Incentive programs are one of the most important strategies that a corporation has in order to achieve its major policies and goals. The purpose of this paper is to identify these goals and their function, so that we later can analyze the incentive system’s effectiveness. The paper’s focus is on Max Hamburgarerestauranger AB’s incentive system, that is directed to the managers of all of its restaurants.

We had interviews with the CEO, as well as the head of the Economics Department of Max H. AB in order to understand the purpose and the dynamics of the incentive system through the leadership’s point of view. It seems that the major goal of the system is to encourage corporate growth, by stimulating an array of desirable effects on the managers’ and employees’ labor attitudes.

We analyzed restaurant managers’ attitudes with a questionnaire survey that was sent out to them. In this way we examined the effectiveness and success of the incentive system, comparing its goals with the survey results and with reference to the existing theories on corporate incentives.

The overall conclusion of this paper is that the incentive program has a positive impact on the restaurant managers’ motivation and behavior. In this way the incentive program is effective because it has a significant effect on Max’s need of expansion; but it can be further improved by introducing intangible rewards, so it can become more accurate.