The influence of national culture on stock option programmes as motivators

The basic hypothesis of this dissertation is that national culture influences the attitude towards SOPs as motivators. The research objective is therefore to find out, using empirical methods on the case of managers in Germany, if is hypothesis can be verified. In order to approach this question adequately a specific theoretical framework has to be defined, this is done in the Chapters 2 to 5. The key terms for example SOPs, National Culture and the German Economic and Social Policy are discussed in detail. Chapter 2 begins with looking at two management concepts closely associated with SOPs as they too are based on the same idea of share-price development: the Principal Agent Problem and Shareholder Value.