This thesis deals with cross-country ski clothing for non-competitive women. Women in this category look for different clothing features in comfort and aesthetics than male top athletes, for whom cross-country skiwear today often seems to be designed. In this thesis the demands of these women have been mapped out by an interview with a reference group of users. The ergonomics of exercising in the winter outdoors are naturally a base for the collection. The collection consists of three functional layers of garments.

Companies and organizations recognize the importance of collaboration to develop responsibility and ability of change in the workplace. The concept of collaboration was a relatively new idea in business in the late 1980s. In a Nordic context, collaboration is a traditional approach that companies use successfully for competition, survival and development. Collaborative organizational efforts cover management of committed people who can help companies achieve flexibility, customer loyalty, innovation and economic success on a challenging and competitive market. Many theorists believe that collaboration is the key to integrating technology, financial competence and innovation.

Abstract Contemporary cities find themselves today in a fierce competition against other cities over company establishment and in -migration. In this competition, the city?s main objective is to become an attractive site of capital accumulation.  As this happens, the pressure on the vulnerable groups in society increases, leading to a social geographic polarization. I have examined how the shift towards neoliberalism has affected a city on the fringe as Kalmar. How is the postindustrial urban space constructed? I found this important to analyze since it put two important questions in the light: For whom, and for which purpose do we build the city today? My questions have been:v  What are Kalmar municipality?s strategies to develop Kalmar?v  What are the results of this strategy in the urban space?v  What are the consequences of this strategy?The research has been a case study of the city of Kalmar with a qualitative deductive approach where David Harvey?s theories about the city in a capitalist system have been the underpinning structure.

The changed role of IT continuously influences organisational development, the individual and his role in the organization, different kinds of structures, management processes and strategies. One of the big concerns for IT firms is the need for IT consultants with enough experience to effectively and rapidly understand the business procedures of the firm in or-der to become a resource. In the classic IT-consultant role in the early days of IT, quite dif-ferent features were expected from them in their work procedures. The structure of how and which tasks they were expected to handle has undergone an indisputable transforma-tion. Today?s IT consultants are expected to know how to think in business strategic man-ners as well as the IT strategic manners.

Mergers and acquisitions are a phenomenon which can occur for a variety of reasons. It may for example be that the organizations want to gain larger market shares or to complement and learn from each other and thus become more competitive. After the completion of an acquisition or merger, a process is initiated to create an affiliation between the two companies' employees. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is something that management can do to make the integration process as efficient as possible. The empirical research in this paper consisted of interviews and surveys with respondents from two accounting firms that recently completed a merger.

This thesis deals with the numerical 3D simulation of a four stroke, spark-ignited, internalcombustion engine, which is mounted on a high performance motorcycle. The work, carried outin collaboration with Politecnico di Milano and MV Agusta, focuses on the simulation of theintake, compression and expansion stroke, including combustion simulation, using an opensource CFD code.Simulation of internal combustion engines offers a great challenge in the field of CFD research.Moving boundaries of the solution domain, caused by the motion of the piston and valves, leadsto deformation of the computational grid, with decreasing quality of the solution as result. Basedon this, a previously developed mesh motion strategy was employed where a number of meshesare used to cover the whole simulation cycle. Within each mesh interval the internal cell pointsof the mesh are moved to account for the boundary motion of the piston and valves. This strategywas previously applied to simplified geometries as well as real engine geometries.

Growth of small businesses is vital to the Swedish economy, and many entrepreneurs want their enterprises to grow. However, the business climate of today is more changing than ever, and attributes becoming increasingly important for companies in order to deal with this are flexibility, speed, and adaptability: characteristics normally attributed to small enterprises. As a larger organization often is associated with more rigidity as a consequence of a higher degree of formalization, entrepreneurs are hesitant to seize growth opportunities, as they fear it will have negative impact on the aforementioned competitive advantages their enterprise possesses as a small business. This simple case study of a growing small enterprise investigates the effects of organizational growth on a small business' organizational structure and through its above mentioned advantages. The study finds that avoiding formalization while growing damages the competitiveness of the firm, and concludes that a degree of formalization is a necessity to maintain the flexibility, speed and adaptability in a growing small business..

