Background: As a result of the financial markets ever ongoing product innovation a new derivative was introduced in the USA in 1997. A derivative that derived it's value, not from the price of an underlying asset, but instead from a climate factor. It's been known for a long time that revenue in certain industries are affected by weather conditions. The suppliers of weather derivatives claim that these weather sensitive businesses can user weather derivatives in order to lessen weather risk. Purpose: To do a critical evaluation of how weather derivatives can be used by companies as a risk management tool.

There are several Project Management Softwares onthe market today. These tools are powerful andextensive to the degree they become too timeconsumingand complex and therefore often defeatits original purpose. This is the case especiallywhen the project manager is inexperienced and/orthe scope of the project is moderate.The purpose of this thesis arose from this context,there seems to be a gap between a home-made MSExcel spread sheet and the advanced softwaresavailable. The thesis and the product has beendeveloped in alliance with Faveo ProjectManagement with the shared goal to create a toolwhich is easy to use but still covers the essentialareas of project management theory. The tool willbe used internally by Faveo-employees as well asexternally together with Faveo?s clients in aneducational purpose.

This Master thesis studies how a diversified institutional care organisation can optimise its collective knowledge resources so to manage and distribute this knowledge to different parts of the organisation with help of the organisations intranet. The purpose of the study is to examine if knowledge management and the organisations intranet can be used to create, store, transfer and better use the knowledge within the organisation. Through a case study the thesis will look at different knowledge processes and their relation to the organisations intranet. The case study includes a questionnaire for the whole organisation and qualitative interviews with seven persons from different levels of the organisation. The theoretical framework of the study approaches knowledge management and intranet through four knowledge processes.

The thesis aims to analyze strategic, cultural and structural aspects of Grameen Bank and its micro-credit project, in order to identify key success factors. A case study was performed with an inductive and qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews. The data was collected by field observations and interviews on site in Dhaka, Bangladesh and surrounding areas.The main conclusion is that the critical success factor of Grameen Bank is the relationship focus, guiding and aligning its strategy, culture and structure. Also, local offices have been observed to utilize practices not permitted by the bank?s management, ultimately increasing the organizational efficiency..

Thesis purpose: The purpose of the master thesis is to analyse the battle of meaning creation regarding the notion of smoking and to reveal the production of unequal power relations. The battle is fought by different stakeholders through means of language and the study focuses on the tobacco industry in Germany. Methodology: A critical discourse analysis is applied with a qualitative research strategy. Our data collection was inspired by grounded theory and is limited in scope through a relevant case within the context of smoking in Germany. Empirical data is collected by means of an internet based document study of publicly available texts.

This essay is about gender equality in a Swedish upper secondary school. The aim is twofold: to obtain knowledge about feminism, gender equality, boys´ and girls´ situations in schools and gender equality work there; and to find out if government management documents for schools work effectively when it comes to promoting gender equality in schools. There are four research questions: How do teachers interpret what´s said in management documents for schools? What strategies do teachers use to promote gender equality? What opportunities and obstacles do teachers see for promoting gender equality at the specific school? And, finally, do the management documents for the school work effectively when it comes to promoting gender equality?The study has a socialist feminist perspective, which sees gender differences as a result of a mix of biological, historical and social factors. Important theoretical standpoints include gender socialization as an explanation for how girls and boys become women and men.The results of the study points out that teachers interpret management documents differently, and that they find the documents hard to understand.

The purpose of this thesis was to study descriptions of companies on their webpages on the Internet. This was performed from a socialconstructionist point of view with focus being on subject positionings and gender. A critical discourse analysis was carried out on two texts from the webpages of two organizations on the Internet. Using the three dimensional model for critical discourse analysis by Fairclough, the discourses and subject positionings that the texts included could be revealed. The purpose of this thesis was also to point out the importance of the use of language in recruiting personnel and to hopefully encourage organizations to put effort into text production to avoid discrimination.

Purpose/Aim: The aim of this thesis was to study the construction of gender and to compare Media?s portrayal of male and female athletes.Material/Method: 140 articles covering seven famous Swedish male and female athletes were selected from two Swedish newspapers (Aftonbladet and Expressen). The articles has been analysed within the frames of Norman Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis.Main results: Male athletes are often described in powerful ways and are framed as being strong and successful. Skills and strengths of women athletes are often devalued in comparison to standards of hegemonic masculinity and self-control. They are often framed as women and girlfriends in advantage of the fact that they are athletes..

The purchasing of management consulting services has traditionally been characterized by informal and relation based interaction. However, case studies have shown that there is a movement towards more formalized and structured purchasing procedures among buyers of management consulting services. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence and the implications of this professionalization. To investigate to what extent certain mechanisms of professionalization have been implemented on the Swedish market, a survey directed to Sweden?s 500 largest companies was conducted.

The management at the City of Stockholm?s Sports Department have problems. During recent years several IT-projects have been launched but results are worse than could have been hoped for. The projects are generally perceived as being too expensive, too time consuming and not to have delivered the expected results. This thesis aims at giving the City of Stockholm?s Sports Department theoretically based advice on how to improve their management of IT-projects.

During the last decade executive coaching has become an increasingly popular method of management development. Few studies have been conducted within this area, especially in Sweden, and little has been said about the construction of management in executive coaching. The purpose of this master?s thesis is to study executive coaching from a social constructionist perspective, focusing on the construction of management. The two research questions are: How is management constructed in executive coaching? How can we understand the construction of management in executive coaching? Additionally, we identify gender as a social construction of importance and thus include a gender perspective in our analysis.

Purpose?This study has examined the information behaviour and perception of information in a group ofinformation users who have a critical approach to the media and the information supply. Some of them call themselvesor are being called conspiracy theorists. The purpose was to examine how their information behaviour is influenced by the belief that the information is biased or inaccurate and what the information behaviour looks like when the user searches for discrepancies rather than a response to a question.Method?The study is based on transcribed interviews and email responses to interview questions.

Background: Liquidity and the management of liquidity are of great importance for companies. Cash management is not a new term, but the need for it has increased recently, for one thing because of the internationalisation and growing harmonisation between the countries in Europe. Netting is a cash management technique, where receivables and liabilities are netted. This technique can be used to release capital and increase the company?s cash flow by reducing the number of transactions in the internal payment system.

This study examines how management consulting firms work with business- and functional strategy and how these strategies are interrelated. More specifically we focus on business strategy (business unit level) and knowledge strategy (functional level) and whether these are aligned or not, i.e. whether strategic congruence exists.A number of recent studies have examined the importance of business strategy and knowledge strategy in management consulting firms separately, but few have pointed out the importance of the alignment between them. With this study we contribute to the strategic field of research with a model that describes how management consulting firms should work with their knowledge strategy given their business strategy. The model is developed through a synthesis between theories in the field of strategic congruence, business- and functional strategies and thereafter tested by an empirical case study of six management consulting firms.

Purpose: To explore how the changes in work life, here represented and depicted through the concepts of knowledge work and knowledge worker, have been incorporated in the official psychosocial work environment discourse in Sweden. Methodology: Critical discourse analysis, contrasting the official psychosocial work environment discourse to literature on knowledge work and knowledge worker, to explore how employees, employers and their relations are constructed within these two discourses; focusing identity, autonomy and power. Using the constructions to make visible how they are articulated, used and dealt with in a real life case from the Work Environment Authority. Theoretical perspectives: Our social world is socially constructed and language is the main tool for constructing it. Discourse analysis is thus not just a tool for deconstructing texts but also for enhanced understanding of our construction of the world and our ability to communicate about it.