This essay discusses the interaction between the authorities in Nacka municipality in Sweden and supervisors within the eldercare. In Nacka politicians have gradually started delegate responsibility for how care-giving for the elder should be done and focus instead on formulating economical objectives and overall rules. It is up to the approved supervisors of eldercare to deliver good care and quality. The method chosen to accomplish this is public choice. This method is a part of the big New Public Management (NPM) reform which have had a big impact on Swedish public sector since the 1980´s.

???This study has been made with the purpose of gaining an understanding of how a Swedish company may think and act concerning their internal control. An American body, COSO, have for some time published documents containing guidelines for how companies should go about this process, however, when conducting this study we were not aware of the extent to which companies in Europe and mainly Sweden used them. In order to learn about this, and also to gain an understanding of when these guidelines are appropriate, we conducted a case study with a large-sized, multinational Swedish company. We also conducted an interview with an expert in internal control monitoring, Anna-Clara af Ekenstam of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, in order to get the perspective of the evaluators in this process and to gain some insight as to whether our case is typical in Sweden or not. We found that our company disregards certain aspects of internal control condoned by COSO, while performing better on other dimensions.

According to the curriculum for the Swedish preschool system, children?s development and learning should be documented and analyzed in order to evaluate and develop the preschool quality. Social criticism is directed to some of the methods of documentation for assessing the children´s individual knowledge development. The purpose of this study was to examine how, what and why some teachers use documentation in preschool. I wanted to examine which methods preschool teachers used when they documented the children and what they focused on.

Background: It has been shown that companies that lived under protected conditions for a long time have had difficulties to adapt to major changes. With that in mind an even more extensive low-cost competition in the Swedish grocery market will make a threat for the traditional grocery stores' long-term survival. The question then becomes, which strategies will be successful and lead to higher customer loyalty.Problem: Are the traditional grocery stores using strategies that can compete in addition to pricing and will those strategies lead to long-term survival?Objective: Is to analyse and evaluate two traditional grocery stores' strategies and to examine whether these are consistent with customer demand.Approach: First we have created a more fundamental understanding of the situation in the Swedish grocery market. Then we have implemented two interviews in each grocery store.

The construction industry has not undergone the same logistical development as the manufacturing industry; this, in combination with increased material price, leads to the fact that the construction industry must be improved. This master thesis is a part of the research cooperation Brains & Bricks goal of reducing production costs for the construction sector by 25 percent. Brains & Bricks is a cooperation between Linköping University, Peab and Katrineholms municipality. The master thesis aims to identify improvements in the flow of material, the Supply chain operation reference, SCOR, model has been used and the work has been carried out on one of Peab?s construction sites. At present the business is characterized by bad communication both between the construction site and the office as well as between the construction site and suppliers.

Problem discussion: Syncron experience a challenge in realizing the full market potential of its newly developed IT-based price management system, Global Price Management (GPM). The system has already been implemented and is currently running with success within the IT-structures of the first customer. The fact that the development of the system has been initiated by a customer, and thereby has left Syncron oblivious of the real underlying drivers and incentives for the development, is part of the problem. Understanding the customers? incentives for developing their pricing process thus reducing the application uncertainty is a good starting point.

The project is a practical and theoretical test of IP telephony with Skype in order to form a base for a comparison between IP-Telephony with Skype and the Public Switched Telephony Network (PSTN). PSTN is the common standard that most of us use for telephony today. The objective for the study is to simplify the choice between PSTN and IP-Telephony for the Swedish private customer user group. The project is supposed to answer the following questions. - How easy is it to start using IP-telephony with Skype? - How is the quality of IP-telephony compared to PSTN? - Are all services provided by PSTN available and accessible using the IP-solution? - How are the usability and the availability of support with IP telephony? - Is IP-telephony a cheaper solution and in that case under which circumstances? Within the project a collection of practical and theoretical tests have been performed to be able to form an opinion on the IP-solution in the following areas, installation, function, quality, usability, costs, accessibility and security. In order to study usability, a test group of ten persons have been used to evaluate the usability of the system.

