Book excerpt: Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: 1.1, The challenge of attracting, motivating and retaining Chinese employees: In the last decade, as a result of the advancing globalization, the People s Republic of China (PRC) has become a focus of interest for Western companies. The country is home of 25 % of the world s population and has maintained an economic growth rate of 8 % during the last twenty five years. How can companies position themselves best to profit from this fast-growing economy and prevail against an increasing competition? Along with a massive inflow of foreign investment, Western management practices and philosophies have been brought into China. Thus, every day, foreign managers in subsidiaries of Western companies have to confront decisions about money, benefits and other different forms of incentives that can be used for attracting, motivating and retaining the local Chinese employees to ensure the competitive advantages. The introduction of Western incentive systems in China can be problematic as some Western incentive practices may contradict the norms of Chinese culture and the socialist ideology. Unsurprising that issues of human resource management, particularly in the attraction of employees, the performance motivation and the staff retention, are seen as the main difficulties in the Chinese operations of Western companies. Consequently, the question arises if customary incentive practices that have been proved useful back home can be transplanted to the Chinese subsidiaries of Western companies and if so, how? It is common knowledge that the compensation packages offered by companies to their employees have a great influence on the profitability. The better the foreign managers are able to align decisions about motivational incentives with the challenges presented by the values and the motives of the employees, the likelier it is for the organization to achieve competitive advantages. Thus, especially in the international context the major limitation of contemporary pay systems is the degree to which individual attitudes and preferences are ignored. . 1.2, Conceptual design of Incentive systems for Chinese employees: Objectives and methodology of the thesis: The aim of this thesis results directly from the mentioned problem. On the basis of a literature review that is combined with an analysis of applied incentive systems, it sets out to explore why Western approaches may or may not be applicable in the Chinese context and how [...]