Title:Rewarding and Recognizing Employees: How IT Professionals in Sweden and in Finland are motivated and prefer to be rewarded Authors: Yecenia Rivera Ortiz Nghi Tran Supervisor: Dr. Klaus Solberg Søilen Course: Master Thesis in Business Administration Purpose: With this thesis we want to investigate through an empirical and a theoretical study how IT professionals in Sweden and in Finland are motivated and how they prefer to be rewarded and recognized. Method: The methodology for this thesis is both a quantitative and qualitative research methodology. The data was collected through questionnaires which contained multiple choice questions and open questions. The Statistical Analysis of Data presentation was performed for the multiple-choice questions and Qualitative analysis for the open questions. Conclusions: Motivating, recognizing and rewarding IT-professionals is a severely complicated issue of great importance to both employers and employees. IT-professionals does not appear to be fully motivated and recognized and they would do a better work if they where, according to them self. It is important that the management in the organizations dedicate time and interest to their employee’s individual needs and to improve their motivation. By doing so, the quality of work and efficiency might be improved.