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.

ABSTRACTCourse/level: Enterprising and Business Development, Bachelor Thesis, AUT2012, 2EB00ETutor: Magnus ForslundAuthors: Linn Danielsson & Alexander OlofssonKey words: Strong diversity, Consistent Corporate Culture, Core Values, Corporate Strategy,Definition of Diversity, Working with Diversity, Management, Standardization.Title: Diversity or Corporate Culture ? A case study on the paradoxical relationship betweendiversity and corporate cultures in corporations and organizations.Background: Diversity and corporate culture can in various ways result in corporate andorganizational advantages. While diversity promotes innovation, creativity and companydevelopment corporate culture possesses advantages such as efficiency, community and unity.Diversity and corporate culture seems to create various benefits that are both beneficial forCompetitive advantage.Problem discussion: I would be beneficial for companies and organizations to maintain bothdiversity and corporate culture since they complement each other. However, diversity andcorporate culture have different purposes and benefit in different ways. The question is howtwo such different strategies can meet.Question for research: How does diversity and corporate culture co-exist in corporations andorganizations?Purpose: The aim of this study is to create further understanding for the co-existence betweendiversity and corporate culture in corporations and organizations.Method: The study is made qualitatively with a hermeneutic approach and based on a casestudy on two corporations within the real estate industry.

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.

Background: The real estate market has previously been subsidized by the government. The construction has been characterized by standardization and large scale complex. In the current situation there are other conditions on the real estate market, subsidies do not occur at the same degree and the market is more Competitive. Customer influence has also changed. Today the customers want to customize their apartment by personal needs and lifestyle.

As competing organizations struggle to become more effective, one field stands out as one of the vital keys to success; internal communication. Even small errors in information handling can end up into obstacles that seem impossible to overcome. Managers constantly need to adjust the internal communication to fit variables that mirror the structure of the organization. This thesis is a study about how and in what magnitude structure affects organization?s internal communication.We have done qualitative interviews with McDonald?s and Diesel, two different global organizations within the branch of service business.

Background: The real estate market has previously been subsidized by the government. The construction has been characterized by standardization and large scale complex. In the current situation there are other conditions on the real estate market, subsidies do not occur at the same degree and the market is more Competitive. Customer influence has also changed. Today the customers want to customize their apartment by personal needs and lifestyle.

Mechanical relays are more and more being replaced with semiconductortechnology. In this thesis it is investigated if and how the larger loads couldbe controlled by transistors. The main part of this work aims to create andverify a solution that can control the starter motor, as well as protect it incase of any failure. The different malfunctions that the solution protectsagainst is high current, too high peak current, low current, maximum cranktime and minimum cool off time. The timers also protect indirectly againstoverheating of the starter engine.The transistors used are BTS555, from Infineon.

Background: Change factors have appeared in advertising and customer understanding has grown among companies, which have led to important Competitive advantages. Advertising agencies are not the only ones benefiting from this expertise anymore, but companies are starting to thus take clients from advertising agencies. They are also taking intermediaries, such as production, over more and more jobs from advertising agencies. This has led to an even tougher competition in the market and that advertising agencies are losing their jobs. The increased competition in the market, has also led many companies choosing to change its advertising agency, to think in new and changing strategies in the enterprise.

Svenska Lantchips is a Swedish SME sized snack manufacturer. Being a small, medium sized, family-owned business with branches throughout the world, they make an interesting company for a case study. The case study I have conducted focuses on the internationalisation process of this family owned company ? how they, despite their size, find ways to keep up an unique business structure, designed for internationalisation.The aim of this essay is to compare Svenska Lantchips? internationalisation process with traditional internationalisation theories and see if these are compatible with this company. The theories used are The Uppsala Model, The Network Model, and The Born Global Theory, with The Born Global Theory representing the younger generation of models.After undertaking an in-depth interview with Michael Hansen, business developer at Svenska Lantchips, I collated a substantial amount of material, which I have used as the basis of this essay.

AbstractEqual opportunities from an employer brand perspective- What does the future manpower inquire?Authors: Erik Frick & Niklas HalldénInstructor: Karin JonnergårdExaminer: Sarah PhilipsonBackgroundWe are living in a society that originates from a patriarchy founded many thousand years ago. This has put women in an inferior position in the labour market. To promote equal opportunities we argue for that companies can utilise employer brand. Employer brand is a new theoretic concept that is being used more frequently among scholars and companies.Presentation of the problem? Which role do equal opportunities play to attract potential manpower from an employer brand perspective?MethodOur method has a quantitative approach and we have choosen to carry out a survey.

The complex, ever growing and changing environment, requires that today's organizations are dynamic and willing to change in order to stand Competitive.This awareness has made change number one priority in almost all organizations' agenda.We live in a world that is constantly changing, yet many organizations fail to change successfully. When a change occurs in complex environments with multiple stakeholders, it immediately increases the complexity and the challenges of the change process.A complex situation may arise when, for example, partial outsourcing of the corporate information system infrastructure. Two of the most difficult challenges that organizations face today is to conduct a successful change process and managing the effect of a change, such as arising expectations. It is very common for change in an organization not to achieve the desired result or that they even fail. There may be a lot of reasons for these failures.

Many companies are currently working to optimize and streamline their processes and production lines to achieve higher profitability. In increasingly Competitive markets, companies are working to find solutions to increase the value of their production with such a small use of resources as possible. A tool used to accomplish this is the Lean management system. Lean comes from the production system that Toyota has been developing since the early 1900's, The Toyota Production System (TPS). The Lean philosophy helps companies, by working towards continuous improvement in its operations, to achieve higher customer satisfaction, more efficient production and ultimately higher profitability. Many companies are working to implement Lean in their organization. But there are many who fail to implement a complete change towards Lean.