Background: As Porter?s diamond (1990) suggested, the business environment highly influences firms? strategies. Today, most of the companies have to decide their strategy depending from a worldwide business environment. Yet, strategy researches and the growing importance of marketing for business success also show that customer dimension must be taken into consideration. On some markets and in certain industries, the offer is much higher than the demand and then, companies need to attract customers.

Conflict prevention is a term which has gained much influence during the last decades. To prevent conflicts from occuring have both humanitarian and economic incentives as the cost for war are much greater than the cost of acting preventive. To act in this matter has been regarded a priority for the United Nations during several years, and the European Union have also expressed a wish of playing a more active part. The essay compares the actions taken by the international organisations in Macedonia, a country which headed toward a violent conflict. The UN acted through the mission UNPREDEP and the EU through the mission of Concordia.

Investment costs for eight different type housing systems for dairy cows has been calculated in order to compare the building costs as a function of herd size, shelter type and automatization. A commercial calculation programme for building was used and complemented with prices of equipments specific for dairy cow building. Herd sizes were 120, 250 and 400 cows. The milking equipments were automatic milking system (AMS), parallel parlour with 32 stalls (2x16) and rotary parlour with 24 stalls. Shelter was either insulated equipped with automatic cable driven scrapers on solid alleys, automatic feed wagon on rails, or uninsulated with manual manure handling and a tractor driven mobile mixer wagon on a drive-through feeding table. Building cost per cow or per kg milk was calculated using an average life time and 6 % interest rate and annual milk yield is 9 500 kg/cow and year. Structure effect 3-4 % higher for an insulated structure than in an uninsulated for 400 and 120 herd respectively. This is much lower compared to what is normally argued.

The aim of this study is to analyse the sexual power relations in contemporary urban novels of Swedish female writers.I have identified a discourse in these novels as a heteronormative matrix which power is ruled by norms and assumptions about normality in both the heterosexual and lesbian stories. For this purpose I have related to Ivar B. Neumanns theory that individuals always find a way to confront the discourse by three different strategies. These strategies are used in my study as tools to organise these novels, because it is possible to see that the protagonists find at least one of these strategy?s to her protest.The first strategy I studied was the docile.

The aim of this study is to investigate the situation in Romania concerning trafficking for sexual purposes. We look at what affect the European Union has had relating to this matter, in order to conclude what a membership implies on the fight against trafficking. A gender perspective is apparent throughout the essay and new institutionalism leads us to focus on the affect of the EU, both formally and informally. Questions to be answered revolves around the EU:s strategy against trafficking, recent trends and the implementation of the strategy in Romania, formally and informally. The study has the form of a case study and is conducted through a field study in Romania.

Banking systems in India is quite popular and it needs some more changes to reach all the customers. Lack of the service is main problem in Indian baking system. If the common person wants to open the account, it take?s little bit high cost and banks are not near the people location. Due to the Lack of service, people do not want to be a customer of the bank.

The margin in crop production is more and more less and it forces the producer to check out how to reduce the cost of establishment of new crop. One way to reduce the cost in establishment is to begin with plough less farming. It saves money and time compares to conventional soil preparation with plough and harrow. Not all soil types are god for plough less farming and should be continued with ploughing (mainly light soil), but other soil types working very well with plough free farming. If you want to success with plough less farming you have to think in new lanes. One of the things you have to think about is to not grow too much cereal after cereal. Low stubble is important when you harvest the crop and also to spread and chop the straw well. I have in this work interviewed some farmers and farm advisers in Östergötland to see which thoughts they have about plough less farming.

On November 1st 2010 the obligatory audit was removed in Sweden for small companies. What factors influence such companies to have their financial reports audited, and what factors exert the strongest influence. Purpose: The authors would like to investigate factors that affect companies with voluntary audits in Skåne län to continue with the audit. The authors also wish to examine the factors that have the strongest impact on the choice to adopt auditing. Method: A quantitative study has been conducted in which aquestionnaire was sent to companies in Skåne Län Conclusion: The factors that affect smaller companies to continue with audit are as follows: Accounting quality, cost, creditors (loans), suppliers / customers, the tax office and distort competition.

This study investigated how banner ads, depending on its quality and placement,can capture a user's attention while searching for editorial content in an online newspaper. Furthermore, the user's search strategy was also studied to see whether it varied depending on the placement of an ad. An experiment was conducted where 20 subjects searched for articles in a Swedish online newspaper while their eye ovement was recorded with a headmounted eye?tracker. In each search task the online newspaper contained either a low quality ad or a high quality ad.

This thesis studies the concept of balance in the management control systems (MCS) of a small Swedish company within the IT-sector. The aim is to evaluate the importance of balance and dynamics in MCS and investigate which factors affect them. The frameworks used are Simons (1994) four levers of control, and the five-factor model for balance and dynamics by Mundy (2010). The small IT company - the object of the case study - has grown extensively in the last years and needs to develop more formal MCS without losing efficiency and creativity in their fast-moving industry. The case study reveals that balancing MCS is important also in smaller companies with less formal MCS.

Unit testing is a type of testing technique which is becoming quite fashionable to the developers and companies that are in the business of creating and managing software. Alas there are seldom any concrete data to support the positive claims of the authors in unit testing methodology books. These claims are instead based on empirical studies and the experience of the authors. The problem that arises from this situation is that it becomes problematic for managers and also the developers themselves to convince both customers and their own management to use this type of testing as there is no exact return of investment model. This essay examines this problem from two points, the first point is from the literature itself and interviews conducted with a number of developers at a software company located in Umea, Sweden.

This is an investigation of a mobile prefabrication factory´s competitiveness and profitability which also will result in a suggestion for a design of the factory. The mobile prefabrication factory is an idea of a new concept for production which is meant to be used in the manufacture of slab. The main intention with this concept is that by using a fast established prefabrication factory to produce elements near the construction site, thus avoiding transport from the factory to the building site. This means not only an environmental and economic gain, but also that you can avoid risking damage the elements which often occur during transportation. The contractor is owner of the mobile prefabrication factory and can thus avoid long waiting times and cyclicality.

The purpose of this study is to get the cadastral procedure for condominiums to become more affordable. The aims of the study is to examine how the number of condominiums, the number of joint facilities and the number of joint property units that are formed in a condominium cadastral procedure in Sweden influences the cadastral procedure cost. To get an overall perspective the study also explores how the chosen forms of co-operation have worked out in association management.A condominium is a type of three-dimensional property unit, which may only contain one residence.  This form of property formation has been allowed in Sweden since 1 May 2009.  At the end of 2014 less than 1000 condominiums had been formed despite the legislator?s expectations for 3000-5000 condominiums a year. The property unit can have access to necessary facilities, not available within the property boundaries, by establishing joint facilities or form joint property units.

Problem: When opening a newspaper today there is a good chance that the headlines have something to do with recent developments in the global climate debate. This development is forcing companies to take action. The problem for many companies, including Thule, is that they are unaware of the environmental work conducted throughout their value chain and also what they need to do to become green. Thule, a company with a strong focus on profitability and growth, will not make environmental issues a part of their core strategy unless it can be shown that economic incentives exist. With this thesis we will try to build a case that will help Thule, and also other companies, see the possibilities a green venture brings with it.

The primary purpose of this paper is to find the determinants of first-day returns on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Our research will cover the 1996 ? 2004 periods. Our secondary purpose is intended to find a profitable trading strategy with regard to future IPOs on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. By using regression analysis, focusing on company specific factors and the IPO process, we hope to find a function exhibiting statistical significance, determining future first-day returns from which construction of a profitable trading strategy will be possible.