ProblemThe manufacturing industry is a mature industry where the profit margins are small and the competition is hard. This makes it hard for both manufacturers and resellers to gain market shares and reach reasonable profit margins only by selling products. Therefore Swecon who is reseller for Volvo Construction Equipment tries to find alternative methods and ways to increase their profit. An alternative source of income could be to develop the range of services that are connected to the ground products.PurposeThe purpose of the thesis is to examine how Swecon in southern Sweden can improve their offers of existing services connected to the ground product and investigate the demand of new such services.MethodThis study is based on a qualitative study of five of Swecons local offices and five of Swecons customers. The empirical framework is mostly based on personal interviews but in some cases information was retrieved by using phone interviews.

This study examines regional integration in Africa with a focus on the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, COMESA. COMESA, with roots that go back to the beginning of the 1980?s, is one of the largest and most diverse areas for regional integration in Africa and has currently 19 member countries. The goal of the COMESA co-operation is to become a fully integrated area by the year 2025 that will merge into the African Union (AU). AU will then, in turn, create a fully integrated African continent in a not too far away future.

To achieve the requirements to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 % by 2020, Swedenneeds to increase its use of bioenergy. In doing so it seems natural that those who already haveaccess to large amounts of biofuels in the form of by-products such as straw, wood chips anddigestible materials take advantage of these assets locally. By combining production of heat withpower production at the farm it may be possible to not only reduce the direct use of fossil fuel forheating but also reduce energy costs.The purpose was to simulate different cases of using a small scale biofueled combined heat andpower plant for farm-based systems. A MatLab-model was developed and used to draw conclusionsabout the costs for production of heat and electricity with different conversion technologies.The model uses climate data to simulate the variations in heat energy demand on a day-to-day basis.The given heat demand is the base of the simulation and from this the possible electric output iscalculated. This study has focused on the impact of the following properties: electric-, heat- andtotal efficiency, fuel, fuel price and specific fuel requirements.

Throughout its wide distribution in the northern hemisphere, the golden eagle occurs in a diverse range of environments, e.g., mountainous, forest and open areas. The literature on juvenile golden eagles is limited, and this study provides further knowledge on habitat use and ranging behaviour during the post-fledging period in boreal Sweden. A total of 14 golden eagle juveniles were tagged with GPS transmitters during 2010 and 2011, and nine could be followed during the entire post-fledging period from fledging until migration. The juveniles fledged at the end of July and beginning of August and initiated migration during October and beginning of November. The length of the post-fledging period, until migration started, ranged from 49 to 97 days. During this period, the juveniles? distance from their natal nest and their GPS height increased with time as their flying abilities developed.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV?s) are nowadays greatly appreciated. The advantage over manned airplanes are great since UAV?s can be much smaller and therefore lighter. The goal of this project is to evaluate the performance of an environmentally friendly UAV using only lithium-ion batteries.

AbstractLean production has become one common concept within industries to make the work more effective and to meet today?s hard competition. A challenge for Chinese production is the threat from new low cost countries. It will become very difficult to succeed to produce to a lower cost than these countries; this led to that Chinese companies must develop new strategies, according to Lee and Zhou (2000). This will put China in front of new challenges and new strategies can be needed to retain their strong Competitive advantages.

The purpose of this paper is to study and describe the occurrence and conditions of aesthetic subjects and choral singing in Swedish upper secondary schools 2014. The paper is based on seven recorded individual interviews with three music teachers, four principals and one director of education in three upper secondary schools in Sweden. The study uses discursive psychology and the interviews were analysed with focus on music teachers and school leaders interpretative repertoires and rhetorical strategies and how they use the language to legitimate aesthetic subjects in an upper secondary school context. In the most recent upper secondary school reform of 2011 the aesthetic subjects are no longer mandatory. Today there are different ways to provide opportunities for the students to participate in music activities but since the government no longer decides how it shall be implemented it is up to the management of each school to determine the activities.The statement made by the informants are interesting in relation to the status of music subjects, but due to the limited scope of the paper, no general conclusions can be drawn.

