The study has shown that retailers in the mid-price segment differentiate their brand through developing a strong company identity around the brand. The personality involves store atmosphere, merchandise and advertising. Larger companies have chosen to lay the responsibility on management level, which facilitates on store level. By controlling the strategies on a central level the company can make sure that the stores are steered in the direction that the company wants them to be steered in, and also that they follow the positioning-concept. The company can also devote its efforts to working with its core value, which is service.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how a valuation of a company preceding an acquisition can be affected by the fact that a strong brand is attached to the target company. Techniques to value a company and theories of brands are well developed, but the link between them is partially missing even though the needs to value brands have increased. A case study of five Swedish acquisitions is conducted to identify possible complicating and simplifying factors and how these are handled in the context of a valuation of an acquired company with a strong brand. Important findings are that a decreased volatility of future earnings can lead to more accurate prognoses and valuations due to the existence of a strong brand. A strong brand can, on the other hand, also make the valuation of the target company more difficult due to the fact that it is a subjective asset which increases the overall risk of the company.

This thesis describes redesign and adaption of a products housing. In order to make it more economical to produce at a lower production volume. The thesis is based upon a prototype that a previous student developed for injection moulding. The goal is to find alternative manufacturing methods, but also to identify parameters that affect the cost of the injection moulding tool.The housing must be tough in order to protect the circuit board inside. But at the same time it must allow sound, light an electrical communication to pass through.

This study looks into the possibility, and profitability, of expanding a pilot project that has been put into action at GGP Sweden AB in Tranås, a manufacturing company that produces front mowers. The pilot project is meant to give GGP Sweden AB a more precise control of the flow of goods from their suppliers, and its essence has proven to be quite similar to the Japanese Just-in-Time philosophy.The study has been divided into four separate areas; mapping, supplier selection, supplier evaluation and cost analysis. These areas represent a holistic perspective on the expansion of the pilot project and cover topics varying from methods of finding suitable JIT-suppliers, constructing Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to reviewing costs and assessing profitabilities.In this report, the reader will initially take part in the works of mapping GGP?s manufacturing unit, pilot project and supplier base, which results in a list containing the most suitable suppliers for a Just-in-Time based collaboration. Afterwards, the reader will be led into the area of supplier evaluation, where five KPI?s are created with the purpose of ensuring that GGP will be able to evaluate their suppliers and pilot project in an effective way.

AbstractTitle:The Impact of Management Control Systems on the Purchaser Function - A study of Scania and Sandvik Authors: Mohammad Reza Akhbari and Johanna Sullivan Svensson Published: 2011 Keywords: Management control, purchasing function, impact, control, control instruments, Key Performance Indicators, measurement, communication and organizational structure. Background and problem formulation: In order for a company?s business idea or vision to be fulfilled, the management of a company needs assistance from various means to intentionally affect the operation in the desired direction. Management control concerns activities of both financial and non-financial character in order to implement the strategy of a company and to reach profitability. Since the purchaser function is responsible of spending 50 percent of a company?s total revenue, the function has an optimal starting point to be a key actor in the shaping and execution of a company?s strategic plan.

The study has shown that retailers in the mid-price segment differentiate their brand through developing a strong company identity around the brand. The personality involves store atmosphere, merchandise and advertising. Larger companies have chosen to lay the responsibility on management level, which facilitates on store level. By controlling the strategies on a central level the company can make sure that the stores are steered in the direction that the company wants them to be steered in, and also that they follow the positioning-concept. The company can also devote its efforts to working with its core value, which is service.

The study has shown that retailers in the mid-price segment differentiate their brand through developing a strong company identity around the brand. The personality involves store atmosphere, merchandise and advertising. Larger companies have chosen to lay the responsibility on management level, which facilitates on store level. By controlling the strategies on a central level the company can make sure that the stores are steered in the direction that the company wants them to be steered in, and also that they follow the positioning-concept. The company can also devote its efforts to working with its core value, which is service.

