The ?civilized? world is in need of fossil fuel in order to function. Hybricon AB is a company in Umeå that is developing a technology that hopefully can reduce parts of this need. They are currently testing their two electrical busses (with Hybrid backup) in city traffic on the roads of Umeå in cooperation with the county of Umeå.                               The busses are originally diesel-busses, but the diesel motor has been replaced with two electrical hub-motors with a power of 145 kW each that are powered by batteries.The batteries are charged at the end station after each route. In case the batteries should run low on capacity during driving, they can be recharged by the so called genset.

The aim of the study is twofold, to generate a sensory profile of Swedish wine today and to investigate the opinion of both wine producers and wine experts on viticulture in Sweden and wine from grapes grown in Sweden, achieved through a contextual analysis comprising a literature study and interviews with wine producers in Sweden and Denmark and wine experts from Sweden and Germany, and a sensory analysis at the company Ipsos. ?Mixed methods? was the chosen research strategy as the semi-structured interviews gave qualitative results and the sensory analysis would give quantitative results displayed as spider charts. There is a lack of studies investigating how the Swedish wine is perceived by consumers and consumers might be unaware that the Swedish wine, established through ?trial and error?, is increasing in quality every season, creating a need to display the sensory profile of Swedish wine to strengthening the perception of Swedish white wine. This study shows that the Swedish white wine today is a wine with a fresh, citrusy and flowery aroma and a fresh, citrusy and green apple taste, however, a sensory analysis cannot show if the attributes are those that are desired by the customer, a consumer test is necessary to conclude that. Trends point towards locally produced products, one reason why Swedish wine has great potential, yet the future needs to be secured through job opportunities and education. Creating an approval system for Swedish wine is suggested as a future improvement, it is a common procedure in most wine regions.

When a crisis hits a company, it is very important that the company communicate with its customers. Communication is important for a company in crisis because this is a way for the company to tell their side of the story and thereby try to get the customers to see things their way. Because mass media reaches a lot of people, it is a simple and fast way for companies in crisis to get their message out to the world. Mass media can be very useful for a company, but it can also be a problem. Mass media and companies in crisis may or may not have the same purpose with the communication.

AbstractThis study aims to investigate the applicability of well-recognized supply chain strategies based on product characteristics. Choosing the right supply chain strategy can be the difference between winner and loser in today?s competitive climate and science offers several recommendations as to which aspects that should be considered. Fisher (1997) and Christopher and Towill (2002) suggest that supply chain strategies should be based on what kind of product the company is handling and that, in order to know which strategy is the most appropriate, the products must be categorized. Some criteria developed for the categorization are lead time, forecast in demand and profit margin.

WSP building physics in Stockholm has certified the preschool Temmelburken in Bromma with the system of certification Miljöbyggnad. The rating of the building became BRONZE. In this thesis the preschool has been investigated with respect to the three areas: thermal climate, use of energy and improving of the level of certification. The thermal climate at the preschool has been investigated by a questionnaire survey and by measurements in order to do comparisons between the results from the two investigations as well as with the results of the simulations that WSP has done at the certification of the preschool. The differences between the results from the simulations and the questionnaire survey for winter as well as from the measurement performed with a comfort meter the 19th of March are concidered to be reasonably small since they give rise to the same rating according to Miljöbyggnad.   Operational data for the use of energy for the preschool have been obtained in order to do comparisons with simulations performed by WSP and Svenska Besiktningar AB. The comparison shows that the simulated values for the specific use of energy are lower than what the real specific use of energy would be for the preschool, since just the operational data for the heat energy is higher than the simulated values. At the investigation of the possibility of improving the level of certification it was found that the rating of the preschool can be raised from BRONZE to SILVER by improving the ratings of the ?thermal climate summer? and the ?daylight?.

This dissertation discusses the preparations companies do when their auditor is about to visit them. We wanted to investigate if companies do some form of preparations with the intense of trying to influence the auditor in an, for the company, advantageous way. The purpose was to be fulfilled through the deductive process of theorization and from the gathering of empirical and the analysis of this data. We decided that a multiple case study would be the best approach for us, as we wanted to undertake a greater number of interviews than is normally done in a case study. The result from our study showed that auditors think that information from a company is more reliable, if its documentation is neatly kept, or if the relationship between the auditor and the company is good.

This thesis emphasizes the importance of understanding the employees? attitude and motivation towards their workplace at a company that works in the advertising business. An example company; thcommunication agency PS Communication in Stockholm, was used for the empirical part to investigate the purpose. The topic is interesting since the company works in a fast changing environment with new techniques,tools and professionals and the company is also going through an expansion that include many new recruitments.The purpose in this thesis is as follows: ?the purpose of this study is to elucidate the fate of attitude and motivation of employees in relation to the workplace during business expansion, if performance is reduced and competition increases.?The analysis and results shows that attitudes andmotivation among the employees in the workplace has deteriorated, the employees agree that it is due to expansion the company is undergoing.

