IT has become more evident in most organisations and has grown to be a part of the infrastructure rather than a tool for competitiveness. Therefore focus should now lie on how IT is adjusted to the business rather than on the usage of IT. To make the best use of IT in the business the CIO needs to start think more business-oriented instead of as before, technology-oriented. To develop the IT-department in that direction the IT-staff need to start cooperate with the business and gain knowledge about stakeholders, markets and the way of working for other staff members in the business.With this as a basis, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate attitudes regarding cooperation between the IT-department and the business and if there is any difference if the CIO has business related background or not.To fulfil the purpose a quantitative investigation with the help of surveys was conducted. The sample consisted of 18 companies with 100-200 employees in the area of Jönköping.

This Master Thesis is a part of PlymoVent?s business to customer plot, with the aim to investigate how the consumers receive the services that PlymoVent provides. With regard to PlymoVent's Business strategy and reference theory, the demands of how to receive and monitor a supply chain for a better customer satisfaction where targeted. The findings refer to poor customer satisfaction due to obscure procedures in problem resolution and discrepancy handling, and vague transportation accuracy..

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to give a contribution to the studies of what strategies those are of importance for challengers in consumer technological markets aiming for the market leader position. To be able to investigate this phenomenon we have chosen to study Microsoft?s second position in the video game console industry. In addition, we want to illuminate Microsoft?s competitive advantages, how Microsoft can take advantage from Sony?s setbacks and what strategies those are of importance for Microsoft in the battle of becoming the market leader.

Background: During the 2000s, there has been an increased interest in studying business management and strategy implementation with customer focus in public organisations. To achieve business goals it is important to continuously work with strategies to meet customerdemands for increased efficiency and service. Purpose: The aim of the essay is to examine how to work on strategy implementation in a municipal real estate company from a management perspective in order to achieve overall goals. Method: The study?s methodology is a case study based on qualitative telephone interviews that were conducted with representatives in managerial positions from various levels of the company. The choice of the qualitative data was considered relevant in relation to the chosen topic of the thesis. The empirical data was then compared to the theoretical framework of the thesis. Results: Strategies guide the company to achieve the overall goals, which are later on broken down into operational targets.

Introduction: The world is changing rapidly and the uncertainty that characterizes today´s society makes companies preparations for the future crucial. Purpose: To examine how CEO:s in small companies look at the future and what kind of preparations they make in order to meet it. Hereby, our ambition is to find out whether there is a difference between companies working in industries characterized by different degrees of stability. Mode of procedure: The purpose of this thesis has been fulfilled by interviews with four CEO:s from industries characterized by different degrees of stability. Result: The companies working in relatively unstable environments tended to be relatively more flexible and have an emergent strategy formation process, whereas companies working in relatively stable environments displayed relatively less flexibility and tended to have a planning strategy formation process..

The purpose with our study is to investigate why Capgemini adopts the Rightshore strategy, how they implement this strategy and how it affects Capgemini?s core competence. We also aim to look at how the company?s knowledge management is supporting the offshoring strategey, in addition to how Capgemini ?keeps control of? its core competence in following the trend of offshoring to India?.

Environmental issues and sustainable development is a high priority in today?s society and has received substantial attention lately. In the inaugural speech it is expressed that the goal for the IT?politics is a sustainable information society for everyone, which can be achieved by using IT to support sustainable growth. The Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications has developed a document which outlines three specific proposals on what the government should focus on during a three?year period (2008?2010) that with the use of IT will contribute to a sustainable society.

The aim of this study was to investigate what formative assessment means and get information about how teachers? assessment practice in formative assessment can look like, based on five key strategies. I have observed five teachers in grade 4 to 6 during a week of their mathematics teaching. Formative assessment is assessment for learning and has the purpose to support students? knowledge development.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how well vision and strategies communicates from division level to underlying business unit levels with focus on the Balanced Scorecard Concept. The investigation was carried out within the ANS division and two of its underlying business units at the LFV Group (Swedish Airports and Air Navigation Services). ANS is responsible for the air navigation services in Sweden and the production of the services is carried out of the business units AER (En Route) and ATA (Tower and Approach). With Air Navigation Services means supervision and conducting air traffic mainly within national air space. The purpose of the services is to insure that air traffic could be carried out in a safe way.The Balanced Scorecard was introduced for the first time in the beginning of the 1990´s.

Celebrity endorsement has been a popular advertising strategy all over the world for the past few years. The purpose of this thesis was to find out why companies choose celebrity endorsement as advertising strategy and how the celebrity endorsement process appeared in companies. We choose to interview two companies in the retail business and the interviews were conducted with the marketing managers for each company. This study provided that companies utilize celebrity endorsement to increase their sales, and it is important that the whole company is in the celebrity endorsement process discussion before the company choose which celebrity they will work with. .

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to test for the existence of Capital Structure Arbitrage oppertunities in the equity-credit markets. Methodology: The mispricing of Credit Default Swap contracts are calculated and used as input in an Equity-Credit market trading strategy. The returns are then evaluated with a modified Value-at-Risk simulation. Theoretical perspectives: A Merton-based structural model, CreditGrades, is used for credit pricing and a mispricing-convergence trading-strategy between the credit and equity markets is implemented. Empirical foundation: Daily quotes for the Credit Default Swap spread of 37 European firms were collected for a period of two years, as well as equity-prices for the same period and the previous two years, used for model calibration.

Background: Many authors consider knowledge to be a significant source for competitive advantage. Replicating companies found their competitiveness on an ability to leverage its knowledge base by replicating its business model in new contexts, a process often referred to as the McDonalds approach. Several authors emphasize that an efficient method for knowledge transfer may increase the risk for imitation. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine in an explorative manner how strategies for replicating complex knowledge systems are employed and developed. Furthermore, our ambition is to explore the notion of replication strategy.

This thesis aims to explore the process where strategies for music artists are created by record companies. We describe and analyze how decisions regarding signing, distribution, marketing, bookings and co-operations are made. Through our study we find that the strategy process can be described as a pattern according to Mintzberg's definition. The "inside-out" perspective is dominating and the record companies base their strategies on internal core competencies and the artistry and will of the music artist. The underlying causes of this are the uncertainty that characterizes the industry; the focus on social relations; and the importance of cultural legitimacy..

I uppsatsen presenterar författaren hur US Grand Strategy förändrats som en följd avterrorattackerna mot USA den 11 september 2001. Författaren pekar vidare påalternativa utvecklingsmöjligheter för US Grand Strategy och prövar om traditionellaanalysmodeller fortfarande är tillämpliga för att beskriva vägval för amerikanskutrikes och säkerhetspolitik..

Background: As Porter?s diamond (1990) suggested, the business environment highly influences firms? strategies. Today, most of the companies have to decide their strategy depending from a worldwide business environment. Yet, strategy researches and the growing importance of marketing for business success also show that customer dimension must be taken into consideration. On some markets and in certain industries, the offer is much higher than the demand and then, companies need to attract customers.