Existing studies concerning private labels are unclear as to whether private label manufacturers carry out product development themselves. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies comparing product development processes in private label companies and national brand manufacturers. This study highlights a set of critical product development factors and assesses their prevalence in four different companies in the Swedish retail business. The study is based on a number of qualitative interviews with key personnel responsible for various table fats. Findings indicate two levels of involvement in the product development process on the private label side.

This paper examines the opportunities of landscape architect students to integrate with other students which are related to the landscape architects vocational field during their education. It also involves a discussion about the profession of landscape architects and the view of landscape architect students concerning who they will work with in their professional career. Six qualitative interviews were carried out to identify how one work with student exchanges, both within the landscape architecture education program and in voluntary forums during the students' leisure time. The interviewees have experiences of different student exchanges and different approach to landscape architecture education at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Alnarp. During the interviews, it emerged that the number of exchanges for different reasons steadily has declined in recent years. At the same time, the interviewed conceded that exchanges are important to prepare students for their professional career. An electronic survey was sent to all landscape architecture students at SLU Alnarp.

Saab Aerosystems have had one dominating product, JAS 39 Gripen, and one dominating customer, FMV, for a long time. The operations management system at Aerosystems is adjusted for development of Gripen and as the business unit is trying to enter new markets with other products and customer the operations needs to be adjusted to fit the development and manufacturing of these products as well.The purpose of the master thesis has been to investigate how Aerosystems is managing requirements on operations from external customers and how to make improvements within this area. The aim has been to carry out a situation analysis to identify where improvements are possible and then produce proposals for improvements through studies of literature and other business units. The thesis also include a study of knowledge transfer within the business unit to investigate how this can be applied to improve the managing of requirement on the operations.An extensive interview study has been carried out in which interviews mainly have been conducted with employees at Aerosystems, but also at Saab Avitronics and Saab Aerostructures. The reason why these business units have been examined is because they have carried out a large number of successful businesses with external customers, which also are potential customers for Aerosystems in the future.The interviews have been analysed to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats with the present way of working.

The Swedish stock-market gives investors an opportunity to benefit from the global growth while financing companies invests and contributes to a socio-economic development. Parallel to the ownership of the funds also follows a responsibility as companies in the funds affect society and the environment. The growth of savings in funds, combined with an increased focus on sustainability has developed SRI (socially responsible investment). Therefore it is interesting to examine whether responsibility is an exception, which only concerns SRI-funds or a general principle, which includes the whole Swedish stock-market.The results of the survey makes it clear that all the Swedish major banks actively works to integrate sustainability within the respective bank's business to achieve a more sustainable financial system. Thus concludes the investigation that responsible investments are a general principle on the Swedish mutual stock-market.How responsibility is integrated in fund management differ between the banks.

AbstractThe aim of this study is to investigate the implementation process and the implementation steering of the social development aspects, gender equality and integration, in the program for regional development of the region Kronoberg in the period of 2004-2007.The study asks three questions: 1) How have the social development aspects, gender equality and integration, been implemented in the program for regional development of the region Kronoberg? 2) What has facilitated or hindered the implementation of the two social development aspects? 3) What possibilities to steer the implementation process of the two social development aspects exist at the governmental and at the regional level?In order to answer these questions a qualitative method has been used. To be able to analyse the empirical material, which consists of documents and interviews, the theoretical framework comprehends the policy process and implementation steering. The conclusion is that the incorporation of the social development aspects in the regional development program does not fully correspond with the central intentions, and that is due to circumstances at the regional level..

We live in an exciting society, characterized by continuous changes and challenges. The effects of the globalization are widespread. The continuous flow of people, capital and goods follows in the wake of advances in communications, transport and information technology, resulting in a changed situation for different stakeholders in the society. This situation leads to increased cooperation and exchange, but also increased competition. The primary means of collecting empirical data for this study was interviews and a document study.

The development of IT systems is usually accomplished by some form of system development methodology. It can be performed as the waterfall method, where each phase is completed before the next begins. One of the reasons to follow a development methodology is that the process is more structured, faster and that the product will have higher quality. One risk of not using a system development approach is that the code can be unstructured and difficult to maintain.This paper describes an alternative method in which the development occurred without the use of any system development methodology. This has been possible because there was a clear goal of the program that should be developed.

