We would like to learn more about how the restrictive policy against incentive programmes affects the board’s of Swedish state owned commercial firms ability to govern management in an efficient way. We also want to find out if there are different consequences in reference to this that are not directly linked to corporate governance issues. Our empiric observations have been made in order to profoundly explore the subject and examine it through the eyes of professional individuals, all expressing different views and standpoints. We conclude that the most efficient structure is when an active board is complemented by a well structured and individualised incentive programme. However, this thesis conclude that this structure is not possible given the current guidelines and policies employed by the state, which in turn might lead to sub optimizations in the governing..

The increased specialisation and complexity in products and services has created the need for Swedish companies to focus more on their core businesses. This has resulted in them opting to buy services and products that lie outside of their core business from consultancy businesses or other types of suppliers. When companies describe their offers in internal and external marketing it is done often in terms of company or service attributes that are not based on customer value or offered value for the customer. The reason for this is that companies have not adapted their services to the different needs of their customers. As a result of this, they run the risk of offering the same services as their competitors and communicate values that the customers either do not understand or experience as value adding.

The study addresses the field of design as a profession and examines the views on strategic management in a design project among nine selected graphic designers. The graphic designers who participate in the study are permanently employed at design companies in Stockholm. The study has a qualitative approach and the method is based on face-to-face interviews. We have chosen to examine this subject due to the opinion among professionals that strategic management in the design industry has increased during the last decades. There is a belief that strategic management in some cases are used too extensively as a way for design companies to make more money.

International trade in services has increased over the past 30 years as a result of progress in information and communication technology, increased focus on services from the manufacturing sector and the establishment of trade associations.The international market for healthcare services, also referred to as medical tourism, is growing more and more. Patients increasingly seeking treatment at other countries healthcare systems because of long queues within their own country or because it exists better prices for the same care abroad. However, this type of service exports occurs at a limited extent in Sweden.The purpose of this study is to highlight and analyze the conditions for Swedish service companies to export healthcare services. This, includes the challenges and opportunities that exist to expand the exports of these services.The approach for this study has been in the form of interviews with two market actors and written responses, from the same interview guide, with three market actors. These market participants are the so-called Care companies which export healthcare services in various counties, and the membership organization Swecare who work with export promotion activities for its members in the Swedish healthcare sector.

This paper quantitatively examines the effects of marketing brands within the same product category and the same brand portfolio jointly. We have chosen to call this type of marketing category advertising. The results of the study show that category advertising leads to increased brand awareness within the category, which is particularly important for brands within less salient subcategories. For strong brands however, category advertising leads to lower purchase intentions, an effect which could potentially be moderated by focusing the advertisement on the complementary nature of the products combined with promotional elements. The study also shows that there is no difference between advertising products jointly and separately when it comes to brand attitude, category attitude, typicality, brand purchase intention for weak brands and category purchase intention.

Background: Mergers and acquisitions have evolved from initially almost exclusively having been an American phenomenon, to becoming a common occurrence throughout the world. Companies though, are not defenseless against hostile bids, but must take many factors into account when selecting defense measures. Purpose: This paper aims to enhance the understanding of acquisitions through hostile bids on the companies studied. More specifically, this study aims to create a deeper understanding in how Scania and Skandia have chosen their defense measures, or could have chosen, before and during their hostile bidding processes with specific concern for their strategic credibility. Method: This paper is based on two companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange exposed to hostile takeover attempts in a similar time period.

The notion of firms interacting with technology is not new; these types of systems were already in place in the mid eighties. E-business users worked with connections between their inbound logistics and procurement systems, and suppliers? order-entry systems. When these connections were described for the first time the vertical links between two, or more, value chains in a value system received more attention in firm strategy. The design of the linkages in the value system was said to be a product of the need for coordination and relative bargaining power.

After been told that an ordinary winter service for our combine should cost more than 20000 SEK, not included spare parts, I decided to write this paper about today?s requirement of the workshop on a farm. I think that the lack of proper premises is the reason way not more of the ordinary machinery maintenance or upkeep is performed on the farm. When I did my literature survey I found that the Swedish environmental code, set by the Swedish law regulate how drain or sewer should be built. The environmental code however leaves a lot for your own interpretation. It might not be so bad but it must be very hard for the local environmental office to interpretation the regulations, since they are the ones that gives permission for the sewer in your workshop.

