Many studies have been conducted of different types of business networks in recent years. Despite this, there is a lack of research concerning industry-transcending formal networks which are limited to a specific region. We have conducted a case study of Örebro Promotion, which is an industry-transcending network including over 500 members. Örebro is a medium-sized city in the middle of Sweden. The purpose with our study is to create an understanding of why enterprises choose to be a part of the network and what they feel is the gain of their membership.

Problem discussion: To be competitive in a changeable environment, as the video surveillance market, in a time when the company and the market grow with almost 40% yearly, the sales organization must be well trimmed and effective. Knowledge about customers’ needs and what makes success are essential parts of the progress. Sales Product Management (Sales PM) is a new group at Axis with the main task to support local sales offices around the world in their work with different sales projects. Because of the number of ongoing projects Sales PM needs to be able to screen among these and focus on those where their help will be most valuable for the company. At the same time they have to know which kind of support their sales offices want and need.

Because of the large supply of information is today's leisure travelers very enlightened and have firsthand knowledge of what can be demanded on a hotel stay. Along with business travelers, who are not price sensitive, they place higher demands on the standards and service they require. It has become increasingly important to attract the visitors in a unique way.The purpose of this study is to reveal those aspects which hotels focus on in their business in order to keep their guests, despite the strong competition and the new demands of the changing hotel industry. The study has examined more closely if the hotels have specific concepts in their approach, if their servicescapes (the environment where the service is assembled) are designed in a unique way to attract visitors and if the hotels have special relationships with their guests.The study is qualitative and in order to answer the purpose has observations of the selected hotels and interviews with managers and receptionists been made.One of the conclusions that we reached is that the most important aspect in the hotels business is their relationship to the guests. Each respective hotel strives to have a special and unique relationship with its guests conveyed by its staff.

The prevailing food and energy crisis of the world, due to the declining reserves of fossil energy and a never ending rise of consumption, forces us to look into new fields to supply our energy demand. The boom of bio energy is criticized, as food crops are used to provide biodiesel and ethanol and the volumes are ridiculously small to supply world demand. Algae are one of the world?s oldest life forms and exist in many different phyla, providing a great variety to choose from, for different purposes. Cultivating microalgae offer a way to produce energy at great volumes without competing with food production and at the same time the algae offer a way to use our expensive nutrients in a more efficient way, besides this the algae are carbon dioxide neutral since their carbon source can be supplied by the atmosphere and the additional energy required can be supplied by algal oil or other renewable sources.

States have sovereignty in deciding how to tax business profits. If two states wish to tax the same profit that belongs to the same taxpayer, double taxation will arise. The increasing number of multinational companies gives rise to double taxation problems and the states have to co-operate to find out how to avoid such problems. The OECD Model Tax Convention includes an article in how to determine the rights to tax business profits. This article has been a subject of discussion and a committee of the OECD has been working to develop a new article 7.The work in proposing this new article has had as its aim to reassure that the interpretations of this regulation is made in the same way.

Incubators have grown more popular in recent years. Studies have shown that companies that have been part of an incubator grow faster and have a higher survival rate. The Swedish government realizes that this benefits the economy. Therefore they have started different funding programs in order to support the incubators. The thesis aims to explore the underlying reasons for why companies that have been part of an incubator often experience high growth.

For centuries, the human body has been used as a mean to project the norms, moral values and aesthetic preferences that exist throughout society. It has been controlled through constrictive fashion, family and social virtues and through how we perceive gender and sexuality. This essay strives to show, not only how the body and the aesthetic values coexist, but also how they work together and influence each other, with the body as the aesthetic medium. To do this, Michel Foucault?s writings of sexuality and his theories on morality and discipline, as well as Judith Butler?s works on normativity and performativity are being used.

The purpose of this study was to examine young women?s perception and fear of sexual assault. An additional aim was to analyze the women?s view on guilt and responsibility in rape related questions. Two focus group interviews were executed with undergraduate women aged 22-32 years.

