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The purpose of this paper is to shed light on a widely used yet scarcely investigated form of incentive, awards. The paper seeks to explore, first, whether awards can be used to motivate higher performance in academia and volunteering, and second, how often and in what forms awards are in actual fact being used in the voluntary sector.

The paper combines a theoretical analysis with various analytical methods, including a new matching technique, randomization in the field, and the survey approach.

Awards have the potential to substantially increase performance, yet they are less frequently used in the Swiss voluntary sector than theory suggests.

The focus lies on awards in academia and the voluntary sector. Future research should investigate awards in other fields, e.g. the for-profit or the cultural sector. It should also assess their use in other countries to facilitate cross-country comparisons. The effects on non-recipients and the public at large are another area worth investigating.

Practitioners are encouraged to consider awards as an important motivational instrument, which could be integrated more explicitly and more widely in the volunteer management systems of Swiss non-profit organizations.

This contribution analyzes a widely used yet scarcely investigated form of incentive, awards. originality/value derives naturally from this observation.

This paper aims to analyse the governance structure of monasteries to gain new insights and apply them to solve agency problems of modern corporations. In an historic analysis of crises and closures it asks, if Benedictine monasteries were and are capable of solving agency problems. The analysis shows that monasteries established basic governance instruments very early and therefore were able to survive for centuries.

The paper uses a dataset of all Benedictine abbeys that ever existed in Bavaria, Baden‐Württemberg, and German‐speaking Switzerland to determine their lifespan and the reasons for closures. The governance mechanisms are analyzed in detail. Finally, it draws conclusions relevant to the modern corporation. The theoretical foundations are based upon principal agency theory, psychological economics, as well as embeddedness theory.

The monasteries that are examined show an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them dissolved as a result of agency problems. This paper argues that this success is due to an appropriate governance structure that relies strongly on internal control mechanisms.

Benedictine monasteries and stock corporations differ fundamentally regarding their goals. Additional limitations of the monastic approach are the tendency to promote groupthink, the danger of dictatorship and the life long commitment.

The paper adds new insights into the corporate governance debate designed to solve current agency problems and facilitate better control.

By analyzing monasteries, a new approach is offered to understand the efficiency of internal behavioral incentives and their combination with external control mechanisms in corporate governance.

In the conventional positive neoclassical economics, the underlying behavioral assumptions concerning government activity clearly contrast with those usually admitted for other economic agents. While the latter are assumed to seek their own private interest, although accomplishing in that way a social function, governments are assumed to have as their main objective the maximization of social welfare. Hence, the assumption that economic policies are intended to stabilize economic activity follows as a consequence. The inconsistency of this asymmetry between the treatment of government and other agents was clearly stressed by Downs (1957):

The shortcomings of lobbying in respect of tourism policy are a frequent topic of discussion in tourism circles which lament that there is virtually no voice — and therefore no ear — for tourism policy matters in the Swiss Parliament. Is this really the case, or is it merely the customary reaction of a branch that is undergoing major structural change? A review of the achievement record on tourism policy affairs in recent years comes to the conclusion that the successes — at federal level, at least — are actually quite creditable: Innotour has been rejigged and a qualification offensive launched, the special VAT rate — that controversial regulatory policy issue — has been extended, the Schweizerische Cesellschaft für Hotelkredit (Swiss Society for Hotel Credits) was given a new credit, despite considerable opposition, and Switzerland Tourism's federal subsidy looks set to be higher than ever before. And all this at a juncture when savings and cuts are being made on all sides. So there is every indication that tourism lobbying in Switzerland is better than its reputation. It was in this context that tourism lobbying was investigated. The corresponding study, conducted by Brigitte Zaugg (2004), took its lead from the principles of the New Political Economy (Public Choice Theory), which uses as its essential point of departure that the ever‐more‐complex relations between politics and industry generate higher information requirements in all political bodies. Lobbyingprovides a tool for reducing information deficits. Here, information is understood as a swap commodity, because well informed circles can intensify their influence. What is more, with the help of lobbying, it is possible to develop viable legislation characterized by a high degree of acceptance and a broad consensus. Thus, despite certain image problems, lobbying is increasingly perceived as an indispensable form of basic democracy and a legitimate factor in shaping political will. If the influencing of tourism policy decision‐making processes in order to push through specific interests is further increased, the question arises of how lobbying could be modified to make it even more successful. In this connection, the study identifies four focal approaches: 1) the development and nurture of a sustainable network of contacts, 2) the permanent readying of sound information geared to public welfare and a regular exchange of information, 3) the preparation of suggested improvements that are as practical as possible and include own inputs, and 4) the creation of strategic partnerships and the grouping of tasks.