The thesis focus on how organizations can improve the ability of absorbing coworkers ideas in purpose of gaining long term competitive advantage through innovations. The study was conducted at IKEA AB where a campaign to collect coworkers ideas was a big success given the quantity of ideas collected. This fact allows a comparative analysis of idea management in the shape of campaigns and in comparison, idea management in the everyday line-organization.The analysis show that fundamental factors for innovative environments such as organizational climate, culture and leadership perceives auspiciously by the respondents. However, lack of infrastructure such as systems and processes hinders coworkers ambitions to contribute with ideas.An important issue in idea management is the treatment of incentives for innovation. Results of the study show that the ?soft? incentives ?feedback, encouragement and attention have a higher impact in coworkers willingness to the contribution of ideas than for instance monetary rewards..

In May 2010 the plans for Malmö?s new Concert Hall, Conference Centre and Hotel were announced publically. The purpose of this thesis was to present strategy for communication in order to gain approval for the new concert and conference center from the inhabitants inMalmö and to incorporate the use of it in their everyday life.Material from the receiver?s as well as the sender?s perspective has been collected from qualitative interviews. Through group interviews we have investigated the general consensus of the inhabitants of Malmö regarding the investment, placing, offered events, expectations as well as how they collected information.

This study will chart the changeover work, with a standpoint in the SMED-theory, at the company Peter Ernst AB in Värnamo. They are suppliers in plastic moulding industry and delivers to amongst other Saab in Trollhättan and Scania. The company are in a very competitive market, and they have to make manufacturing more efficient and rationalise their costs to be able to compete. A big problem, which the company has identified, is their long changeovers. It brings higher costs, a more stressful work climate and holds back the company from becoming more efficient.Field studies will be conducted on the changeover, which will be observed and filmed.

The study aims to understand the underlying factor why McDonald's customers return despiteprevious failure customer experiences. Why do customers come back to the company thatcontributes to the former dissatisfaction? McDonald's attempt to maintain unceasingpurposeful emergence fail at the local level, where the customer contact occurs. McDonald'sofferings and customers' bounded rationality results in that customers are satisfied with an"ok" experience, which adds to their low expectations of McDonalds. This makes clear thatMcDonald's does not have to make an effort through constant adaptation at the local level toachieve a "great" level of satisfaction.

This thesis is a case study of the search function on the University of Uppsala?s web site. The search function in this study was chosen since it exists on a large and complex web site and there were apparent lacks in the old version of the search function. The thesis highlights some of the problems that can appear in the development of a search function on a local site. One interesting find is that one of the most difficult issues is organizational and not technical.

Since the beginning of the new millennium, China has opened itself to the outside world and in an enormous pace increased its contacts and relationships with other countries. The trigger to these dramatic changes of economic and foreign policies is the insight that China can no longer sustain its rapid economic growth, largely based on industrial production, on energy and raw materials from China alone.Good relations with African countries have been of highest priority in China?s strategy of ?Going global?. The new African policy is based on the two principles of mutual benefit and non-interference in internal affairs ? as opposite to the West?s strategy of structural adjustment programmes (SAP), which include massive interference in internal affairs.

As the population of senior citizens increase, various housing options are required for an increasing competitive environment within elderly care. This study addresses the concept of profile housing for the elderly by outlining its definition and providing options for the different kinds of housing options available within the municipalities of Stockholm and Solna. The study reveals that these locations have different definitions of what constitutes a profile home. Based on this, should one assume there are further definitions to cover additional municipalities?     This study also touches upon how a group of senior citizens would perceive their living conditions if relocated into such housing. Members of the group have also expressed that they would like to go about their daily activities as they have prior to being relocated. They want health professionals to enable and encourage participation in various daily activities..

The society of today is overflowed with information and commercials. There is a thick media noise that the marketers finds hard to penetrate. Bearing this in mind, we can see that Event Marketing, witch is marketing through events, has grown to be a popular form of communication as it has an ability to work its way through the existing media noise. Through events a company can strengthen its brand and image as well as form a lasting relationship with its consumers. What other functions does Event Marketing possess? In what context is Event Marketing an appropriate marketing strategy to use? These are two questions that we aim to answer through this essay.To be able to answer these questions we interviewed the marketing manager of two different companies, L´oréal and TeliaSonera.