China is considered as one of the world?s fastest growing economies and the future of China looks promising. Even though the Chinese market attracts many new foreign companies to enter the market there are entry barriers which companies may encounter as obstacles, which will aggravate the market entry in China. As a result companies loose business opportunities and therefore it is of great importance for Swedish companies, which are planning a Chinese market entry, to identify which entry barriers that are considered to be the most difficult obstacles to overcome.The purpose of the thesis is to examine which entry barriers that are generally considered to be the most difficult obstacles for Swedish companies to overcome when entering Chinese markets and to rank the five most difficult entry barriers to overcome.Information about these entry barriers have been gathered from Swedish companies, which have carried out successful market entries in the Chinese markets, through an e-mail questionnaire.The result generally shows that the most difficult entry barriers to overcome in China were: bureaucracy, property laws, language, cultural differences and difficulties finding local partners. The ranking of the entry barriers? result shows that bureaucracy is the most difficult obstacle to overcome, followed by cultural differences, language, relations and access to distribution channels.We conclude that companies experience different difficulties overcoming these entry barriers, which depends on the companies? size, years in China, markets and if the entry barriers were considered controllable or uncontrollable.

The report describes a measuring method for analysis of energy consumption measurement in microwave ovens. Concurrently that the awareness of the environment evolves the demands are growing for more power saving products. This is also counting within the Home Appliance business, which is Whirlpools business area. Whirlpool is therefore interested of launching microwave ovens with documented low power consumption. To be able to implement this, both asserted measuring equipment, that fulfils all demands, and a standard procedure is required.

In theory, the logic behind partnerships is simple: All organisations have strengths, but no organisation has all the strength required to do everything. Triggered by global perspectives and challenged by sustainability objectives, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 pointed out needs for corporate responsibility. In this conference, Private-public partnership, PPP, was identified as a potential way to work towards sustainability, especially as a way to emphasize a corporate responsibility commitment. Nowadays, organizations exist to satisfy the needs and interests of all their stakeholders, such as customers, markets, shareholders, as well as secondary stakeholders such as media, NGOs, and society at large. Addressing all stakeholders and working towards a sustainable business development makes PPP a potential solution, but also a source of challenges.

Background: Last year (2006) has been a year when the environmental issues figured more often in the media, and the environmental awareness among common people increased. Environmental climate reports have lately been on the headline all over the world. As a result of the increasing population in the world, it?s becoming more important to be aware of the environment. To do that, it is important to maximize the efficiency in the work with the environment.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how key performance indicators are being used as performance management tools within the production industry. Specifically the purpose is to investigate how the KPI:s within the telecommunications industry drives reusability regarding production test systems. This thesis will also highlight today?s cost models and suggest improvements of the KPI and what new ones could be introduced. A case study at Ericsson AB has been performed.

As a result of global competition, companies within the automotive industry are required to improve their production systems to achieve sustainable and competitive production. To attain operational excellence, companies have adopted concepts like lean and World Class Manufacturing (WCM).In order to deliver, companies need to increase the availability and reliability of production equipment. This demands focus on both operational and strategic maintenance, and efficient equipment acquisition and management. The main objective of this thesis is to identify processes and success factors that are necessary for improved maintenance performance. By conducting a case study and by performing a literature review, the following has been studied: 1) how companies within the automotive industry work with maintenance and maintenance strategies, 2) implementation of maintenance strategies, and 3) new acquisition and spare parts management for maintenance. The results show that basic maintenance concepts and related terms are well defined in the literature.

In order to accomplish that a construction is correctly built, it is critical to obtain a well functioning control mechanism throughout the project. The way to enable this is not by having an independent inspector constantly at your side. Today it is praxis to use check lists and have people responsible of quality to make sure that these are followed. This is where discretionary inspections play their part. These among others are documents needed to com-plete the check list.