Finns det ett samband mellan belöningssystem och finansiell aktieägartillväxt i publika svenska företag? En intressant och högaktuell fråga, som det visade sig, och som kommer att försöka besvaras i denna uppsats. Inledningsvis undersöktes om det fanns någon relevant svensk statistik som kunde belysa de exekutiva ledarnas förtjänstutveckling under senare år. Statistiska Centralbyråns inkomststatistik gav inte svar på frågan. LO-ekonomernas statistik visade sig vara relevant och bekräftade mitt antagande att inkomstutveckling för denna grupp varit osedvanligt god. Med antagandet bekräftad och således stärkt i tron ställdes tre frågor som uppsatsens syfte var att besvara: Fråga 1 Hur ser de belöningsmodeller ut som tillämpas av svenska företag avseende ersättningar till medlemmar i företagens exekutiva ledningsgrupper? Fråga 2 Hur förhåller sig de tillämpade belöningsmodellerna till relevant belöningsoch motivationsteori? Fråga 3 Finns det ett samband mellan aktieägarnas finansiella utveckling i dessa företag och företagens belöningar till den studerade yrkesgruppen? Lämpliga teorier att applicera på de undersökta företagens belöningsmodeller visade sig vara agentteorin och förväntansteorin. Dessa två teorier jämfördes med de fyra undersökta företagens, Ericsson, Handelsbanken, IKEA och Skandia belöningssystem genom studier av dessa bolags årsredovisningar för åren 2000-2004. Det visade sig härvid att de företag (två st.) som hade de högsta belöningsnivåerna redovisade sämst resultatutveckling och negativ avkastning till aktieägarna, medan det företag (en st.) med den lägsta belöningsnivån, hade en god resultatutveckling och en fördelaktig avkastning till aktieägarna. För IKEA var studiematerialet för knapphändigt för att kunna uttala sig om hur belöningsnivån utvecklats även om aktieägarens avkastning var den mest fördelaktiga bland de undersökta företagen. Samtliga företag, IKEA undantagen, har konstaterats ersätta sina exekutiva ledare med grundlön, rörlig lön, anställningsförmåner och pensionslösningar även om Handelsbanken uppger att man inte tillämpar rörlig bonus eller rörligt tantiem. Slutledningsvis konstaterades att det inte i något fall förelåg något samband mellan hur företagen ersätter sina exekutiva ledare och aktieägarnas finansiella tillväxt.

Syfte med uppsatsen är att skapa en ökad förståelse för belöningssystem och dess funktioner, samt undersöka om dessa motiverar personalen till att sträva efter samma mål som företaget. I vår slutsats har vi kommit fram till att Elgiganten och ONOFF använder sig av väl fungerande belöningssystem. I studien kom vi fram till att både de anställda och litteraturen pekar på att det är de icke-finansiella faktorerna som motiverar mest. Därmed borde de utveckla de icke-finansiella belöningarna vidare för att nå högre motivation och högre effektivitet inom verksamheten. Vi har även kommit fram till att det inte är belöningssystemet i sig utan det är känslan som personalen känner när de uppnår en belöning som motiverar mest. / Our purpose with this thesis is to create an understanding for reward systems and its funtions, to see if it fulfils the purpose to motivate the employees to strive after the same goal as the company. The conclusion we have come up to is that Elgiganten and ONOFF have a well functioned reward system. In the thesis we have come up with that both the employees and the literature point out that it's the non financial factors which create the largest part of the motivation. This means that the company should develop the non financial reward further to reach higher motivation and higher efficiency in the organization. We have also concluded that it's not the reward system itself but the feeling the employees feel when they reach a reward that motivates the most.