Background and discussion of the problem: In the staffing company business a unique situation exists because of the three part relation between the staffing company, the users of the staffing companies? services, and the consultants employed by the staffing company. To over bridge the conflicting objectives of the staffing company and the consultant incentive systems are designed. Research question: What effects on the consultants? effort direction do the staffing managers expect of the formal or informal incentive system? Method: The authors have found that a suitable method for the thesis is a survey study.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is about facing responsibilities towards a company?s employees, customers, stakeholders, suppliers and the environment. As customers and consumers came to seek companies that were dealing with CSR a rapid wave of ?forced? implementations of social responsibility began. Fair Travel Tanzania, which has CSR as the foundation of the company, says that they are transparent about what they do and how they give back to the locals, could it be a problem with this? And how do they actually give back to the locals? Is it possible to measure the impact of CSR activities within the company? And if so, how?.

Using the models from van Maanen and Schein (1977) and Dutton et al. (1994), we have been able to investigate the socialization process and organizational identification both from the organizational as well as the individual?s perspective. The link between these two perspectives establishes a better insight into the company?s actual socialization intentions and the individual?s identification with the firm.

This paper aims to examine how, and if, music is being used integrated in other subjects thanmusic in school. The study is based on qualitative interviews and I haveinterviewed fourteachers, regardless of whether they use music a lot or not.The questions the study is basedon are if there might be a connection between theteachers' own feelings for music andwhether they use music inschool or not, how music is being used and does the use of musicgive any effects?The result of this study shows that there can be a connection between the teachers ownsfeelings for music and the fact if they use music when they teach or not. One of the teachersI?ve interviewed had bad music experiences and didnot use music in her teaching.

This study analyzes how the Swedish climate policy has changed during the years 1990-2008. Thisis done through a comparative analysis of three climate bills that were developed during this period.With a constructivist approach, and theories about discursive indicators and discursive fields,discursive changes in the bills' content are identified. The results show that changes have occurredin how the problem is described, how the issue is framed, which problem solutions that areadvocated, which legitimizing arguments and key concepts that are used and the extent of theknowledge that the bills are based upon. The conclusions drawn from the results describe adiscursive change between the bills in the form of a shift from a discourse that in a greater extentadvocates active policy responses, based on ethical arguments about fairness towards othercountries and caution towards the environment, to a discourse that more often favor market actionsbased on arguments about the economic viability of Sweden..

This report is about an investigation which has been done as an assignment in aninternational company. An Intranet has been implemented in parts of this company, andprimarily there is a local group of people in the company which is responsible for thelocal Intranet as an informationsystem. This local group of people is also responsiblefor further development of the use of Intranet as an informationssystem in the localorganisation. To create a starting-point for this development, I have done aninvestigation that deals with:· acceptance of Intranet as informationssystem among members of the industrialmanagement.- what factors affect acceptance of Intranet in a negative way- what factors affect acceptance of Intranet in a positive way· rules by which further development of Intranet is supposed to be based on· existing and needed Intranet-applications..

Title: A study about the purchasing process of ITLevel: Master thesis in Information Technology and Business Administration, 15 hp, EIK024Authors: Emelie Johanson and Mikael LindströmTutor: Peter Ekman, Mälardalens HögskolaKeywords: IT-investment, purchase, decisionProblem: In the last decades the amount of IT investments increased and has become an important resource within most organizations. IT gives the ability to compete and could also be a condition for many to be able to compete. In different businesses it could vary in where they put their focus when they choose an IT investment. This thesis examines how the purchase process of IT looks. How does processes differs in a bigger company versus a smaller company? From these two perspectives this study examined these research questions: Who makes the decisions whether or not an IT solution should be purchased? What aspects decide when companies are to choose between different IT solutions? Where in the purchase process do problems usually emerge?Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the purchasing process of IT from a business perspective.

In this study, company reconstructions and the financing of current accounts hereof are analysed from a perspective of insolvency law. The purpose with a company reconstruction is to maintain the operations of the company despite the insolvency of the mandator. In contrast to bankruptcy proceedings the person liable for payment stays in charge of the operations. However, this person is not allowed to sign for new loans, issue pledges of security for these loans or in any other way enter new obligations without the approval from the temporary company reconstructor. Besides providing for a successful reconstruction the reconstructor also has to consider the interests of creditors, especially to maintain the preferential order of the creditor's claims, keeping them unchanged in case of a formal bankruptcy.