Sweden introduced a development assistance policy in 1952 and thirteen years later Sida, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency started, in 1965. But in 1995, five separate development assistance authorities came together and established the new Sida as it is today. Sida is Sweden?s representative in the development assistance policy field and they work through projects that have to be presented through a Country Strategy Process (CSP). The aim of this paper is to point out Sida?s perspective on the conducted development assistance policy and what guide lines that are followed.

This study examines how and why organizations evaluate training and development within the organizations. The study has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews, with office and organization development managers. The purpose of the study is to contribute with knowledge about how three large Swedish organizations evaluates training and development programs for staff members. Another purpose is to describe why the organizations evaluate training and development programs and to research if there is a further need to develop the organization evaluation methods. Therefore the research questions are Why and how do organizations evaluate training programs? What further need is there to develop organizations evaluation methods?The conclusion of this study shows that evaluation of the training and development programs are not a high priority among the selected organizations.

The world is changing and the business context is no exception. One of the clearest tendencies is a tougher business climate with harder competition due to increased international trade and the expansion of the e-business. At the same time the customers are becoming more sophisticated and demanding. The last decades have also meant that tougher and more frequent demands are being aimed at the businesses from a wider variety of stakeholders; demands regarding how environmental issues, social responsibilities and business ethics should be dealt with. All of the above have driven companies towards implementation of different management systems to be able to cope with the demands as well as to ensure that these issues are being dealt with in an efficient and effective manner.

Foreign invested SMEs have recently become increasingly interested in China. The enterprises are in this report categorized as second wave companies since they follow the footsteps of previous pioneers, of which mostly were larger companies. The ambitions of the SMEs are either to sell products on the ever expanding Chinese market or to utilize the potential of low cost production for global markets. The existing literature is fragmented and solely based on the experience of larger companies. We believe that SMEs are facing new and different challenges, and thus a new generic theoretical frame work is desirable.

Wildlife contributes with many benefits to humans but also brings economic costs. From being eradicated in Scandinavia the grey wolf (Canis lupus) is returning to South-Western Sweden and people are not used to its presence. In Scandinavia carnivores have to co-occur with humans in a landscape used for many different interests. Consequences of wolf establishments are e.g. competition for moose, depredation on sheep and attacks on hunting dogs.

 Since the 28thof May the project to develop an internal Innovation Leadership Program (ILP)on Accenture has been running and came to an end in November the same year. The taskwas formed into a master thesis and given to two students at the Royal Institute ofTechnology in Sweden.Since the start the content and structure of the ILP has been established based on the resultsof a theoretical study, a gap analysis and an external and internal benchmarking. The theoreticalstudy focused on articles, books and lectures about innovation, creativity and pedagogy. Subjectssuch as leadership, motivation, reflection and coaching were studied as well, but in a smaller scale.The gap analysis consisted of eleven interviews with people from different career levels withinAccenture and the goal was to establish the view of innovation and creativity among the employees.The interviews also asked about the knowledge the participants had about Technology Lab in orderto get insight of how to improve their communication and cooperation with people in client projects.Internally a similar program was studied called Minority Leadership program, whom will not bedescribed further in this report, to get inspiration. The external benchmarking was conducted onStanford and was very successful.

Title:Cash is King ? or is it?Level:Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business AdministrationAuthor:Caroline Eng and Jessica HillbergSupervisor:Jonas KågströmDate:2011- 06Aim:There is a long tradition of trading the currency and the first coins can be traced back to Persia already 500 BC. With the modernization of society and the technological advances we have made in recent years, we are now using electronic payments more and more. We pay by card, Internet banking and mobile phone in addition to cash. The purpose of this paper is to follow Swedbank project "cash smart" and have it as a basis when we examine if we are heading for a cash-free society and what obstacles and opportunities there is for a cash-free society.Method:We have used a qualitative method to conduct interviews with two individuals involved in the project "cash smart" at Swedbank in Gävle.

This report is a literature review that aims to describe marketing contexts for mango production in Kenya. The institutional conditions in the country are not well developed for marketing purposes, which causes many difficulties and problems for the society. In Kenya most mango producers are poor small-scale farmers with limited resources. Mango is a perishable commodity and to keep its value and quality it is essential to have the opportunity to sell the mangos in the right time. Inefficient and undeveloped infrastructure and marketing systems hinders the mangos to reach the market in time though, which causes large losses of produce.The Kenyan mango production has increased during the last decade but due to market losses for the producer, the small-scale farmers? profits have not improved.