The aim of our study is to explore the empowerment process among micro-business owners in Kayamandi, a black township of Stellenbosch in South Africa. What are the positive and negative implications for the empowerment process? Another aim is to find out the role of local and international support in this process. The theoretical framework of this study revolves around the concepts of gender, power and empowerment. Our methods are qualitative interviews and observations.

In writing this study, I wanted to examine which principles of organization that are possible for Swedish public libraries to use, and what these principles mean for the libraries customerorientation. This is done by examining a number of written sources, as well as studying the organization of six public libraries. I found several possible principles, but a number of principles have been more commonly used than others. Historically most public libraries were organized according to the functions needed to be carried out within the organization, but today it is much more common to use subject-based organizations, with some examples of organizing according to user-groups and needs. I have also encountered the possibility of organizing according to the sources that are to be handled, or the way in which these sources are used by the customers.

Background and aim: Organizations must be able to manage change in order to survive in today?s competitive society. To continue to develop and reach better results is fundamental. Case Company Parker Hannifin Corporation, Quick Coupling Division Europe, Tema Ingenjörsfirman AB, Skövde has an ambition to have an organization that manage changes and continuously improve its performance. That is the reason why this examination work arises.

From a management point of view, enabling organizational creativity is often referred to as reducing immediate control, increasing autonomy and enhancing the access to slack resources. At the same time, the business environment of today is fiercer than it was only a decade ago, and this renders a quest for more efficient approaches to competitively run a business. This paper aims to examine creative industries and more specifically try to identify a set of elements that are common for successful companies. As this industry has not been subject to any considerable array of studies, this thesis seeks to establish a structure for how to take both organizational models and leadership theories into account when developing an understanding for the process, organization and leadership of the creative business. By studying six separate creative companies, our findings suggest that conventional theories on organizational creativity do not adequately account for all factors that contribute to these companies' creative success.

A social intranet is an information and communication channel that is relatively new. There is still a small amount of research done around social intranet and what it is, and also on what organizations and their members may benefit from using such an intranet. Therefore, this paper was written with the purpose to em-phasize the reasons, possibilities and difficulties of implementing and using a so-cial intranet. With interview as method we took part of the experiences and views on social intranet from a number of organizations that are using or is about to establish a social intranet, and also from companies who deliver the service. Through the use of previous research in organizational communication, we then analysed the responses we received from our respondents.

IKEA is probably one of the most well known Swedish companies in the world. During thepast decades millions of people all across the globe have decorated their homes according tothe style of IKEA. But just exactly how big and influential are they? Many, if not to say all,municipalities in Sweden wants IKEA to establish and build their famous stores in one oftheir towns. But at what cost? When deciding on a municipality to establish in, IKEAnormally tends to have an advantage when it comes to controlling the conditions and terms ofthe establishment.To undertake this dissertation I use a theory based upon the inter-organizational theoriescalled resource dependency theory.

With a starting point in a project for reinforcing small scale business among immigrants in Sweden, carried out within Swedish for immigrants (sfi), the aim for this thesis is to examine the project from the view and experiences of the participants. Interviews with participants in the project have been inspired by the teoretical and methodological views of Grounded Theory.The interviews show that some participants want to start their own business, but almost as many don?t have that dream. The former group all have experience of being self-employed. They are aware of the difficulties but are nevertheless determined to proceed their dream.

Politicians Week in Visby has since the late 1960s developed to be a fairly unique concept in Swedish politics, which even in recent years has begun to be exported to other countries in Europe. Curiosity and interest around the arrangement of activities and actors have in the past decade become increasingly both nationally and internationally. The purpose of this study has therefore been to find out how ?Almedalsveckan? as a political arrangement emerged and developed. The question that the study mainly tries to answer is how ?Almedalsveckan? became a concept of the open democratic meeting between politicians, citizens, journalists and various organizations in the Swedish society.

The purpose of this study was to analyze how the key staff concept is used in residential care for children and young people and which role the key staff concept plays in the organization.The study was based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with six key staff and two managers from two different residential care facilities for children and young people. The theoretical perspective used was the neo-institutional theory and Hasenfeld´s term Human service organizations.One of the conclusions of the study was that the key staff describe that they have a central role when it comes to the treatment of the children. Another conclusion showed the variety of tasks that the key staff have, like the administrative work that they do. They also have an educational role, similar to the one that parents normally have which means that they are responsible of parenting the children. They also described themselves as a link between the children and their social network.

This paper discusses the strategy and strategic change in the Swedish freight forwarding business and analysis factors that influence the forces of the business. Three companies of various sizes are chosen to be investigated as a case study, outline that cost leadership and differentiation are both important strategies for companies to compete in the market. However, companies outpacing competition do not only pursue either of the two strategies, the need the ability to add one (cost leadership) to the other (differentiation) in relationship to environmental change over time..

The purpose of this thesis was to study local bank offices work with customer satisfaction. A case study concerning two local bank offices was made, the cases were based on interviews with the managers at the bank offices. The research questions that we wanted this thesis to answer was how local bank offices create customer satisfaction among small business customers, and how local bank offices assess customer satisfaction among small business customers. The study showed that local bank offices find customer satisfaction among small business customers important and use complaints as the primary source in the process of creating customer satisfaction..

ERP system is the information technology that has had the biggest impact in companies? development and way of working in today?s world. ERP system is divided in several applications with a modular software design that allow people in every department in a company to store and retrieve information accurately and in real-time. This master thesis investigates attitudes toward ERP systems among business organisations and ERP suppliers with the overall purpose of analysing to which extent a new ERP system will bring change in the business process. The purpose of this thesis is to make a survey of attitudes toward ERP systems among business organisations and ERP suppliers.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to contribute to the development of business relationships between a supplier and its customers. The research area and research problem was further developed into three research questions. The research questions concerns the following subjects: the substance of business relationships and dimensions within relationships management that can be used in order to contribute to the development of a company?s business relationships.

Organizational learning has become more and more important in the last decades as the environment in which organizations exist continues to change rapidly and unexpectedly. In order for organizational learning to happen, the individuals within the organization must learn. Just as different individuals possess different skills, each individual also has their own learning style. As the use of teamwork increases, so does the need for techniques to put high performing teams together and with organizational learning as one of the objectives the question is, how do we maximize learning, efficiency and performance in teams? This study uses a quantitative method to examine how teams, from a course at the Stockholm School of Economics, perform on the individual learning, team efficiency and team performance scale based on the individual learning styles within the team.

Title:Changes in the auditing work of asset management companies.Advisor:Bengt BengtssonExaminer:Stig SörlingAuthors: Mattias Skog & Andrea CyganikPurpose:The purpose is to examine how the work of auditing asset management companies has changed since the crisis 2008.Methodology:The study is based on an adductive approach using a quantitative method.Theoretical framework:The theoretical framework includes previous studies and literature concerning the auditing business, the financial crisis, principal agent theory and stewardship theory.Empirical findings:The empirical material is based on answers from 22 auditors in 6 different auditing firms, and it was conducted by sending them a survey.Conclusion:The study showed that the major changes were changes in laws and regulations controlling the auditing business. New guidelines and laws were set to try and improve the quality of the auditing business while trying to restore stained reputation. New regulations were also set to increase the control the government have of inspecting the business through finansinspektionen..