<p>An animal's ability to make adaptive choices is key to its fitness. Thus, the process of determining options, making a decision, evaluating outcomes, and learning from those outcomes to adjust future behavior is a central function of our nervous system. Determining the neural mechanisms of these cognitive processes is a crucial goal. One brain region, the posterior cingulate cortex (CGp), a central hub within the default mode network, is prominently dysregulated in Alzheimer's Disease and schizophrenia. Despite its clinical importance, the posterior cingulate cortex remains an enigmatic nexus of attention, memory, and motivation, all pointing to a role in decision-making. This dissertation is concerned with the role of this brain region in the learning and valuation processes involved in making adaptive choices. Specifically, I used rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to examine the neural activity in posterior cingulate associated with specific learning and valuation -related variables. In the first experiment, I showed that posterior cingulate neurons track decision salience--the degree to which an option differs from a standard--but not the subjective value of a decision. To do this, I recorded the spiking activity of CGp neurons in monkeys choosing between options varying in reward-related risk, delay to reward, and social outcomes, each of which varied in level of decision salience. Firing rates were higher when monkeys chose the risky option, consistent with their risk-seeking preferences, but were also higher when monkeys chose the delayed and social options, contradicting their preferences. Thus, across decision contexts, neuronal activity was uncorrelated with how much monkeys valued a given option, as inferred from choice. Instead, neuronal activity signaled the deviation of the chosen option from the standard, independently of how it differed. The observed decision salience signals suggest a role for CGp in the flexible allocation of neural resources to motivationally significant information, akin to the role of attention in selective processing of sensory inputs. This pointed to a role for CGp in learning rather than subjective value signaling, and the second set of experiments aimed to test the role of CGp in associative learning. I recorded from single CGp neurons in monkeys performing a simple conditional motor association task while varying stimulus familiarity and motivation. CGp neurons responded phasically following commission of errors, and this error signal was modulated by motivation and stimulus novelty. Moreover, slow variations in firing rates tracked variations in learning rate over the course of sessions. Silencing these signals with muscimol impaired learning in low motivational states but spared learning in high motivational states, and spared recall of familiar associations as well. These findings endorse a role for CGp in performance and environment monitoring to regulate learning rate. Collectively, these experiments reshape our understanding of the role of posterior cingulate cortex in cognition, integrate default mode and value-based theories of CGp function, and provide a potential foundation for a circuit-level explication of Alzheimer's Disease and schizophrenia.</p> / Dissertation

<p>Memories are not veridical representations of the environment. Rather, an individual's goals can influence how the surrounding environment is represented in long-term memory. The present dissertation aims to delineate the influence of reward and punishment motivation on human declarative memory encoding and its underlying neural circuitry. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical framework for investigating motivation's influence on declarative memory. This chapter will review the animal and human literatures on declarative memory encoding, reward and punishment motivation, and motivation's influence on learning and memory. Chapter 2 presents a study examining the behavioral effects of reward and punishment motivation on declarative memory encoding. Chapter 3 presents a study examining the neural circuitry underlying punishment-motivated declarative encoding using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and compares these findings to previous studies of reward-motivated declarative encoding. Chapter 4 presents a study examining the influence of reward and punishment motivation on neural sensitivity to and declarative memory for unexpected events encountered during goal pursuit using fMRI. Finally, Chapter 5 synthesizes these results and proposes a model of how and why motivational valence has distinct influences on declarative memory encoding. Results indicated that behaviorally, reward motivation resulted in more enriched representations of the environment compared to punishment motivation. Neurally, these motivational states engaged distinct neuromodulatory systems and medial temporal lobe (MTL) targets during encoding. Specifically, results indicated that reward motivation supports interactions between the ventral tegmental area and the hippocampus, whereas, punishment motivation supports interactions between the amygdala and parahippocampal cortex. Together, these findings suggest that reward and punishment engage distinct systems of encoding and result in the storage of qualitatively different representations of the environment into long-term memory.</p> / Dissertation

Sammanfattning Kandidatuppsats i företagsekonomi med inriktning mot hållbar verksamhetsutveckling och management, Mälardalens Högskola i Västerås.   Datum: 2011-06-07   Författare: Yosef Gebretsadkan och Natalie Sepúlveda Moradinassab   Handledare: Peter Selegård   Titel: Belöningssystem - En studie om belöningar och motivation hos Handelsbanken   Problemformulering: Belöningssystem har i dagsläget blivit oerhört modernt och de flesta banker använder sig av det. Till följd av detta har studiens problemformulering utformats enligt följande: Är belöningssystem en bra motivation för effektivare arbete? Hur mycket påverkas de anställda av belöningssystem?   Syfte: Syftet med studien är att beskriva vad belöningssystem innebär och vad det har för verkan hos organisationer, i detta fall Handelsbanken. Vi redovisar även medarbetarnas uppfattning om belöningssystemet och hur de upplever att deras motivation påverkas.   Metod: Informationen har hämtats från vetenskaplig kurslitteratur och artiklar samt internetsidor. Undersökningen bestod av ett flertal intervjuer av både ledningen och anställda vid olika kontor i Handelsbanken. Intervjuerna bestod av personliga möten och karaktäriserade semistrukturerade intervjuer.   Slutsats: Förbättringsförslag för ökad motivation bland anställda i Handelsbanken redovisas, där ett av förslagen är en utveckling av variationen på de olika formerna av belöningssystem eftersom alla individer påverkas av olika förutsättningar.   Nyckelord: Belöningssystem, bank och motivation. / Abstract Bachelor’s essay in business studies with the specialization towards management, Mälardalens Högskola in Västerås. Date: 2011-06-07   Authors: Yosef Gebretsadkan and Natalie Sepúlveda Moradinassab   Tutor: Peter Selegård   Title: Reward system- A study about rewards and motivation in Handelsbanken, Sweden.   Problemformulation: The reward system has now become extremely modern and most of the banks are now using it. As a result of this, the study’s problemformulation has been set to: is the reward system a good motivation for effective work? And how much are the employed affected by the reward system? Purpose: The purpose of the study is to describe what the reward system is and how it affects organizations, such as Handelsbanken. We also want to highlight the employee perspective through letting them describe their view of the reward system and whether they believe their motivation is affected by it or not.   Method: The information is taken from scientific literature, articles and also websites. The study is built upon a number of interviews, with both the board of directors and the employees of their different offices in Sweden. The interviews were allsemistructured and took place in their offices.   Conclusion: An improvement suggestion for increased motivation among employees of Handelsbanken has been developed. This suggestion is to develop the reward system to each individual because everyone is motivated by different things.   Keywords: Reward system, bank and motivation.