The law firm industry has during the last years met new demanding conditions and one tool to handle these new conditions has been to implement a Knowledge Management system. Large investments have been made in these Knowledge Management systems but the implementations have met many challenges from within the organizations.With a multiple study, based on interviews with Knowledge Management Managers included in a Knowledge Management network, this thesis aims to study the challenges with Knowledge Management and the underlying causes. The result, based on McDermott's theories shows challenges within technical, personal, social and management areas where the law firm need to shift a focus from Information to Knowledge Management, create a culture of trust and integration and use the informal powerbase.The causes for these challenges are found in the base of Mintzbergs theories of Professional bureaucracy where the Knowledge Management is affected by strong self-regulated individualist, a divided organizational structure and industry conditions..

This study is about how a swedish brand within the food industry that experiences a crisis following a product failure. It focuses on three areas following the crisis and these are crisis management, recovery strategies and brand management. This study seeks to explain how these areas interact in relation to massive exposure to mass media and how they interact restore the brand's potential loss of reputation. This study was conducted as a case study with a deductive and qualitative approach. The data gathered to this study was mainly based on newspaper articles and complemented with semi-structured interviews with twelve local retailers of the brand..

The aim of this study is to find out if there is any difference between how a state-owned company and a publicly listed private company communicate its sustainability performance in its sustainability report. It also aims to find out if the communication regarding sustainability has changed over time. The poll was conducted in two Swedish companies, Sveaskog AB and AB SCA, operating in the forestry industry and through a quantitative content analysis, the companies' sustainability reports from 2005 and 2010 were examined. To get a result, the reports has been examined by the GRI framework (Global Reporting Initiative) and an assessment of the communication was made based on a scale of 0-3. The results has been evaluated based on stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory and the growing interest in CSR. The analyses found evidence that there is a link between the form of ownership of the company and how it communicates regarding sustainability.

In 1996, the Swedish government deregulated the Swedish electricity market. As a consequence of the deregulation, Swedish customers could start to freely choose between different electricity companies. Different enterprises have tried various strategies in order to shape their image to attract new customers; often focusing on an image revolving around price and environmental friendliness.The purpose of this essay has been to analyze customers? relations to the electricity market. In order to analyze customers? relations a quantitative study has been conducted; focusing on customer satisfaction and customer commitment.

The purpose of this study was to identify the positive and negative aspects of the work and dynamics of a management team and from that recommend how the team can improve. The aim was also to investigate whether there was a gap between how the members of the management team comprehend themselves and how the project, section and team managers comprehend the management team. The management team contains of seven core team members and is the head function of a research and development site in central Sweden. The results are based on interviews with the present members of the management team and three former members, a survey among the project, section and team managers and by participating observation on meetings with the team. The results show that the management team is an overall well-functioning team that with some changes and improvements, especially concerning communication and information, can reach even further.

It is clear that media advertising is one of the crucial marketing tools for companies in order to promote their products and services. As we are moving towards more and more economic integration, both on a regional and global scale, the question about standardisation of media advertising has become increasingly important and is nowadays subject to discussion in most international companies. This thesis deals with the issue of standardisation in a region where the process of political, legal and especially economic integration is taking its course, but where cultural and linguistic diversity is still a remaining fact: Europe. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the potential gains from a standardised advertising approach but also to identify its limitations. Especially on a market place like Europe, with its diverse cultural and linguistic background, a fully standardised approach might be difficult to implement.

In the end of the 80´s the area of system development moved into a new era. As a consequence many new methods and development models emerged which in many cases resulted in problems when choosing system development models and methods. As a result of these problems the today standardized modeling language UML (Unified Modeling Language) was created. UML is tailored to support many different types of projects. This is possible because of UML?s capacity to be adjusted and adapted to a specific company environment.The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to investigate how and why companies use UML and what experiences and opinions those who use UML have of using UML in practice.