Corporate incentive programmes : an application of utility theory.

It is pointed out that many reports exist by now on the successes of incentive programmes in reducing accident rates of corporate fleets at favourable cost-benefit ratios to the incentive provider. However, these are not useful in assisting the incentive provider in making the critical choices when putting together his own incentive programme. The intention of this paper is to briefly present one approach in the line of classical utility theory that presents at least some tentative and testable guidelines to make these choices. Certain implications of the simple utility approach have been tested by studying decision taking in an operational game, in a simulation of a risk taking task.