This thesis highlights starting points underlying the notions of two feminist utopians, Christine de Pizan and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In approaching their texts, it focuses on the notions central to understand their writings. These would be historical, social, and cultural contexts. Defining concepts as utopian in its varying forms and feminism has been of significance. A feministic approach grounded in Simone de Beauvoirs philosophical phenomenology in the study of feministic utopia's visibility, has contributed to the understanding of the power structures to which women are tethered. In order to understand the way women are presented, it has become obvious that The Book of the City of Ladies and Herland are literary works that are related not only by their authors? background and personality but by the society in which they lived. Through their engagement in the contemporary intellectual debate on all social planes, both authors contributed to shifting the focus of their own contemporary notions of a woman to the notion of a woman equal to men. Woman, in Christine de Pizans utopia, is given specific properties and through themes of issues given meaning. She is not free in the sense that Simone de Beauvoir says.  She has a broader repertoire than was historically assigned, but her freedom is not arbitrary, contingent, and temporary and judged by her actions.

SammanfattningDatum: 18 januari 2013Nivå: Kandidatuppsats i företagsekonomi, 15 hpInstitution: Akademin för hållbar samhälls- och teknikutvecklingFörfattare: Simon Brodahl Pontus Eliasson David WahlbergTitel: Jag är organisationenHandledare: Johan GrinbergsNyckelord:Delaktighet, engagemang, delaktighet i beslutsfattande frågor, psykologiskt ägandeskap, anställdas välbefinnande och kunskapsspridning.Frågeställning:- Finns det ett gemensamt synsätt på delaktighet och engagemang inom ABB Motors & Generators?- Vad kan göras för att öka delaktigheten och engagemanget inom produktionsdelen och vad kommer detta leda till?- Vad bör ABB: Motors & Generators ha i åtanke vid applicerandet av delaktighet inom produktionsdelen i framtiden?Syfte: Syftet är att utifrån teoretiska referenspunkter analysera ABB:s verksamhet ur ett engagemangs- och delaktighetsperspektiv som ligger till grund för en analytisk diskussion vilken utmynnar i förbättringsförslag.Metod: Den teoretiska referensramen är konstruerad med hjälp av vetenskapliga artiklar och litteratur som behandlar ämnet engagemang och delaktighet. Det empiriska materialet består av en kvalitativ studie bestående av tre djupintervjuer.Slutsats: ABB Motors & Generators innehar ett tankesätt som behövs för att främja ökad delaktighet och engagemang hos de anställda. För att öka medarbetarnas engagemang till organisationen, krävs det att kommunikationen är bra mellan de olika funktionerna. Det är även viktigt att produktionsdelen känner förtroende för ledningen samtidigt som ledningen ger medarbetarna bekräftelse.

Syftet med studien är att skapa en djupare förståelse för, samt belysa och jämföra hur små företag som har både fysiska- och webbaserade butiker, potentiellt kan effektivisera försäljningen genom att kombinera sina fysiska- och webbaserade kundrelationer.Studien är utformad som en jämförande fallstudie där sex företag undersöks genom kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer. De företag som har intervjuats är små produktföretag som bedriver försäljning via både en fysisk- och webbaserad butik. Företagen som har intervjuats är alla belägna i Kalmar eller på Öland.Kundrelationer är en väsentlig del för alla små försäljningsföretag som vill vara konkurrenskraftiga. Det är därför viktigt att arbeta fram strategier för kundhantering. Kundrelationer inom fysiska- och webbaserade verksamheter har olika styrkor och svagheter.

Research on the power of customer involvement, and in particular recommendation is very resourceful. Many studies have mapped the reasons for why customers are willing to recommend, however they often ignore potential differences among brands and how that may affect these reasons. This study is built on a quantitative survey investigating how consumers interact with brands, depending on category affiliation. The categories used were Bhat and Reddy's symbolic and functional, consisting of three brands respectively where each brand represented a different product type.The evolvement of social media has also transformed the platform of recommendation from physical to virtual and changed the way people connect. Thus, taking the investigation further, potential differences between symbolic and functional brands was tested in different social media platforms.

Sedan 1980-talet har det skett en stor utveckling inom det informationstekniska området. Den teknologiska utvecklingen har inneburit stora förändringar inom flera olika områden i samhället. I takt med att teknologin har gått framåt har det också vuxit fram nya kommunikationssätt mellan företag och kund. Detta beror till stor del på internet och persondatorns inträde i folkhemmet som möjliggjort att vem som helst när som helst kan finna information och jämföra olika företags erbjudanden. Denna utveckling har ställt nya krav på företagen och företagens fokus har flyttas från att vara marknadsorienterade till att bli kundorienterade och relationsskapande.

