Title: The Relationship between Internationalization and Firm Performance Seminar date: 5 June, 2008 Course: Masters thesis in Business Administration, Programme for Managing People, Knowledge and Change, 15 University Credit Points (15 ECTS). Authors: Cheng Hsun Chiang and Márton Pap Advisor: Dan Kärreman Key words: Internationalization, Performance, Multinationality, Degree of Internationalization (DOI), Country of Origin Purpose: To illuminate various crucial aspects of internationalization by systematically contrasting the different models of the multinationality-performance relationship and searching for underlying reasons. Methodology: Meta-analysis on previous theoretical and empirical research. Our emphasis in this paper has been put on the qualitative aspects of the previous research unlike many other conventional meta-analyses that focus on the comparison of the empirical data. Theoretical perspectives: Five main models have been developed by earlier studies to describe the relationship between internationalization and performance: positive linear, no or ambiguous relation, inverted U-shaped, standard U-shaped and S-shaped curve.

This study examines retail atmospherics from a reality perspective. The topic "special exposure" has received research interest in the past but it has not been recognized as a critical consideration in the daily retail business. Too many retailers leave assortment decisions to thumb rules or trial and error. The highest aim of this study is in addressing that gap between theory and practice. To catch the attention of the customer is important in supermarkets because most grocery purchase decisions are made at the point of purchase.

The European Union is seen as democratic, and one of the criteria for a democratic decision process is that it must be fully transparent for the citizens. That is the only way for them to make their own decisions about political issues, and it is only possible as long as the citizens have access to relevant and reliable information. However, this is not always the case within the European Union, since it is often difficult to get a hold of different documents of the institutions, and since the civil servants to a great extent are forbidden to give away any information..

Quickmatch is a company that recruits students to other companies that need temporary workers. Today all administration is done by hand, which is very time demanding and therefore inefficient. Employees send assignment reports by e-mail about the working hours and breaks to the administration office. Since these reports are handled manually, there is a great need for an automated system that makes the company more scalable.The purpose of this work was to solve the defined problem, i. e.

As stocks have become a more common way for people to save their money, the range of financial information has had a substantial increase. To understand the assumptions that stock valuation and analysis are built upon, it is important for the reader to have an understanding for the models that are used by banks and institutions when recommendations are published.The cash flow model, which is the most commonly used stock valuation tool, is based on CAPM. This model describes the relationship between an assets return and its risk in relation to an index. The risk parameter is called the beta value and has grown to be the dominating risk factor within financial economics literature.The use of beta values has been widely discussed in the world of academics and some researchers claim that the degree of explanation brought about by the beta is so low that it should be discarded, others are faithful to the beta and believe that it still serves a purpose. As a result of this criticism other ways to calculate the beta have surfaced, models that take other factors of risk into consideration.

Background: Vaccination is an important part in cats? welfare. It both helps to prevent the individual cat from catching a disease or lessen the symptoms of it, and protects the entire cat population from an epidemic. It is the cat owner who makes the decision to vaccinate or not. Understanding the cat owners? perspective regarding vaccination may improve communication between the owner and the veterinary nurse, which may lead to a higher vaccination rate among cats.

SAAB Automobile ABis a car manufacturer within General Motors corporate group. SAABAutomobile ABhas a big part of the responsibility for the brake development in the corporategroup. The car industry is facing harder environmental requirements, which influence the brakedevelopment. The focus is to develop brakes with low drag and sustained brake feeling andperformance. Important characters for the brake caliper are high stiffness and low weight, highstiffness results in high performance and low weight is important because it is unsprung mass.This thesis investigates the possibility to improve the performance of the brake caliper for aGMproject.

