CSR is a far reaching concept and practice, whose popularity and diffusion has increased rapidly in recent years. Research indicates that CSR has made an evolutionary journey from primarily being characterized by reactiveness to develop into a risk minimizing and proactive competitive advantage and should be looked upon as an answer to heightened societal pressure and awareness. Based on a review regarding different relevant theoretical perspectives, this master thesis discusses CSR as a concept and practical matter in relation to various strategically chosen representatives of a selection of professions.Moreover, the data were collected through in-depth semi structured interviews. The findings show that CSR is a contemporary and highly context dependent phenomenon whose inherent multiplicity brings a distinct aspect of uncertainty to it, in terms of both meaning and practice. And in some parts there is a reluctance to communicate CSR due to a fear of missing out of important aspects.

During the last decades the questions about environment and social ethics, so called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), have increased in importance. It is in the business world highly important for the corporations to show the public that the company care about these questions. A common approach nowadays is to outsource productions to other countries resulting in that suppliers have a great part of the work with CSR. CSR as a trend is a rather new phenomenon, and therefore interesting to see how the corporations handle these questions and how the approach looks like. The purpose with this study is to show how corporations which are recommended by CSR organizations for their handling regarding these questions approach CSR and how the work look like in the supply chain.

Quality Assurance in Service Procurement --- Total Quality and Total Quality Management refer to popular management philosophies in organizations these days. The purchasing department has an important part in the strive for organizational quality as several studies show corporate spend is significant and increasing. In this master thesis I study the actions companies take to ensure quality in service procurement. I argue that managing quality when sourcing services is particularly tricky, because of the special characteristics that belong to services. The purpose of the study is to examine whether different actions are taken to ensure the quality of different kinds of services.

Prior research on the ability of financial ratios to predict bankruptcies has shown a significant difference between the companies that went into bankruptcy and those that survived. This paper investigates whether there is a difference in the prediction ability of financial ratios during the last financial crisis compared to relatively normal macroeconomic environments in which most previous studies have been conducted. We use univariate analysis to compare companies that went into bankruptcy during 2010 and 2011 with companies that remained active. Our dataset consists of 51 failed companies that are matched with 102 companies that remained active. All companies were Swedish limited companies with more than 50 employees and the comparison is made with 26 financial ratios.

Det finns mycket tidigare forskning och litteratur om hur design som kommunikationsmedel kan tilla?mpas i praktiken, ba?de genom estetisk och strategisk design. Da?remot framga?r inte huruvida tilla?mpningen av design som kommunikationsmedel a?r branschspecifik eller generellt ga?llande fo?r fo?retag oavsett bransch. Fo?retag kan nyttja design som ett kommunikationsmedel fo?r att kommunicera sin varuma?rkesidentitet till konsumenterna sa? att deras syn pa? imagen blir liksta?lld med identiteten.

Pets like dogs and cats have a considerable importance for humans and research demonstrate a variety of positive economic and social effects in society due to our pet companions. The presences of pets are increasing on a global scale with correlation to economic development in low- and middle income countries. For example dogs have doubled in India over a five year period. The feed industry for dogs and cats is also the fastest growing sector in the food industry and certain pets have a significant animal protein intake which, depending on the choice of resources may provide a high ecological footprint. Examples of environmental effects with distribution and manufacturing of pet food are increased greenhouse gas emissions, waste, use of water and energy.

AbstractGlobalisation has lead to changes on many levels of our society; -industrial, technological, and corporate to name a few. This is an ongoing process which affects the society we live in today. The process is affecting the working-conditions for everyone through the changes of the relations on the working market. The unions have enjoyed a very special role in Sweden for a long time, but that role is now affected by these changes. The relationship between state and unions is changing, and the unions? influence in politics is decreasing.

The term CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is frequently discussed today. Many large companies work actively with CSR related questions. However, few empirical studies exist on what this work entails and why it is undertaken. Instead, most of the academic research focuses on what the term itself should mean. To bridge this gap this study centers on the employees? perceptions of CSR.

Denna rapport redogör för skapandet av varumärket Deco Retro. Samt den tillhörandedesignprocessen för att skapa en visuell identitet och profil för varumärket. VarumärketDeco Retro togs fram som ett undervarumärke till Kitsch Sweden AB som behövde ettvarumärke som passade deras nuvarande och framtida produkter. Deco Retro ska bidra meden stärkt identitet och värde för de produkter som ska säljas under varumärket. Designarbetetkring varumärket strävade framförallt efter att kommunicera den idé, identitet och de värdensom under projektet tagits fram för varumärket, samtidigt som det ska ha bidragit med enestetiskt tilltalande grafisk design.

