Eco-design is all about improving products environmental performances throughout the products lifecycle by including the environmental aspect into the product development process. There are a large number of different tools that can be used for this, but there are several factors that can affect which one will be the best to use. Some tools for eco-design takes comprehensive studies and can only be performed by experts, while some tools can be used more time- and cost efficient and with basic knowledge. The choice of tool should be based on the company?s situation.This report describes the research of how the design and furniture company Blå Station could include a tool for eco-design in their product development process.

The newspaper industry changes with the society. New trends and developments affect how layout and design are perceived. Therefore it is important for the survival of a news­paper to catch up with trends and retain contemporaneity. This demands that a daily paper frequently updates its appearance and sometimes even redesign the whole newspaper. Folkbladet, a newspaper in Norrköping, is currently in need of a new layout. The employees often deviate from the graphic guidelines that exist at the company today, due to that it doesn?t feel contemporary, but also because they don?t appreciate the appearance as it is today. This thesis is based on a study of the layout of Folkbladet and analyse: which tools can be used to create a distinct identity regarding layout, which tools you can use to create a clear structure and readability in a newspaper, and how Folkbladet can make use of these tools. To find out about the company?s situation today and their identity, interviews have been made with employees.

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to study the importance of having a website for traditional service companies as well as the factors that might influence its importance. This is done by answering three research questions that all contribute to the answer of the main purpose. A qualitative study has been performed including eight interviews with respondents from eight different service companies presenting four different types of businesses. The empirical findings of the study are analyzed with the help of the theoretical frame of references in order to identify the most interesting conclusions. The results of the thesis state that the main purpose of the website among the studied companies is to rationalize and save costs.

Background: The debate about environment, labor conditions and aid to developing countries has the last years been a much discussed subject The pressure on the companies to live up to their responsibility is beginning to be noticed in the market.Purpose: To find out if a retail company investing in Corporate Social Responsibility thereby direct can effect it?s stock value. Using interviews to investigate if and how stock analysts and corporate finance professionals valuate a company?s CSR initiatives.Theoretical perspective: The description of CSR is leading to the main theory, The Brand Value Change, and the Market Hypothesis. Additionally a theory of the Consumer Buying Process and CAPM-model about financial risks is presented.Method: An event study of 30 companies to investigate if there is any change in their stock values and interviews with three professionals from the financial sector to find out about their attitude to CSR.

Most major companies today have a visual identity. It answers questions like: which font do I use? and when can I use the logo or not? Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel in Västerås have a visual identity but no guidelines for the employees to follow. Further-more, rollups and rollup handouts produced by Westinghouse are not mentioned in the visual identity. ?erefore the external information from Westinghouse is someti-mes, both by employees and customers, perceived as not uniform.

Purpose/Aim: This essay seeks to describe in what way different newspapers framed Uppsala Reggaefestival, which is a music festival in Uppsala, Sweden. Not only the local press, but also the framing by national press will be analyzed. Furthermore, it seeks to discuss what causes different frames.Material/Method: The material consist of 96 articles from 4 different newspapers which are being analyzed through a quantitative content analysis method inspired by Melin and Lange, and their ideas of identifying the main message of a text. The media framing of Uppsala Reggaefestival are compared to another similar music festival in Sweden, Arvikafestivalen. By using theories about media framing and media logic the results can, if not explained, at least be discussed.Main results: The study shows that Uppsala Reggaefestival is framed in a way that is focused on the problems within the festival, for example drug abuse.

The Swedish business cycle is in a strong position at the moment, leading to great results and larger profits. This strong business posture has encouraged companies to increase both their liquidity and revenue. Now there is a dilemma, what actions should or could a respectable business take on these newfound liquid assets.The purpose of this paper is to deliver a clear picture of what options there are for such companies listed on the Swedish stock-market, and how the market wants them to act. To these means we have studied the basic theories linked to this subject and reviewed the cause and effects that motivates them. We have also conducted interviews with the people representing the market through their line of business.In the theory we found several options on what companies in similar situations tend to do.

Background: A company?s choice of capital structure is influenced by the access to internal and external capital but also by the opportunities and threats that the management perceives in the environment and the management?s attitude towards risk. How an individual perceives and interpret the environment depends on the cognitive structures, which are shaped by personality, background and earlier experiences. Accordingly cognitive structures can be expected to influence the choice of capital structure. Purpose: Out of a cognitive perspective we intend to study the relationship between the way a company views it?s environment and what capital structure it chooses to have, in order to contribute to an increased understanding about what lies behind a company?s capital structure policy.