Background: Due to outsourcing, the material flows in the telecom equipment industry have undergone major changes, which in turn has imposed new challenges for packaging supplier Nefab who delivers to the industry. In order to achieve market intelligence, Nefab wants to map the material flows, and investigate possibilities of further reusable logistical packaging systems.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe the typical features of the logistical material flows in a technically based, rapidly growing industry, and analyze the driving forces and obstacles, which influence the selection of logistical packaging system. Procedure: After developing a theoretical framework consisting of general logistical theories and theories related to logistical packaging, we have interviewed companies in the logistics channel of Ericsson Radio Systems.Results: We have found the main characteristics of material flows in our investigated industry to be Variations in Demand, Focus on Time-to-Customer, and Globalization of Logistics Channels. Regarding driving forces and obstacles in the selection of logistical packaging systems, we have identified Transportation Characteristics, Customer Demands, Quality, Handling & Administration, and Current Packaging System as important factors..

In recent time, agile methods have been devoted much attention, and the concept is widely used in the IT industry in particular. An increasing number of companies are interested in this way of working. The following report is the result of a study on the ability to create value for customers in business development through the use of agile methods. We ask what the advantages and limitations of agile methods are in the creation of customer value. Grounded Theory and an initial literature review was used to answer this question.

AbstractThe customer demand for ecological products has increased in recent years, within the garden industry this mainly concerns herbs and other edible plants. The organic trend is increasing and more people are aware of the environment and want to take responsibility for it through their purchases for their garden as well.In this essay the aim is to investigate customer demand and the possibility of selling organicperennial plants in eight garden centres on the Åland islands and in Gävle/Sandviken. I include two garden centres with an organic profile to get a wider point of view. I investigate the global market for organic perennials and look further into existing certification standards on the Swedish market today.The methods I have been using are interviews and a literature study.The study shows that the experienced demand for organic perennials is small in both of myinvestigated groups. The biggest motivation for starting to sell organic perennials would be to find a supplier of these plants and that more customer would ask for them.

This report describes the work of developing a specification of requirements for Waste Heat Recovery Units. The main part of the paper describes how the work with the specification of requirements has been performed. One specific question to be answered is:What are the customer?s demands in case of properties for the Waste Heat Recovery Units and how is that information collected as an order documentation to suit the business area Oil & Gas?The report begins with a description of the assignment and continues with the aim and background. A theoretical part describes the different areas and methods that have been important during the process.

Injuries to the suspensory ligament represent a huge problem in equine veterinary medicine. As many of the affected horses are elite-competition athletes, there are high expectations on veterinarians to make these horses fully functional again. The suspensory ligament has several features which makes the healing process complicated. So far no treatment has shown to optimize the healing process. This has led to the testing of many new treatment methods, in order to find a consensus for the injury.

Package design constitutes an important marketing and differentiation tool in an increasingly competitive food market, particularly in the category of daily consumer goods where the turnover rate is high and the purchases are based on self-service (Hine, 1997; Spethmann, 1994; Underwood, 1999). Media fragmentation undermines the traditional marketing tools and the demands for packaging are bigger than ever. A package must not only sell a product, but also tell, through design, how the product is used and express the values that the trademark owner wishes to convey to the end customer (Underwood, 1998). The understanding of the role of packaging as a marketing tool has increased, but the initiators inside the packaging industry in Sweden still think that the Swedish packaging industry is developing slowly. They often describe Swedish packages as homogeneous and unimaginative.

During the last decades the local business as well as the multinational organization hasexperienced prominent changes in the technical field. The requirements for reaching newmarkets and achieving higher efficiency in daily work have risen to a whole new level. Totake advantage of the possibilities of IT the user has to be aware of the company?s businessactivities, what shortcomings and chances of development exist today. This is what makes itinteresting to depict the current situation of the company?s business.

Background: The use of digital marketing channels during the last years has increased significantly, especially the use of marketing on the Internet. Hence the communication chart of marketing has been redrawn. The technological development has had a major impact on the marketing discipline. The integration of information technology and marketing has resulted in the emergence of a new field, namely e-marketing. Hence the need for further research is desirable.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine alternative marketing procedures that a company can apply to increase the digital awareness and manage their customer relationships.Theoretical framework: Theories regarding digital marketing cycle, SEO and customer relationship.Method: This research is based on data collected through a primary semi-structured interview with a company active in the corporate information industry which also provides a RFQ service.