Artificial rearing of infant rats is a useful method for studying the role of early experiences in neural and behavioural development because it permits precise control over key features of the early environment without maternal influence. The present thesis examined the behavioural response of artificially reared rats towards natural and drug-mediated rewards, as well as novel environments. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were separated from their mother and litter-mates starting on post-natal day five and reared artificially (AR, n = 39), or they were reared naturally with a foster mother and litter (MR, n = 43). On post-natal day 21, half the rats from each rearing group were housed in isolation and the other half were group-housed with 3-4 rats per cage. Following three weeks in their respective housing conditions, all rats were exposed to three behavioural tests in the following order: open field, elevated plus-maze and sucrose preference. Additionally, one of the two cohorts used in adolescent behavioural testing was later tested in adulthood for conditioned place preference in response to morphine injection (intraperitoneal, 10 mg/kg). Adolescent AR rats were found to be more active in the open field and in the elevated plus-maze than MR rats. Furthermore, although there were no differences between the groups in fearfulness in the open field, in their first experience on the elevated plus-maze AR rats were more anxious than MR rats in exploring the open arms. AR rats also showed increased preference for sucrose consumption relative to chow, although their overall caloric intake during the 1h test was lower than that of MR rats. In adulthood, AR rats displayed a stronger conditioned place preference response to morphine. There were no significant effects of housing condition on any of these outcome measures. These findings support the potential of this model to contribute to the understanding of the role of early experience in the development of behavioural motivation.

The purpose of this essay is to try to understand the relationship between the structures of modern working life and the development of burnout. By using the method of qualitative interviews we wanted to see if the Effort-Reward Imbalance Model could be applied to the data we had collected. Two questions have been highlighted in our research:               • Is it possible to establish a relationship between the structures of modern working life and the development of burnout among the subjects interviewed?   • Is it possible to explain the development of burnout among our interviewed subjects through the Effort-Reward Imbalance Model?       Our theoretical frames are the general theories of the modern society and the modern working life as developed by Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman. We have also used Johannes Siegrist’s medical-sociological Effort-Reward Imbalance Model (ERI-Model). Our main findings are that the characteristics of modern working life mostly have had a negative affect on the lives of four of the five interviewed subjects. Hence, modern working life is one contributing factor to the development of burnout among our interviewed subjects. Four of five interview subjects fulfilled the three hypotheses postulated by the Effort-Reward Imbalance Model. This indicates that these individuals are at an increased risk of developing poor health. It also indicates that an imbalance between efforts and rewards as well as an imbalance between internal and external factors at the workplace might have contributed to their development of burnout.

<p>Negotiating the complex decisions that we encounter daily requires coordinated neu- </p><p>ronal activity. The enormous variety of decisions we make, the intrinsic complexity </p><p>of the situations we encounter, and the extraordinary flexibility of our behaviors </p><p>suggest the existence of intricate neural mechanisms for negotiating contexts and </p><p>making choices. Further evidence for this prediction comes from the behavioral al- </p><p>terations observed in illness and after injury. Both clinical and scientific evidence </p><p>suggest that decision signals are carried by electrical neuronal activity and influenced </p><p>by neuromodulatory chemicals. This dissertation addresses the function of two puta- </p><p>tive contributors to decision-making: neuronal activity in posterior cingulate cortex </p><p>and modulatory effects of serotonin. I found that posterior cingulate neurons respond </p><p>phasically to salient events (informative cues; intentional saccades; and reward deliv- </p><p>ery) across multiple contexts. In addition, these neurons signal heuristically guided </p><p>choices across contexts in a gambling task. These observations suggest that posterior </p><p>cingulate neurons contribute to the detection and integration of salient information </p><p>necessary to transform event detection to expressed decisions. I also found that </p><p>lowering levels of the neuromodulator serotonin increased the probability of making </p><p>risky decisions in both monkeys and mice, suggesting that this neurotransmitter con- </p><p>tributes to preference formation across species. These results suggest that posterior </p><p>cingulate cortex and serotonin each contribute to decision formation. In addition, the </p><p>unique serotonergic pro jections to posterior cingulate cortex, as well as the frequent </p><p>implication of altered serotonergic and posterior cingulate function in psychiatric dis- </p><p>orders, suggest that the confluence of cingulate and serotonergic activity may offer </p><p>key insights into normal and pathological mechanisms of decision making.</p> / Dissertation