To start a company on the Internet is something that has appealed a lot of people during the last couple of years. Some of the companies have succeeded in their struggle but a lot of companies have failed to live out their ambition. This paper deals with the concept of e-commerce and aims to study whether or not the companies that has succeeded has made use of business models and what other factors that is important that you wont find in any written theory.The paper also aims to study the concept of business models and what a business model consists of. To be able to do this research we have interviewed three different companies that are all active in e-commerce and have survived for at least three years. Two of the companies are classical web shops that sell products to their customers and the last one is a site with articles about hardware and IT business in general.

In almost every workplace today IT-systems have strong and significant roll in theeveryday work. It is therefore important that the systems have a good functionalityand that they work as an aid for the users. This thesis aims to study the systems atthe company Telge Nät and to analyse them from a usability perspective. By using thisperspective it has been obvious how difficult it is to make improvements on usability,once the system is in place. Even other larger improvements of the systems aredifficult to make at this stage and this is something that the users are aware of.

Title: Strategies for competition ? a study of the Swedish contact lenses market.Authors: Pernilla AArskog and Annika Lange.Background: As a market gets more mature and the competition increases, it is more important for a company to apply the right strategic perspective. There are four fundamental strategic perspectives for a service-oriented business: a core product-, a price-, an image- and a service perspective. This study is a about service management and take its point from the theories from the Nordic School about strategies for competition, customer value, perceived customer quality and customer loyalty.Purpose: The main purpose with this study is to analyze and evaluate how the actors at the Swedish market of contact lenses should compete to gain further competitive advantages.Method: The study includes four qualitative interviews with two traditional opticians and two Internet based businesses, but also a survey with 106 contact lens users is included.Analysis: In the analyse part of this thesis it was concluded that the traditional opticians conception about their customer not agrees with what the customer evaluate as important. Many of the customers have thought about changing their optician, and besides that do not recommend their optician, and can there for not be categorize as loyal customers.

The purpose of this study is to examine what creates motivation in the workplace of a small company with a high employee satisfaction index. The case study consists of qualitative interviews that help explain what the most important motivational factors are for the experienced IT consultants in a company that was founded by a circle of friends. The study concludes that the unique and equal pay model implicates an economic risk to the individual consultant but results in liberties, synergies and benefits. These appeal more than either self-employment or work at a larger IT consultancy that several consultants have backgrounds in. An expansion is ongoing since two years back, which threatened the culture but implicated opportunities for the individual consultants.

The new Swedish Companies Act allows Swedish companies to issue two instruments that were previously prohibited: mandatory convertibles and participating debentures. The aim of the thesis is to conduct a cross sectional study of Swedish corporate hybrid securities, especially in the light of the new Companies Act. The cross sectional study also includes areas such as credit rating, accounting and tax. The thesis concludes that it is possible, under Swedish law, to issue corporate hybrid securities that qualify for both high equity credit and tax deductible interest payments. The use of certain hybrid provisions are, however, restrained by Swedish company law.

Most major companies today have a visual identity. It answers questions like: which font do I use? and when can I use the logo or not? Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel in Västerås have a visual identity but no guidelines for the employees to follow. Further-more, rollups and rollup handouts produced by Westinghouse are not mentioned in the visual identity. ?erefore the external information from Westinghouse is someti-mes, both by employees and customers, perceived as not uniform.

This thesis examines how a company can get an effective, high quality, maintenance of their computerized systems. After literary studies concerning the life cycle activity Maintenance we have studied how the maintenance at the department IT Supply of IKEA IT AB in Älmhult is carried out. What steps and measures in the analyzing of results of changes are carried out and if they have predefined processes for changes. Based on the facts we found most important in our literary studies we have created a model and theoretically applied this to the maintenance of a specific system to see what they can work with to further improve the quality and efficiency in their maintenance. The basis for our thesis is literary studies and the collected material has been used as a foundation for the research at the company, which was carried out through interviews. This thesis is based on the question: ?How do the lack of a model for maintenance and the lack of orientation affect the maintenance in a company??.