Reasons behind a low level of trust in middle managementThe purpose of this study was to investigate reasons behind the low level of trust in a large Swedish industrial company and to get a perception of what parameters the company can work with to increase level of trust. The question we been focusing on is how rewards and punishment can drive the organizational culture as organizational cultures is driven by different behaviors. As far as we could see there was no research or studies on specifically rewards and punishment connected to culture and its development.This is a qualitative study, and we made an approach to use Kathy Charmaz variant on Grounded Theory as a method. Interviews with managers in three different levels at the same department has been done. The study started with Jacobsen & Thorsvik's model, the transformation process to understand how different elements of the organization are connected. Using Schein's three-level model, the questionnaire was constructed. When analyzing the results from the interviews, mainly Ekman's LGSP model and Schein's three-level model was used.During the interviews was it obvious that all managers worked to develop the culture but without greater success. We found the organization had structural problems that made it difficult to develop trust and sometimes managers behaved in a way that was driving the culture in wrong direction according to company strategy. We noticed a widespread unconsciousness amongmanagers on how organizational culture is developed and how they were affecting their coworkers.When those who work in an organization become insecure, the uncertainty makes it difficult to build trust between different units. The uncertainty creates various negative behaviours that drive culture in the opposite direction to the desired.

Numerous papers examine the relationship between gacha mechanics and gambling, however, few enquire about what attracts players to gacha games. This is the focus of this thesis, asking players, from their perspective, what are the elements of gacha games that keep them engaged. It also queries why, after having stopped playing gacha games for a period of time, players return to these games. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with five players who play gacha games at least 20 hours a week and who took a break from these games for at least one month. Results indicate that players are initially attracted to gacha games due to their aesthetic and that players value narrative elements associated with the games and the gacha characters. Interestingly, the gacha mechanic itself was not pointed out as the reason for engaging with the game, rather it is used as a means to acquire a desired ingame item. Nonetheless, strong emotional attachment is associated with successful and unsuccessful pulls; a low amount of pulls to acquire a desired character or item is described as a strong joyful memory, whereas not being able to acquire the desired gacha character or item despite a large number of pulls is associated with intense frustration and sadness. Collectionism was pointed out by players as a motivation for acquiring gacha items, with players placing a higher value on items they need to complete their collection rather than necessarily on high-rated game items. The results also indicate that burnout can occur when a game stops or slows the release of new content, eventually leading players to stop playing that game.

Given increasing cultural diversity, behavioral health professionals and researchers are paying greater attention to the need for cultural competence. Behavioral health treatment research has included predominantly individuals of European ancestry; research on parenting practices/interventions has been no exception. African-American parents are particularly underrepresented, raising questions of cross-cultural applicability and acceptability. Acceptability of interventions is crucial, predicting engagement in, adherence with, and premature withdrawal from treatment. In this study, acceptability of rewards, a frequently used intervention for changing children’s behavior, was examined among African-American parents. Children’s characteristics (gender, behavior problem type), culturally-linked variables (authoritarian parenting, promotion and prevention focus, Afrocentric worldview), and parenting beliefs (behavioral attributions, irrational parenting beliefs) were examined as predictors of reward acceptability. African-American parents (n=79) of children aged 4-12 read four vignettes (two with girls and two with boys) describing children’s behaviors (externalizing and internalizing symptoms). Parents rated the acceptability of rewards to improve the behavior. Authoritarian parenting and prevention focus were hypothesized to be negatively associated with reward acceptability. Acceptability was expected to be lower for externalizing males and additional variables were investigated as moderators and co-variates. Exploratory analyses examined differences between mothers and fathers and between low and high Afrocentric worldview. The main hypothesis was unsupported. Authoritarian parenting and prevention focus did not contribute to a model predicting acceptability, and gender differences were not found. Behavior type was associated with acceptability opposite the expected direction, with higher acceptability for externalizing symptoms. Acceptability on a general-attitude measure was predicted by efficacy expectations, internal behavioral attributions, and Afrocentric worldview. However, on a measure specific to the vignettes, few variables predicted acceptability; ratings were lower than on the general-attitude measure. This may suggest that parents viewed rewards as acceptable in circumstances different from those depicted in the vignettes. Individuals endorsing high Afrocentric worldviews had higher reward acceptability, were more likely to be older, were less driven by prevention goals, had lower authoritarian parenting styles, and had less rigid and more rational parenting beliefs. Fathers and mothers did not differ. Results underscored the importance of inquiring about specific situations rather than general attitudes in assessing intervention acceptability.