An industry in distress was the breeding ground for a noted pricing strategy, labeled name-your-price. The industry was the music industry and the pricing strategy bears reminiscence of how medieval buskers earned their living during the dark ages; by letting the customers decide how much the good was worth, embodied by a thrown coin into a hat or similar collector. Translated into the contemporary corporate environment of today, where technical innovations provides access to the intellectual property for free, a few mighty economic actors have once again turned to the strategy were it all started; letting the customer set the price. The hat has been replaced by a box for your credit card number and the live music by a MP3 file, but the similarity is striking. The business model have been applied in other industries as well with various levels of success, thus the purpose of this thesis is to set up a framework for where the name-your-price strategy is applicable.

Frågeställningar: Vilket är förhållandet, om ett sådant finns, mellan ett företags CSR-arbete och dess lönsamhet? I vilken utsträckning bedriver KappAhl aktiviteter inom CSR? Går det att utläsa något förhållande, och i så fall vilket, mellan KappAhls CSR-arbete och företagets lönsamhet?Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om det finns ett förhållande mellan företags CSR-arbete och deras lönsamhet.Teori: I studien redogörs för vilka definitioner av CSR som används idag och olika teorier kring ämnet som vi fann användbara.Empiri: I empirikapitlet granskas diverse åsikter kring förhållandet mellan CSR och lönsamhet samt vilka faktorer som kan påverkas av att ett företag arbetar med CSR. Vidare har vi valt företaget KappAhl som undersökningsobjekt. Vi har genomfört en intervju med KappAhls miljöchef Ann-Marie Heinonen och vi har även använt oss av information om företaget som huvudsakligen har hämtats från dess hemsida..

Bakgrund & Problem: Många studier pekar på att det är stor skillnad mellan den formuleradeföretagsstrategin och den faktiska prestationen. Detta har benämnts som ?The Strategy toPerformance Gap?. En föreslagen metod för att komma tillrätta med detta gap är Gartner GroupsCorporate Performance Management (CPM) initiativ. Stora och internationellt verksamma företagborde ha mest att tjäna på att minska gapet, de torde även vara de som har kommit längst inyttjandet av nya teorier för att nå dit.

IKEA har under hela sin verksamhetstid befunnit sig i den strategiska position som benämnes hybrid, men har på senare tid tack vare ett förbättrat produktsortiment förflyttat sig närmare en differentieringsposition. Det har i sin tur medfört en höjd image som gjort att kunderna nu kräver mer service av IKEA Helsingborgs personal, en begäran som inte tillgodoses. Servicemötet ? interaktionen mellan frontpersonal och kund ? på IKEA Helsingborg har således kvalitetsproblem och fungerar inte tillfredsställande för vare sig kund, personal eller ledning. Uppsatsens primära syfte är att undersöka vilka ledningsåtgärder som behövs för att nå god kvalitet på servicemötet på IKEA: s varuhus i Helsingborg.

Med utgångspunkt i dagens debatt kring omfattande kompensationer i banksektorn har vi valtatt i denna uppsats undersöka korrelationen mellan kompensation till ledandebefattningshavare och antagen kreditrisk och korrelationen mellan kompensation till ledandebefattningshavare och lönsamhet inom några av Europas största banker. Vi undersöker ävenom det föreligger någon trend över åren 2006-2011 för kompensation och beviljad kredit.Genom en kvantitativ metodansats har vi samlat in data och analyserat denna med hjälp avredan existerande teorier. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att det varken föreligger någrakorrelationer eller tydlig trend för de undersökta variablerna. Slutsatserna vi kan dra är attförhållandet mellan kompensation och kreditrisk och förhållandet mellan kompensation ochlönsamhet är komplexa och kan inte förklaras med några enkla samband. Den medialahysterin kring kompensationsutbetalningar är dock befogad eftersom det är betydandesummor som betalas ut..

For research purposes Saab has developed a generic mathematical model denoted VEGAS of an aircraft with a configuration similar to JAS 39 Gripen. Today parts of Gripen backup control system are used also for VEGAS making the system subject to both corporate and defense secrecy. The main objective of this master thesis is to design, verify and implement public pitch axis flight control system for VEGAS. Furthermore, simplifications regarding the design process is to be examined. Design of pitch axis flight control system for the entire flight envelope has been carried out.