Bakgrund: Investeringsplanering utgör en stor del av företagets totala planing. Behovet attinvestera har under senare år tilltagit. Anledningar till detta är bland annat;strukturomvandling, ökad priskonkurrens, optimism samt ökad ekonomisk aktivitet. Specifiktför tillverkningsindustrin är ökade kapacitetsbehov och nya produktionskrav.Tillverkningsindustrin är vidare investeringsintensiv och har under senare tid upplevt ett ökatinvesteringbehov.Problemdiskussion: Investeringar är ett ämne där ett brett utbud av tidigare forskningföreligger. Dock är processen ett relativt outforskat område.

Det finns en problematik för ensamstående föräldrar att på ett tillfredställande sätt balansera arbetsliv och familjeliv, än mer problematisk blir situationen om barnet eller barnen har särskilda behov. Studiens syfte är att belysa, analysera och skapa en förståelse för hur karriärutvecklingen formas för ensamstående föräldrar till barn med särskilda behov. I fokus är föräldrars karriärutveckling efter att ha fått barn med särskilda behov. Informanternas bakgrund, karriärutveckling, samhällsstöd samt förändringen det innebar att få barn med särskilda behov, är fyra faktorer som särskilt belyses. Examensarbetet utgår från en hermeneutisk ansats.

Det finns en problematik för ensamstående föräldrar att på ett tillfredställande sätt balansera arbetsliv och familjeliv, än mer problematisk blir situationen om barnet eller barnen har särskilda behov. Studiens syfte är att belysa, analysera och skapa en förståelse för hur karriärutvecklingen formas för ensamstående föräldrar till barn med särskilda behov. I fokus är föräldrars karriärutveckling efter att ha fått barn med särskilda behov. Informanternas bakgrund, karriärutveckling, samhällsstöd samt förändringen det innebar att få barn med särskilda behov, är fyra faktorer som särskilt belyses. Examensarbetet utgår från en hermeneutisk ansats.

As the cities are becoming more crowded, the urban distribution has become a major logistical challenge. Some commonproblems in the inner cities arelimited accessibility and idling. Many of Sweden's municipalities are above the limit values for PM10limit set by the EU.Sundsvall is one of these municipalities and has the vision to create a sustainable city and region. Sundsvall LogistikparkAB is part of an EU project, SMARTSET, which is collaborationbetween several cities in Europe. SMARTSETSundsvall is about to develop a market-based sustainable model for city logistics.

This report contains CFD-simulations of cable tray fires in nuclear power plant applications with the CFD-code SMAFS. Furthermore the report evaluates the use of CFD-codes within this kind of problems. The assessment of this report is that there is a tendency towards the good use of CFD-codes but before using it solely more research has to be done on the subject..

Purpose: The aim with the report is to investigate if the South East Asian customer on the food processing market base their investments on Total Cost of Ownership and if so, which are the cost drivers considered most vital. Moreover, do these cost-drivers diverge from the perception FP Ltd has, and if so, can a Total Cost of Ownership-model help to achieve a mutual understanding? Methodology: First a descriptive approach will be taken, identifying FP Ltd?s employers? perception on how to meet the customer. This will later be compared to our empirical findings of the actual customer behaviour in Thailand and Vietnam. Thorough analyse of the gap between the two parts will give us the outcome whether or not FP Ltd will have any use of presenting a quantitative model justifying their higher price.

The Swedish processor Findus contracts approximately 500 pea producers annually to secure the company?s supply of green peas for human consumption. A production contract, which has had roughly the same design for decades, regulates the relation between Findus and the pea producers. Agriculture is typically a risky business. The main sources of risk in agricultural production are production risk and price risk.

Aims: Patient associations have been around for some time and research has shown that such associations can influence society, politics and how diagnoses are thought of. This study is a comparative analysis of two patient associations in Sweden. The first association called Attention represents people diagnosed with neuropsychiatric disorders such as ADHD. The other association called RSMH represents people diagnosed with mental illness such as depression. The aim of this study is to explore the social and political agenda of these associations and to explain their relation to biological, psychological and social models of explanation.Method and theory: The method used was a qualitative document analysis using documents produced by the associations themselves as well as documents from media and politics.