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 research of organizational structure and control in the audit profession suggest that there is a contradiction in that auditors should both nurture collegialities while they at the same time have their own responsibility for their individual development and career. This creates a competitive situation among colleagues who in return are expected to maintain a good social relationship and team spirit with each individual. Subsequently, being part of the collegiality and being highly individualistic, gives rise to a theoretical dilemma where these opposing forces are supposed to coincide with each other.The purpose of this paper is to create a bigger understanding of how auditors at major accounting firms can handle the conflict that arises. In order to explore this dilemma, we conducted a qualitative study based on an abductive approach. We have made seven semi-structured interviews from a localistic view.

This Master?s Thesis is an evaluation of the software Xilinx System Generator (XSG) and blockset for Matlab. XSG is a module to simulink developed by Xilinx in order to generate VHDL code directly from functions implemented in Matlab. The evaluation was made at Saab Avionics AB in Järfälla, north of Stockholm. In order to investigate the performance of this new module XSG to simulink, a model of a frequency estimator often used in digital radar receivers were implemented in Matlab using XSG.

This thesis is about how the front-staff in two service companies experience empowerment. Competition for business in today's society is becoming increasingly fierce, which means that they must find a way to differentiate themselves from competitors. Service has become a way to compete. Front-staff competence and ability to offer a good service is a crucial factor when the company's success is being measured.Empowerment in business is used as a tool to create motivation and satisfaction of individuals at work. Companies using empowerment can create the freedom and opportunities for employees to act at their own intelligence and discretion.

As commonly known, Social Media is a rapidly growing area. Since consumers to a great extent are present in Social Media, this new internet environment is increasing in relevance for consumer marketing. For controversial brands that are regulated in conventional marketing channels Social Media is an extra ordinary marketing opportunity, since social media is a legal grey area. More and more controversial brands are taking advantage of this opportunity, but the effects of these marketing activities are fairly unknown. Therefore there is an interest in examining the controversial brands marketing progression in Social Media.

The demand for food, feed, fibre and fuel has increased in Uganda over the past 50 years due to population growth. Recurring extreme climate events such as drought and flooding, in combination with large-scale land degradation, have led to declining crop yields. Lack of equipment, money and socio-economic issues has contributed to low yields. However, the soils in Uganda have the potential to produce much higher yields than they do today. This study, which was carried out in April-June 2013 in Kkingo District, south-east Uganda, examined the effects of agroforestry on yield of cooking bananas in small-holder farming systems. Six farms practising agroforestry and six farms with no agroforestry, which were chosen in cooperation with the NGO Vi Agroforestry, were compared.

The purpose of our research was to examine whether the acceptance and diffusion of RFID technology among the employees at public libraries in Sweden, follow the classic diffusion of innovation model. RFID or Radio Frequency Identification, is a technology that uses radio frequency and microchip technology to track items, in our case, library books and other library materials. Diffusion is the process by which, in our case, the RFID technology is adopted by the library staff. The purpose of this study was to examine what factors influenced the acceptance and adoption of RFID among the library staff. We used Everett Rogers' Diffusion of innovation theory as our framework.

Our aim is to create a greater understanding for how Växjö Municipality is working with their vision, strategy and brand, and also how it is perceived by the business sector. This understanding will help us to highlight success factors and pitfalls that exist in the creation, implementation, and maintenance of a municipality?s identity, image and profile to convince the business sector to follow.Methodology: We have been using an abductive and qualitative research-method in which semi-structured interviews have been the basis of our empirical material. We had interviews with three employees, a communication manager and the mayor at Växjö Municipality as well as four organizations and two companies with sustainable focus. We did this to get different perspectives and thereby get a greater understanding.Analysis & conclusion: We have been able to identify both success factors and pitfalls in Växjö Municipality's strategic sustainability work.