in researching and ascertaining incentive systems? Companies want to ensure that good and well-trained employees do not leave the company and they are desperately trying to avoid the recruitment of new professionals. To reach these goals companies should use the inter-dependencies of linking rewards, results, and employee motivation, which can be one of the most value-added human capital strategies (Chen/Hsieh 2005, p. 155).

In the meantime the process of globalization is accelerating this development. The growing demand for highly skilled employees is intensifying the competition for workers in certain specialized industries and regions. On the other hand companies are expanding to new markets and countries in order to secure future business success. This dynamic has a direct im-pact on the value employers are placing on retaining employees and increasing employee productivity as well.
The key questions to be answered in this context are: If an organization moves to multinational areas, do any problems in designing rewards arise due to different cultural under-standings? And if so, what is seen as motivating in specific cultural environments and what can be seen as non-motivating in multinational firms and international joint ventures?

In order to answer these questions I will justify the use of rewards and incentives based on a description of frequently used work motivation theories. Additionally I'm going to examine the scientific models for a certain 'country-compatibility'. In a second step I will go into more depth by defining and differentiating between types of rewards. Furthermore I'm going to put my findings into a global context by introducing a theory which involves the influence of culture or cultural variations on organizational dynamics and employee performance.