In order to become even more competitive, a partnering with other niche players is essential in achieving a competitive advantage and it enables opportunities for reintermediation. From an intermediate perspective, there are great possibilities for those who become content coordinators to enter the market. By becoming a bundler of services and products, the content coordinators will become the actors that will capture the most profit in the value web. The value creating drivers that have been identified in the business landscape of intermediates concern owning the content or owning the customer relationship. We find the possibilities of an intermediate actor, such as a content coordinator to achieve competitive advantage through strategic fit is subject to the context and the ability of creating more innovative and co-creative distribution systems.

A good flow of information in organizations is one of the key aspects of how we define a well-functioning organization. The information flow could be internal as well as external between actors within as well as outside of the organization. In a logistics organization this flow of information is equally important as in any other kind of organization. In this paper we have explored information flows in logistics organizations by applying, boundary spanning and the mobile-stationary divide perspective. In boundary spanning the main goal is to erase or relocate some of the boundaries within an organization, in our case to make the flow of information internally as well as externally better.

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.

This report is a literature review that aims to describe marketing contexts for mango production in Kenya. The institutional conditions in the country are not well developed for marketing purposes, which causes many difficulties and problems for the society. In Kenya most mango producers are poor small-scale farmers with limited resources. Mango is a perishable commodity and to keep its value and quality it is essential to have the opportunity to sell the mangos in the right time. Inefficient and undeveloped infrastructure and marketing systems hinders the mangos to reach the market in time though, which causes large losses of produce.The Kenyan mango production has increased during the last decade but due to market losses for the producer, the small-scale farmers? profits have not improved.

This essay conducts a descriptive analysis of the ideas expressed by NATO´s official security strategy "Strategic Concept" from 2010 and the European Union?s security strategy "A Secure Europe in a Better World" from 2003. The purpose of this analysis is to examine whether the ESDP and NATO are compatible with each other when it comes to the role of security policy actor. To do so, I´ve chosen to analyse the actors' security strategies based on three dimensions. These dimensions are: Their view of the international scene, their views on cooperation and their views on how to reach security.

Social policy has now received an increased attention in the European Union. The European welfare states experience a high level of unemployment, which the EU now tries to handle through the European Employment Strategy (EES). The core of this essay is whether the welfare institutions of the European member states are integrating through an institutionalization process or not. Within the EU four different types of welfare models can be identified: the Scandinavian, the Continental, the Southern and the Anglo-Saxon. The welfare models differ in the institutional settings e.g.

Today's industries are constantly evolving and the demands according to quality for products and services produced and performed are becoming more and higher. ISO 9001 is a standard that serves as a tool for organizations who wants to effectively control and manage their quality workforce on business different processes. A background to the introduction of a quality managementsystem towards Skärås svets och mekaniska in Västerås are that more and more customers demand this from a company to enable it to obtain an order of production.Efforts to introduce a quality system such as ISO 9001-2008 all begin with to carry out a situationanalysis of the business. Skärås svets och mekaniska currently has no existing quality management system so therefore there is no current directives regarding who is responsible, for a future certification in the business.By structuring a situation analysis of the business. You get a good overview of the business and how it is conducted today.

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.

This paper examines the film distribution and exhibition sector in Europe. The general analysis of these sectors? situation was made. Moreover, the comparative and more in depth analysis of three countries by the Porter?s five forces model was made; These were United Kingdom, France and Denmark.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the meaning the reading group of the public library has to a number of users. To fulfill the aim the following three questions have been formulated: 1) What do a number of users expect from the reading group of the public library? 2) Which approach/attitude or approaches/attitudes do a number of users have to reading and to talking about reading? 3) How do a number of users experience the ongoing reading group?The research is founded on qualitative interviews with five users that take part in three different reading groups in public libraries. The theories that are used is the theory of three so called strategies - the pragmatic, the traditionalistic, the emancipatory ? and the theory of flow.

The global market is becoming increasingly integrated and to keep up with growing competition and to achieve even greater success, companies expand to foreign markets. Previous studies have shown that the concept of psychic distance has an important impact on international performance regarding small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The aim of our study is to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of how psychic distance influences export performance regarding Swedish SMEs. Through a single case study of a Swedish SME, we chose to research three different markets in three different continents. Our findings show that psychic distance influences export performance through export marketing strategy and active learning.

Context: During the 21st century several alarming reports have been published that deals with the depletion and pollutant of the earth by human interference. The earth is an ending resource and so are the mountains and bedrocks which are continuously mined in order to harvest its minerals. The idea behind Urban Mining is to (re)invent processes enabling further purpose for materials both from old deposits and new products providing secondary raw materials and energy. This thesis aims to investigate the challenges and opportunities of how firms and organizations can and will be able to strike a better balance between product-/service systems, economic growth and environmental stewardship in the context of Urban Mining as an approach. With the innovation of processes, technology, business- planning and creation in focus.Objective: How to future proof a business model for Urban Mining by the usage of business model design.Method: This thesis will be conducted using a case study approach, meaning that it will incorporate qualitative, exploratory and descriptive characteristics - aiming towards enabling both applied and fundamental research.Results: The result evaluates the business model element differences between traditional C&D industry and Urban Mining industry.

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.

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.