Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) är det arbete som företag åtar sig utöver den lagliga skyldigheten och innefattar bland annat arbete med miljö och samhälle. Fenomenet har framförallt undersökts i större företag i och med deras stora inverkan på omgivningen. I små och medelstora företag (vidare kallat SMEs) är CSR-arbetet inte lika väl utforskat. Syftet med detta arbete är att utforska hur och varför SMEs i Sverige, med fokus på enmans- och mikroföretag i Uppsala, arbetar internt med CSR-relaterade aktiviteter. Genom intervjuer undersöker studien huruvida femton enmans- och mikroföretag i detaljhandeln arbetar med CSR inom kategorierna välgörenhet, samhället, miljön samt leverantörer.

Problem Faith in the power of advertising has varied largely through the ages, and since we know that advertising is paid for, it therefore has less weight than the usual news. Publicity through promotional activities is in turn difficult to control. The question which of these two ways to communicate with the market that is the most effective, is equally entitled to ask, as difficult to answer. Purpose/Aim This paper is designed as a pilot study with two different objectives that go hand in hand. The first overall aim is to investigate how advertising and PR / publicity can be measured with the same tools while designing this metric.

Transport is an important aspect to take account in efforts to achieve sustainable tourism development. If we do not change our behavior regarding travel, the consequences will be significant for the environment. This study examines the various transport operators on the two Swedish ski resorts if their websites and marketing are different from each other in the mode selection. The destinations are Åre and Hemavan Tärnaby. They studied modes are two Swedish airlines, two train companies, three bus companies and three taxi companies.These corporate websites are studied with a content analysis in which the results of the keywords that have been developed are scored according to different categories.

The ever-evolving information technology gives users more opportunities, but also put higher demands on them. The digital agenda of the state and society clarifies the objectives and effects academic libraries? development. E-books influence the development of organizational, economic, legal and political perspectives. At the University Library in Gävle work is ongoing. The process is controlled by the acquisition policy which makes it clear that e-books should be purchased if possible.

The purpose of our essay is to find out if there are any strategies for profit transactions in a group. To realise our purpose we conducted two case studies with interviews. But we can not draw any general conclusions.To conduct the research we had to build a theory. In this theory we found motives to do profit transactions and how to do it. We also thought that there had to be some conflicts between the motives and the manager´s interests.In our analysis we found that financing the dividend was a strong reason to make profit transactions between companies in the group.

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.

Endocrine disruptive chemicals (EDCs) are found in many everyday products and can cause adverse effects on human health. Small children are particularly sensitive to EDCs and they are also exposed to them in a greater extent than adults. Despite this, EDCs are only banned in a few toys and childcare products. There are many sources of exposure and if no steps are taken to reduce the incidence of EDCs we may face an increasing number of people diagnosed with obesity, diabetes type 2 or various types of cancer.The Swedish Government has set a number of environmental objectives, one of which is calleda non-toxic environment. The Swedish Chemicals Agency was instructed to produce and conduct a national action plan to achieve this goal.

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.

Until recently the Danish government was hesitant about whether investments in climate and energy policies were the right strategy for Denmark. Today the Danish government argues that during the forthcoming climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 (COP15), the world's countries must agree upon ambitious climate objectives. Denmark is together with EU-27 aiming at an ambitious climate agreement. This thesis intends to contribute with an understanding of why Denmark, both politically and economically, invests profound resources into committing the world's countries to a climate agreement. The study uses both a neoliberal institutionalism and a constructivist theory in analyzing the Danish engagement.

The thesis has been carried out at Nedis AB in Jönköping. The aim was to develop proposals on approaches that could help the company to continually improve their warehouse operations by eliminating unnecessary operations, making the warehouse more structured and how they better could use the staff's suggestions for improve-ment. The collection of data consists of observations, interviews with a total of nine people from the staff of Nedis AB and a benchmarking conducted at Husqvarna AB. A number of shortcomings and weaknesses in procedures at the warehouse were iden-tified. Packing stations were not standardized and they were seen as poorly structured and messy.

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.

Introduction: First line managers in the public sector, are under a great pressure from both senior management, leadership, politicians and often from a large group of employees. Few studies have been made on the first-linemanagers psychosocial work environment, even though in the studies found that the manager affects their employees work environment.Aim: How first line managers in municipal elderly describes the psychosocial work environment on the basis of demand-control - support model.Methods: The study was conducted through individual interviews with six first line managers. Respondents were recruited through a strategic selection in a medium-sized municipality in Västernorrland. The interviews were conducted using an interview guide. Qualitative content analysis with an deductive approach was used as a method of interpretation of the results.Results: First line managers point out the difficulty in balancing the requirements and several managers also mentioned the importance of having clear role descriptions and objectives.