Intrinsic motivation, the preferred facilitator of performance, may be a relatively stable trait or specific to a given task. This study compared the computer task performances of 207 children in two schools, on the basis of their teachers' reward practices and the experimental reward conditions. Parents' reward practices, teachers' reward practices, and children's trait intrinsic motivation were measured. Baseline task performance scores and the chosen level of difficulty were statistically higher for children who were higher in the Judgment subscale of trait motivation than for those who scored lower on the Judgment subscale. The trait measure was positively related to most of the game scores and difficulty levels of the task motivation. Higher parent reward usage was related to lower SES and to lower achievement. Higher teacher reward usage was positively related to Grade 1 and to higher levels of difficulty. Children who had usually received rewards or who had not usually received rewards, according to a teacher survey of rewarding attitudes and behaviors, were given a challenging task with (a) no mention of rewards or (b) the promise of a reward. Experimental reward conditions consonant with reward experiences related to higher game scores, especially in Grade 1. Experimental reward conditions which differed from reward experiences related to lower game scores after the experimental condition. All scores were higher for Grade 2, except the number of minutes played. The subjects' choice of level of difficulty tended to increase throughout the three trials. The number of minutes played tended to increase during trials in Grade 1 and to decrease in Grade 2. Affect for the task was higher For Grade 2, higher For girls, and higher for Grade 2 children who were lower on the internal Judgment subscale of trait intrinsic motivation. / Ph. D.

Gainsharing plans have been in existence since the late 1930s when the Scanlon Plan was implemented by Joseph Scanlon at the Empire Steel and Tin Plate Company of Cleveland. Since that first implementation, gainsharing has spread to encompass 15% of American corporations with over 500 employees (N.Y.S.E., 1982 cited in Gowen, 1990). Changemasters, Inc. (CMD) is a small, public-sector, research and development organization. CMI has had a gainsharing system in place since 1987. Over the years CMI's gainsharing system has been altered and modified to incorporate the experiential learnings in the areas of motivation, compensation management, and gainsharing. This study documented the evolution of CMI's gainsharing system and evaluated it to determine whether or not it was meeting the desired goals of the program. The study found the CMI gainsharing plan to be effective at fostering organizational profitability/budgetability, employee retention, quality of work life, morale, information sharing, and organizational reward sharing. Recommendations aimed at enhancing CMI's gainsharing system were also presented. / Master of Science

There have been thousands of studies on teams and their performance, but there are still many unanswered questions. An important one is how an organization's reward structure supports the growing trend of using teams. Many organizations implement teams without changing the organizational systems to align with and support the use of teams, i.e., training, feedback, information and reward systems. As predicted by many authorities in the field of team effectiveness research, these teams often fail. One organizational subsystem that has been determined to be important is the reward structure. If the reward structure is not changed to support a team-based structure, the misalignment could negatively impact team effectiveness. This research investigated the relationship between reward structure and team effectiveness using a laboratory experiment. This experiment involved groups of students working as a team on a design problem. The independent variable is the type of reward structure, manipulated over three levels: interdependent (group), independent (individual) and mixed rewards (both group and individual). The experiment used a design task, intended to be more representative of project team work where team members were assigned a functional discipline and worked together to solve a design problem. The primary dependent variable in this study was team effectiveness: team performance as measured by the quality of the team's design, satisfaction of team members, and the ability and desire of team members to work together in the future. Other control variables investigated for their effect on these dependent variables included: cooperative behaviors, reward valence, effort, and autonomy preferences. Few significant effects of reward structure were found. The reward treatment had a significant main effect on both cooperation and effort, but little difference existed between reward treatments. Some unusual results were found in the relationship between effort and cooperation with performance. Both effort and cooperation were negatively related to team performance. Cooperation, satisfaction and ability to exist were all found to be correlated. No one reward structure was found to be significantly better than any of the others in terms of team effectiveness or team process. / Master of Science

