The concept of leadership development plays an important role within the modern organization. As a result of the increasing interest in developing leadership competencies, investments in leadership development programs are becoming a common part of business strategies. However, the return on those investments is seldom evaluated. The reason for this is considered to be the complexity created by the many factors that influence leadership but have no relation to the program. This is a case study based on interviews with participants from a one-year leadership development program that was carried out at AB Previa.

Foreign invested SMEs have recently become increasingly interested in China. The enterprises are in this report categorized as second wave companies since they follow the footsteps of previous pioneers, of which mostly were larger companies. The ambitions of the SMEs are either to sell products on the ever expanding Chinese market or to utilize the potential of low cost production for global markets. The existing literature is fragmented and solely based on the experience of larger companies. We believe that SMEs are facing new and different challenges, and thus a new generic theoretical frame work is desirable.

Lean Product Development is a knowledge-based business concept in order to maintain high quality, meetcustomer requirements and to make product development more efficient. An important part of the processis to add a lot of resources at an early stage and execute the development as an iterative process betweendepartments exploring many alternatives thoroughly. The work focuses on how Lean ProductDevelopment is carried out and explores how to manage interaction between different departments andexpertise with regard to cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing i.e. learning.The information for the studies was gathered at a major Swedish company from two projects. The projectswere carried out as cross-functional and possible key factors for cross-functional collaboration wasidentified.The results have been correlated with theories of Lean, Product development, Lean product developmentand Learning.

This examination paper is an account for the author?s work to arrange and registrate the business archive and business records of court jeweller W. A. Bolin AB from 1916 until present day, and a part of the one-year Masters Programme in Archival Science at the University of Uppsala. Problems that have been encountered are treated, as well as motivations of the decisions made during the process.

Mobile Arts have a technical platform for handling maps and community-featured Points of Interest in cellular phones, where the users themselves can share locations with other users either in groups or public. Development of the platform regarding network communication has been included in this paper. The work evaluates different feasible business models regarding packaging the platform as a commercial application and also faces issues users have when using the product. Even if users found maps and POI interesting and cool in cellulars, the technical difficulties and lack of product focus during beta testing, were present. Therefore, the writers recommendation is more development of the platform and using a business model where Mobile Arts deliver to existing communities.

E-commerce is a conception who many are taking about nowadays. E-commerce is associate with computer based business and it?s a new way to do business on. Users and system connect up to each other for effective mediate and transfer information. Within e-commerce there?s a lot of ways to do business on and it can for example be between a business and a another business (B2B) or between business and consumer (B2C).In this degree report have I reached if small business will invest on e-commerce and if they will, how.

Saab Aerosystems have had one dominating product, JAS 39 Gripen, and one dominating customer, FMV, for a long time. The operations management system at Aerosystems is adjusted for development of Gripen and as the business unit is trying to enter new markets with other products and customer the operations needs to be adjusted to fit the development and manufacturing of these products as well.The purpose of the master thesis has been to investigate how Aerosystems is managing requirements on operations from external customers and how to make improvements within this area. The aim has been to carry out a situation analysis to identify where improvements are possible and then produce proposals for improvements through studies of literature and other business units. The thesis also include a study of knowledge transfer within the business unit to investigate how this can be applied to improve the managing of requirement on the operations.An extensive interview study has been carried out in which interviews mainly have been conducted with employees at Aerosystems, but also at Saab Avitronics and Saab Aerostructures. The reason why these business units have been examined is because they have carried out a large number of successful businesses with external customers, which also are potential customers for Aerosystems in the future.The interviews have been analysed to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats with the present way of working.

The purpose of this thesis is to study to what extent the UN millennium development goals have influenced Sweden?s development policy. The research method that I have used is a qualitative text analysis and I have studied the ideas in governmental texts and millennium development goals reports from 1995-2008.My hypothesis is that the basic ideas that has symbolized Sweden?s development policy has not changed much since the adoption of the millennium development goals in year 2000. This hypothesis is based on different ideas that the basic perspectives in international development policy are rather constant.My conclusion is that many of the areas that are affected by the millennium development goals already are prioritized areas within Swedish development policy, for example poverty reduction and gender equality.

In today?s tough business environment the need for good and efficient leaders are becoming more and more important. The businesses are in constant change, the world is more unpredictable and the competences of the employees are much greater today, which also calls for a new type of leader, a leader who not only is authoritarian, but also possesses soft skills. In this environment where there is this greater focus on leaders, leadership developments have emerged and increased in number over the last ten to twenty years. They try to develop leaders in all domains of their life, both professional and personal and the model we work with in this paper is Total Leadership, this model implies that you try to accomplish being a better leader throughout your whole life as a leader, to be whole, genuine and innovative, no matter career or position in life.

In this project an iPhone application for storing food and drink experiences was developed with focus on an easy interaction design. The already existing market of similar applications were studied and evaluated to extract their positive and negative features. Interviews with experts within the food and drink business where made in the pre study to get a good perception of how to divide and categorize the sections in the application. To optimize the usability, workshops with potential users with different technical experiences where continuously held during the development of the design.During the development two variants of development environments where evaluated. The final result of the application was developed in the environment that made the best impression and seemed to be the best alternative.The resulting product has a thought out design meant to be easy to understand, even for the first time users.

The study examines how social media can be used in a business-to-business context. To understand the communication conditions, factors has been identified that affects the choice of communication channels for different types of information transferred between parts. Furthermore, the study investigates the underlying reasons for why certain communication channels are chosen before others, in different situations. The study results are based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with employees in a small engineering consulting company. The investigation has focused on employee communication and choice of communication tools primarily in relation to the business relationship.

Organisations tend to focus more and more on product and process development to increase their competitiveness. Several major organisations, among them ABB, have developed models aimed to more effectively control and manage product development processes. ABB is using its standardised model ABB Gate Model for this. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the introduction of ABB Gate Model has affected the outcome of decisions and also the decision-making in the product development process. The study is limited to elucidate the version of ABB Gate Model handling product development projects.

The purpose of this thesis was to illustrate the connection between personal networks and entrepreneurial business in the music industry. It also aims to examine how and why entrepreneurs in the music industry use personal networks in their entrepreneurial business activities. In order to explore the extent to which entrepreneurs in the music industry obtain support through personal networks, a case study was conducted based on interviews with entrepreneurs in various areas of the music industry. The study has shown that entrepreneurs in the music industry clearly see distinct advantages through the use of their personal networks, especially in terms of an enhanced supply of resources and through an increased amount of business opportunities. Personal networks have also shown to constitute a considerable amount of moral support for the entrepreneurs in the development process of the entrepreneurial business.

This paper aims at assessing the relationship between female and male part-time employment and the business cycle in Sweden during the years 1987?2005 using quarterly time-series data and two alternative indicators of the business cycle. It further aims at determining whether the share of women working part-time has changed over time. Key results include that the relationship between the business cycle and female part-time employment is found to be significant and countercyclical. No significant effect is however found for men.

A flat organisation makes a horizontal career development possible, which means that it is more important to develop an individual?s knowledge base than to gain a higher title. This leads to a personal development, which motivates expats to stay. Since the responsibility of the career development mostly lies on expats themselves, companies should create conditions that make individual, internal job search possible. Like in IKEA:s case, it can be done through a strong and prestige less company culture, that penetrates the whole company.