The purpose of this study is to examine and explain why three Swedish public libraries failedin their ambition to act as information services for small and medium-sized firms (SMF). To support this purpose two major assumptions are made:1) Public libraries who plan to run this kind of "business" must act with the same means as "professional" services.2) The service must be adjusted to the information needs of the customer.Based on these assumptions sixteen factors which are crucial to the "success" for this kind of service are presented.Applied to the information services of Lidkoping, Sölvesborg and Västervik, these factors reveal a number of shortcomings and mistakes made by the libraries.To understand this result these information services are seen as parts of a traditional Swedish public "library-thought". It is shown that, fundamental ideas in the way the public libraries are defined, like the responsibility to act in a neutral and democratic way, also characterised the three information services.These ideas together with the opinion of SMF as a "rational" information-consumer resulted in information services who did not meet the information-needs and information-behaviour of SMF..

"? en utveckling som tillfredsställer dagens behov utan att äventyra kommande generationers möjligheter att tillfredsställa sina behov".Så definieras enligt Brundtlandkommissionen begreppet hållbar utveckling. Det handlar om att företag låter balansera ekonomiska, sociala och miljömässiga frågor i sin verksamhet. Tre ansvarsområden som på senare tid kommit att spela en allt mer betydande roll i såväl företag som samhälle. I Sverige lyder våra statligt ägda bolag under direktiv att redovisa sitt beaktande av ovanstående ansvarsområden i form av en hållbarhetsredovisning vilken dessutom ska kvalitetssäkras av oberoende tredje part.Studien syftar till att beskriva och förklara vilka upplevda fördelar ovanstående direktiv frambringar.

This thesis investigates how web agencys in Stockholm use, value and incoroprate the terms usability, user experience and interaction design in their work process. The purpose of this study is to investigate how creative professionals works with the notions of usability, user experience and interaction design with focus on the end user. Our definition of creative professionals is every employee at a web agency involved in the work process of developing digital artefacts in any capacity. We wanted to investigate how these notions are considered, consciously or unconsciously, during the workprocess. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at three different web agencys with eight different employees.

The aim of this paper has been to investigate how accounting firms govern their organizations with regards to the complexity in the service that they offer. The service includes the general accounting tasks which through standardization can be cost efficient, the advisory services that entail flexibility, and the relationship with the customer which needs to be taken into consideration when delivering the financial reports. These three components are important but require different approaches when it comes to governing the organization. The conducted case study has shown that the accounting firms govern their organizations bureaucratically and mainly through behaviour and accounting controls. The advisory services demanded by customers are standardized, not analytical, and therefore do not require the firms to take flexibility into consideration.

During the last 15 years the Swedish media market has developed a great deal, thanks to the rise of new media. Literature, articles and investigations have contributed to producing the chapter of background of this essay. How the local newspaper and its organization has changed over time is being accounted in this essay. From the newspaper being the only product on the market to now having a spread out product portfolio. By doing the qualitative interview with research representatives of six local newspapers the aimis to answer the following questions: Who were your competitors 15 years ago? Who are your competitiors today? In what way has the increased competition changed your way of working at the division of advertisement and how do you consider the the increase of mediachannels having affected the customer? How do you see the future? The main results show that all six representatives agree on the fact that the competition has increased during the last 15 years.

The purpose of this essay is to review Mundekulla, which is a small, relatively newly established Swedish company operating in the field of conferences. Today they are serving ecological and environmental friendly food to their customers and we choose to investigate if this is a successful concept by asking the customer?s opinions. Our task is to analyze and understand how this company can develop a stronger concept regarding their conference area. This essay will also focus on trends and how the ever changing world can affect Mundekulla in the future.

The essay discusses the effects that changes to the office plan have on organizational culture. Information about actual change as well as expected change in organizational culture was gathered before the empirical research was initiated. The empirical research was carried out at the Customer Logistics department at Ericsson through: an interview with a manager in charge of the relocation and design of the office, a manager for the specified department and also five employees of this department. The empirical studies show that there was a significant change in organizational culture and that results were not always as expected. There was a loss in symbolic actions, which needed to be compensated for, a perceived reduction in spontaneous communication, and a mixed response of perceived change in social interaction.

In order to become even more competitive, a partnering with other niche players is essential in achieving a competitive advantage and it enables opportunities for reintermediation. From an intermediate perspective, there are great possibilities for those who become content coordinators to enter the market. By becoming a bundler of services and products, the content coordinators will become the actors that will capture the most profit in the value web. The value creating drivers that have been identified in the business landscape of intermediates concern owning the content or owning the customer relationship. We find the possibilities of an intermediate actor, such as a content coordinator to achieve competitive advantage through strategic fit is subject to the context and the ability of creating more innovative and co-creative distribution systems.

Purpose: The purpose with our study is to accomplish a quantitative research of all municipalities in Sweden and see why they apply Balanced Scorecard. The study will also investigate the spread of Balanced Scorecard, even the benefits and how they use it. Method: In our study we have chosen a quantitative research. The study has been accomplished with a questionnaire survey which we sent to all of the Swedish municipalities. We have also done a literature study to get more knowledge about relevant theories. Finally we have compiled the questionnaire in Netigate and Excel, and analysed the result from the questionnaire. Results: Balanced Scorecard is well-known in the Swedish municipalities and 36 percent of the municipalities use this scorecard in whole or in parts of the organisation.

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.