Reward Systems

This study has important findings which provided scientific contributions and practical insights. However, akin to any other study, this study has a number of limitations which need to be addressed. First, making any generalizations based on a sample of 216 participants is difficult. Although this number of responses was due to difficult accessibility and obtaining answers from full-time employees.

Second, the majority of the research sample were males (94%). Although this reflects the nature of employment in the industrial sector in Saudi Arabia which is male dominated, the results may not apply to women workers. As mentioned earlier, this also might explain why respondents in this study tend to be overly concerned, hence motivated, with financial well-being rather than intangible, moral incentives. The culture of an Arab society is that a man is mainly responsible for the financial security of his family, which in comparison, might leave working women more concerned, and motivated with non-monetary incentives.

These authors found that men performed 12.86% better with monetary incentives than nonmonetary, which was statistically significant at the 10% level. In comparison, when a female sample was used, financial incentives had little-to-no effect on women's performance, while non-monetary incentives resulted in a 15.95% increase in performance. However, a larger sample size including other economic cities in the country may provide more definitive and wide-ranging results in order to confirm these findings, validate and extend our model used in this study. Moreover, using a qualitative approach in future studies may provide deeper understanding of this matter.

Another limitation is the concentration of survey respondents in private and semi-private companies in the Saudi industrial sector, future studies including governmental entities are encouraged. Future researchers are also encouraged to test other mediating variables such as employee self-motivation and drive, tenure, and loyalty. Moreover, job nature-based incentives such as proximity to family, i.e., the geographic location of the job, and applicability of the post being fully or partially virtual are intriguing variables to be considered in future research.