Virtual Communities is an increasingly common phenomenon on the Internet. Most of the Virtual Communities are operated and maintained on a non-profit basis with a direction towards entertainment. However, as more state administrated and commercial services become web-based, we believe that the number of Virtual Communities with a community-based or commercial direction will increase in a near future. In this thesis, we describe our participation in, and studies of, a number of Virtual Communities with focus on the IRC-channel ?3dfxsweden?.

This report deals with an exam report written by Olle Hjalmarsson and Thomas Likar, students at Högskolan i Halmstad. The project was carried out for Haldex Traction AB in Landskrona whose business consist of manufacturing automatic all wheel drive systems (AWD-system). These systems consist of a plate clutch which activates all four wheels of a 4-wheel driven vehicle. An important component in these clutches is the accumulator which basically consists of a piston under the load of a spring which creates an oil pressure with the help of an electric motor used for actuating the clutch.At Haldex difficulties has been experienced regarding the assembly of the accumulator parts due to the small tolerances between the piston and the hole of the accumulator in the cast aluminium housing. Attempts have been made to assemble the parts in existing robot cells.

Background: To be better able to meet the new competition, companies are seeking new competitive advantages, wich is forcing them to review and, in time, change both working methods and corporate structures. This has led to an increased interest in the development of strategies within the field of Knowledge Management. Objective: The objective of this thesis is to improve understanding of how learning in a company occurs over internal boundaries and to investigate whether individuals need to be motivated in this regard. We also aim to give recommendations as to how this can be developed. Furthermore, we will work out a model that explains the learning process.

Problem: On the basis of the franchisees role and how he look up on his role in his business, should one like the Swedish Law applies characterize the franchisees role as the role of a contractor?Purpose: The purpose with this research is too survey the franchisee in his business and how he looks upon his role as a franchisee and see if this like the Swedish Law states be characterized as the role of a contractor.Methodology: By doing a proportional stratified selection within the the Swedish Franchising community, nine semi structured interviews has been made. The empirical foundation of these interviews has been concentrated and analysed with the support of the chosen theories. The result of the analysis has created the conclusion.Theoretical perspectives: The research is built up of three angels of approach; the role, the business and the economy within the franchisee and the contractor. The three approaches aim too illustrate the role of the franchisee, the franchisees role in the business and the economical effects in franchising.

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.

Sweden has an environmental goal to achieve until the year 2020. To achieve this goal the construction business has to take an initiative to use the modern techniques that are available to lower the energy consumption I buildings. There?s also a debate going on today regarding the energy demands set by the Swedish government through Boverket, some communities throughout Sweden thinks that the demands are to low and have therefore set up own demands regarding energy in buildings.The possibility to construct energy-saving buildings is today very great, with energy-efficient heating-systems and dense climate envelope. The interest to raise energy-efficient buildings have also increased as a consequence that the population have become more aware about their impact on the environment.

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.

The Swedish TV broadcasting market is constantly changing together with the players in it. The questionto be answered by this paper is how the players in the market handle these changes and to what extentthe players are changing the market. Also, are there any differences between the public service andcommercial players in this aspect? The purpose of this paper is to create a better understanding of theSwedish broadcasting market and its player's market orientation. Through case studies of the three mainbroadcasting companies, SVT, TV4-gruppen and MTG, the market is analyzed from their perspective.The conclusions from the analysis show that there are differences in the market orientation betweenpublic service and commercial players, where the commercial companies are more market driven..

This is an essay about gated communities and their impact on society. The key questions of my essay are: why people choose to live in gated communities; how the city is impacted by gated communities and what the difference concerning the reasons and impact of gated communities in Florida and Sweden is, and what this difference might depend on. I am using postmodern urbanism as a starting point, and I look closer on Edward J. Soja?s theories about the postmodern metropolis.

AbstractWe are with this paper trying to identify some factors that have an influence on youths mental health. Our theoretical starting points are about how school, family, work, individualization, media and lifestyle effect youths mental health. This paper is based on three deep interviews and former reports. The result show how individualization in the community cause insecurity and the family band are breaking up more than before. Youth?s health effects negative by the ability to not get a job.

Humanity faces a major challenge with the climate and environmental crisis, largely driven by reckless recourse use and greenhouse gas emissions by corporations. The EU?s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) aims to standardise corporate sustainability reporting, making practices more transparent and comparable. This directive seeks to enhance sustainability practices and guide market forces towards sustainability, supporting the EU?s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

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.

The game industry is growing by every year but for some reason the research surrounding it hasn't caught up with its rapid expansion. This study aims at expanding the knowledge surrounding one of those areas, player motivations. An empirical model has been used to identify which interaction has the highest impact on player motivation in story-driven roleplaying-games. By conducting semi-structured interviews with eight different game developers using the GameFlow model to explore the use of interactions to sustain the motivation of the player a new criteria has been identified. This additional criteria was: Alive, and it was shown to have a high impact on motivation in story-driven roleplaying-games.