Agency theory describes the conflict of interest between the principal (stockholders) and the agent (CEO). Aligning the incentives of executives with those of the owners is the most direct way to mitigate the agency problem. If there is no meaningful link between CEO compensation and company performance, it is doubtful that the large sums of assets in public corporations are being managed efficiently. In theory the solution is simple reward the CEO when shareholders wealth increases. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if there is a relationship between company performance and CEO compensation among Swedish companies, in materials and information technology industry.

A company library can only exist if it contributes to a positive result for the company. As endusers are beginning to perform searches on the Internet and have access to databases and electronic documents via their desktops it becomes important for company librarians to thoroughly think through what services should be offered to the users so that the library still contributes to the company s profit. The aim of this dissertation was to try to define the services that the company library offers its users having in mind the changes that have taken place concerning the availability of information. I also wanted to explore whether the librarians had the necessary competence to perform the services offered. Six information specialists were interviewed to give their view on the services their libraries offered.

 This paper covers how a company must act to become ?greener? and yet still increase profitability with the main emphasis on the inner structure of the company. The research is focused on the Swedish security systems company Niscayah AB, part of the multinational corporation Niscayah Group with approximately 6000 employees. A company can be assumed to consist of seven parts (strategy, systems, structure, super-ordinate goals, staff, skills and style) that have to cooperate for the firm to be able to become more environmentally friendly. Also, the economic performance is of importance and therefore that too is examined.

Facebook´s importance has grown significantly regarding crisis communication. A deficiency concerning what types of companies has been investigated earlier and how their crisis communication should be carried out on Facebook, has been identified. The aim of this study is to examine the crisis communication of a smaller company on Facebook and explore how this communication has been received by the company?s recipients. We apply an explorative approach on to a case study in order to answer the aim.

The study has shown that retailers in the mid-price segment differentiate their brand through developing a strong company identity around the brand. The personality involves store atmosphere, merchandise and advertising. Larger companies have chosen to lay the responsibility on management level, which facilitates on store level. By controlling the strategies on a central level the company can make sure that the stores are steered in the direction that the company wants them to be steered in, and also that they follow the positioning-concept. The company can also devote its efforts to working with its core value, which is service.

HAFA Bathroom Group has given us the assignment to develop a standardized back panel for their bathroom cabinets. This cabinet is going to be applied to most of their current and future cabinet solutions. To this point, they have constructed unique suspensions-and back panels for most of their cabinet models. They have also been forced to pull wiring and assemble the cabinets differently because of factors like; position of the wall sockets, dimensions of the cabinets and their shapes.The company wants to distance themselves from their current solution, firstly because the cost of having manpower to design each individual suspension solution, secondly because they will save a lot of money when the manufacturing process requires a minimum of components to be constructed. As a result of this, the company can use their resources better to develop future products.The main idea is that the consumer isn?t required to change the suspension or back panel when they decide to buy a new cabinet.

This report deals with an IT solution for the fictive company, Nexus Consulting. It is a small company with four employees, dealing with economic policy. The company wishes to set up a complete network environment with antivirus, firewall, computers and servers. They want us to analyze and compare different outsourcing companies offering cloud services and then recommend which company would suit them best.In addition, the company wants to have a webpage containing essential information about them and the services that they offer their customers.The report describes, analyzes and compares three outsourcing companies offering complete cloud services where a practical solution proposal has been developed by the group.The network component is based on the Windows platform and the web part is coded in HTML and PHP.The report also discusses what cloud computing is and why so many companies choose to move to it..

AbstractAccording to several researchers finance is scarce, scarcer for small businesses than for big enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, that want to start exporting and sales or manufacturing abroad need capital to get ready. Which capital structure and financial costs do they have, and which forms of finance do they actually use for that purpose. New american research by Mansi, Reeb (2002) has suggested, that there is a positive connection between leverage and a negative one between financial costs and internationalization, and that a non-linear model better describes this connection.This study has gathered data in two ways: Through a questionnaire from 37 SMEs and balance sheet figures from totally 166 manufacturing SMEs. In order to examine, whether the company was active on the international market, 200 SMEs in south Sweden were asked, if they exported to, produced or sold on any other market than their home market.