<p>Perception arises from sensory inputs detected by peripheral organs and processed in the brain by complex neuronal circuits required for the integration of external information with internal states such as expectation and attention. Stimulus discrimination requires activation of primary sensory areas in the brain, but expectation is traditionally associated with the activation of higher-order brain areas. Sensory information obtained by tactile organs is represented along the primary areas that comprise the trigeminal thalamocortical pathway. In anesthetized animals, neuronal activity in the somatosensory system has been extensively described over the past century. However, it is still unclear how the different thalamocortical structures contribute to active tactile discrimination and represent relevant features of the stimulus. It is also unknown whether expectation modulates tactile representations in these regions. In this dissertation, I investigated neuronal ensemble activity recorded from freely behaving rats performing a whisker-based tactile discrimination t-+ask. Multielectrode arrays were chronically implanted to record simultaneously from the main stages of the trigeminal thalamocortical pathways involved in whisking: the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), the ventral posterior medial nucleus of the thalamus (VPM), the posterior medial complex (POm) and the zona incerta (ZI). In Chapter 1 I describe the behavior of rats performing the tactile discrimination task, which requires animals to associate two different tactile stimuli with two corresponding choices of spatial trajectory in order for reward to be delivered. I found that both cortical and thalamic neurons are dynamically engaged during execution of the task. The data reveal a very complex mosaic of responses comprising single or multiple periods of inhibition and excitation. Thalamocortical activity was modulated during whisker stimulation as well as after stimulus removal, up until reward delivery. To investigate whether reward expectation plays a role in tactile processing at early processing stages, I also recorded neuronal activity from rats performing a freely-rewarded version of the tactile discrimination task. Comparing data from regularly-rewarded and freely-rewarded sessions, I show in chapter 2 that the activity of single neurons in the primary somatosensory thalamocortical loop is strongly modulated by reward expectation. Stimulus-related information coded by primary thalamocortical neurons is high when a correct association between stimulus and response is crucial for reward, but decreases significantly when the association is irrelevant. These results indicate that tactile processing in primary somatosensory areas of the thalamus and cerebral cortex is directly affected by reward expectation.</p> / Dissertation

<p>The ultimate goal of the nervous systems of all animals is conceptually simple: Manipulate the external environment to maximize one's own survival and reproduction. The myriad means animals employ in pursuit of this goal are astoundingly complex, but constrained by common factors. For example, to ensure survival, all animals must acquire the necessary nutrients to sustain metabolism. Similarly, social interaction of some form is necessary for mating and reproduction. For some animals, the required social interaction goes far beyond that necessary for mating. Humans and many other primates exist in complex social environments, the navigation of which are essential for adaptive behavior. This dissertation is concerned with processes of transforming sensory stimuli regarding both nutritive and social information into motor commands pursuant to the goals of survival and reproduction. Specifically, this dissertation deals with these processes in the rhesus macaque. Using a task in which monkeys make decisions simultaneously weighing outcomes of fruit juices and images of familiar conspecifics, I have examined the neurophysiology of social and nutritive factors as they contribute to choice behavior; with the ultimate goal of understanding how these disparate factors are weighed against each other and combined to produce coherent motor commands that result in adaptive social interactions and the successful procurement of resources. I began my investigation in the lateral intraparietal cortex, a well-studied area of the primate brain implicated in visual attention, oculomotor planning and control, and reward processing. My findings indicate the lateral intraparietal cortex represents social and nutritive reward information in a common neural currency. That is, the summed value of social and nutritive outcomes is proportional to the firing rates of parietal neurons. I continued my investigation in the striatum, a large and functionally diverse subcortical nuclei implicated in motor processing, reward processing and learning. Here I find a different pattern of results. Striatal neurons generally encoded information about either social outcome or juice rewards, but not both, with a medial or lateral bias in the location of social or juice information encoding neurons, respectively. In further contrast to the lateral intraparietal cortex, the firing rates of striatal neurons coding social and nutritive outcome information is heterogeneous and not directly related to the value of the outcome. This dissertation represents a few incremental steps toward understanding how social information and the drive toward social interaction are incorporated with other motivators to influence behavior. Understanding this process is a necessary step for elucidating, treating, and preventing pathologies</p> / Dissertation