Flower seed mixes are increasingly used to enhance the biodiversity and amenity values of urban green spaces. Urban or “pictorial” flower seed mixes are often used because they are designed using cultivars and non-native species to provide more colourful and longer-lasting flower displays. Although these seed mixes are effective in providing a high density of large colourful flowers, over an extended season, their value for biodiversity, and in particular the floral rewards they provide for flower-visitors, is largely unknown. The overall aim of my thesis was to assess and improve the value of these new urban habitats as forage resources for flower-visiting insects. My approach was to quantify and compare floral reward provision and insect visitation between meadows grown from three exemplar commercial pictorial flower meadow seed mixes (called Marmalade Annual, Short Annual and Cornfield Annual). I also compared these standard commercial mixes with corresponding ‘nectar-enriched’ formulations, which were designed by increasing the proportional seed weight contribution of selected species predicted to produce high quantities of nectar within each mix. To compare floral rewards and visitation between meadows grown from these seed mixes, I set up a field experiment in Sheffield, UK, using a complete randomised block design with six replicate blocks, each with six 25 m2 plots sown with one of the six seed mix treatments. My first objective was to quantify the floral nectar and pollen rewards provided by each flowering species recorded in the meadows (on the scale of a single flower or inflorescence). My second objective was to use these data to quantify the floral rewards provided per unit area by replicate meadows of different seed mix treatments, testing whether enrichment of seed mixes is an effective method of increasing floral nectar sugar rewards. My third objective was to corroborate/correct my morphology-based flower-visitor identifications using DNA barcoding to screen for misidentifications and morphologically cryptic species. I then used these DNA barcode-based identifications to assess whether there are systematic biases in the structure of flower-visitor networks constructed using molecular taxon identifications compared to traditional morphology-based taxon identifications. My fourth objective was to quantify patterns of insect visitation to meadows, testing whether meadows of different seed mix types attract different flower-visitor assemblages. Meadow floral composition surveys revealed that contamination by unintended horticultural species was widespread across replicate seed mix treatments, with contaminants likely germinating from a seed bank laid down during a failed attempt at this experiment the previous year. Contamination particularly affected Marmalade mixes, mainly because the common contaminant species were often also components of the Short and Cornfield mixes. For example, contaminants contributed on average about a third of nectar sugar mass or pollen volume per unit area in Marmalade mix meadows. Hence, contamination fundamentally undermined the internal validity of seed mix treatments, reducing the ability to directly attribute meadow level patterns in floral rewards or flower-visitors to seed mixes. As result, examination of patterns of floral resource provision and insect visitation were more informative at a species scale. In terms of patterns of insect visitation, Centaurea cyanus received 91% of bumblebee visits, 88% of honeybee visits and 29% of hoverfly visits, whilst T. inodorum received 27% of hoverfly visits. Patterns of bumblebee and honeybee visitation indicated preferential visitation to floral units of Centaurea cyanus. Although this species produced high quantities of nectar sugar mass and pollen volume, this did not differentiate it from other Asteraceae, such as Glebionis segetum, Rudbeckia hirta and Coreopsis tinctoria, which all produced high quantities of both floral rewards. Hence, it is likely that floral traits not measured in this study, such as nectar accessibility (‘nectar-holder depth’) or concentration/volume characteristics (which can affect accessibility due to constraints imposed by feeding morphology), drove patterns of preferential visitation in bumblebees and honeybees to C. cyanus. Given that in the absence of contamination there would have been very few bumblebee or honeybee visitors to Marmalade mix meadows, aesthetically designed pictorial meadows can fail to jointly provide benefits for people and some important flower-visiting insect taxa. DNA barcoding did not change specimen identifications for most morphotaxa. However, splitting and/or lumping processes affected almost one third of morphotaxa, with lumping of morphotaxa the most common type of change. This was in part because males and females from sexually dimorphic species were often separated by morphological identification. These DNA barcode-based changes to visitor taxonomy resulted in consistent minor changes in network size and structure across replicate networks. Lumping of morphotaxa decreased taxon richness, reducing the number of unique links and interaction diversity (the effective number of links). Lumping also increased flower-visitor generality, reducing plant vulnerability and increasing overall network connectance. However, taxonomic changes had no effect on interaction evenness or network specialisation. Thus, for this well-studied fauna, DNA barcode-based flower-visitor networks were systematically biased toward fewer taxa and links, with more generalist visitors and specialist plants. Given that many tropical faunas have more species and are less described than in Britain this pattern may not be replicated in other studies. Further studies in contrasting plant-pollinator communities are required before generalisations can be made about systematic biases between networks constructed using morphological versus molecular data. Overall, meadows grown from annual pictorial flower meadow seed mixes provide abundant floral units per unit area of meadow and are a valuable alternative to traditional horticultural flower beds or amenity grasslands in high profile urban contexts. Nevertheless, care must be taken during design of seed mixes and selection of mixes for planting to ensure that species in the mix provide suitable floral resources for an array of flower-visitors, including bees. This would be aided by the integration of informative measures for candidate species of floral rewards or visitor types and visitation rates during seed mix design.

The building and construction industry in Sweden is facing a troublesome recruitment problem, due to many retirees in the coming years. One way to increase the general attractiveness within the building and construction industry as a whole, i.e. according to young people’s standards, could be to work more actively with incentives and rewards specifically designed and chosen to motivate and attract young people. The purpose of this survey study is to examine what rewards Generation Y (people born between 1982-2000) is attracted to when entering the labor market, and finding out if there are any differences within Generation Y. The study is based on a quantitative survey of 323 students of Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH). The survey questions are based on the areas that are identified as more important to Generation Y than other generations according to the reviewed literature. The results show that Generation Y perceives non-financial rewards more important than financial rewards and that the most effective rewards to implement considering both perceived importance and perceived monetary value are career opportunities, individual skills development, provisions for retirement and extra days of vacation. The study also shows that there are differences within Generation Y concerning age, culture, work experience and gender. There are also differences between generations. Generation X (people born between 1965-1982) values the importance of non-financial rewards higher than Generation Y, but Generation Y values the rewards monetary value higher in general.

Technology enhancements of the past two decades have not successfully overcome the problem of low motivation in Kindergarten through Grade 12 (K-12). Motivation and math achievement have been identified as major factors contributing to the high school dropout problem (30-50% in traditional/online programs). The impact of extrinsic rewards on achievement and the dropout problem, however, remains a subject of debate. This dissertation seeks first to address this debate, through an investigation of reward system effectiveness in the blended learning environment, on at-risk students with varied intrinsic motivation factor scores. Next, the dissertation explores the importance of fit between students' reward perceptions and reward values when motivating student progress. To this end, the author has developed a new 6-factor motivation orientation model for students in blended learning environments, and a learner-configurable progress-based reward system (PBR) for Learner Content Management Systems (LCMS) based on this model. The hypothesized model was tested for fit with a sample of 353 at-risk high school math students in Miami, Florida. The PBR was developed based upon the findings from interviews with subject matter experts and students, factor and regression analyses used to test hypotheses about learner motivation and predict learner progress. Conclusions from the study informed the design of an integrated PBR. A 6-factor motivation orientation model was found to explain more of the variance (74%) in student motivation than earlier models. Contrary to Deci et al. (1999), hypothesis test results did not confirm adversarial extrinsic rewards/intrinsic motivation relationships. Furthermore, consistent with person-environment fit theory, learners demonstrated superior progress and achievement when extrinsic reward perceptions and values were well aligned. With critical input from flexible learning theorists, teachers, and students, the emerging PBR design may ultimately be integrated through mobile learning applications and social media, within LCMS solutions such as Blackboard, and systems commonly used in K-12, such as Apex. Although beyond the scope of the dissertation, the emerging Web-based design promises to play an important role in engaging a K-12 Community of Practice (CoP), consisting of telecommunications partners, game developers, retailers, and education stakeholders sharing a significant interest in future innovations that address the dropout problem.

This master thesis focuses on usage of the concept of total reward in selected company. The theoretical part summarizes concepts and knowledge related to remuneration of employees and the concept of total reward. The analytical part focuses on detailed description of current state of the company and defined issue. The last part includes proposals for changes in the remuneration system focusing on balancing this system of selected company according to the concept of total reward.