The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze past development of mutual funds in large and small mutual fund companies and see if there are any differences between these two segments. Limitations on the number of funds have been made by choosing Nordic mutual fund companies that invest in emerging markets over an 11-year period. The study is made on 66 mutual funds managed by 13 mutual fund companies in which the segment of small fund companies includes seven fund companies with assets under management less than 100 billion SEK and the segment of large mutual fund companies includes six fund companies with assets under management more than 400 billion SEK. In the comparison of the segments the Sharpe ratio has been used to calculate the risk-adjusted return. The study shows small differences of the risk-adjusted return between the segments.

The purpose of this study was to examine the experience of organizational culture among salespeople at a specific workplace. The purpose was also to investigate what motivates these salespeople in their work and the impact culture has on their motivation. We have used a qualitative research method to collect the empirical material. With the help of seven interviews, including six salespeople from one of Sweden?s biggest electronic retailer and also one information interview with a sales consultant, we attempted to find the answer to how they perceive the organizational culture and how it affects their work motivation. The following questions are used to fulfill this purpose: ? How do the salespeople experience the organizational culture? ? What motivates the salespeople in their daily work? ? What effects does the organizational culture have on the salespersons motivation? As analytical tools we have used are the concept of organizational culture, Schein's description of the three components of culture and Herzberg Motivation-Hygiene theory. The results of the study indicate that the salespeople experience a positive organizational culture and that this culture promotes fellowship and unity between colleagues, which in turn contributes to an enhanced motivation.

VBG Produkter AB is a process-orientated company that develops, manufactures and markets trailer couplings with belonging coupling equipment, protection equipment against skidding and stands for wagon-bridge for heavy vehicles. The company feels that their set-up time in production for couplings is not at an acceptable level. Due to high demands of customer oriented production the intermediate stock level of included products within the assembly of couplings has gradually increased which has resulted in high inventory holding costs. VBG Produkter applies Kanban in their production, therefore it is important to produce exactly the necessary amount and avoid overproduction. The objective of this project is to suggest appropriate solutions so that VBG Produkter is able to reduce their set-up time in assembly of couplings, by identifying internal and external set-up time for the chosen process bushing cell.

Fleets have the ability to affect an adversary?s use of the seas for transportation. Nations have in numerous occasions exercised this power in order to ravage their opponent?s trade in times of conflict with the purpose of diminishing their military might. Great naval thinkers like Mahan and Corbett have described this use of seapower during conflicts in great depth but theories regarding the use of seapower to affect a nation?s peacetime economy in order to achieve limited political goals is lacking.

This thesis is carried out at Portsystem 2000 AB who manufactures and markets industrial doors and docking systems. The background to this thesis is that the company?s management considers that their follow-up process of cost accounts is not fully functioning.The aim with this report is to investigate and describe the present procedure of the follow-up process concerning the time of operations and come up with suggestions for improvements. This thesis is performed within the range of the following areas: Information systems, quality, processes and cost calculation. The main method we used were semi structured interviews with a fairly opened framework.

It has become increasingly important for businesses today to create a strong customer loyalty tie between their brand and their customers. In most markets today a lot of companies fight for market share and loyal customers. The increased uses of Internet and Internet commerce have made it possible for companies to create relationships with their customers through their websites. The Internet has also opened up new ways for customers to quickly and easily price compare products on price comparison websites. This means that customers have become more price conscious which has lead firms to fall into a price war with the competitors. The purpose of this paper is to examine brand loyalty in the consumer electronics market and go into detail on how web shop role affects the creation of loyalty to companies that are either a shop or do not have an online store. To examine this, a survey was made online and an interview was made with the President on Salesoogle Niklas Rasmusson. The questions and the interview of the questionnaire focused on confidence in online commerce and physical stores.

This thesis takes on a broader perspective of the modern age phenomenon we call spam. One of the aims of this thesis is to present and to compare the variety of methods used in the day-to-day fight against spam, as far they have evolved today, but also to present and discuss some alternative methods for suggested future use. The properties of a common e-mail spam are analyzed to show how the components that make up the structure in an e-mail can be used to classify spam. Furthermore I explain the naïve Bayesian classification methods, the signature-based method, the commonly used rule-based method and the challenge and response method and discuss these. The widespread use of blacklists is also explained and a close new variant to blacklisting, Turntide is presented and discussed.

This thesis examines the deregulation reform of the Swedish railroad industry, focusing on passenger transport between 1988 and 2005. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the effects from the deregulation reform on prices, market concentration and to determine whether SJ (the state owned incumbent) has been conducting strategic behaviour in order to prevent new entrants to the market. The chosen method consists of interviews with the MD at SJ between 1988 - 1998 Mr Karl-Erik Strand, the transportation researcher at SSE Mr Gunnar Alexandersson. Statistical sources and companies financial reports have also been used. The results that I have found were besides the fact that the market concentration is still significant high and the profitability among the operators low, is that the prices has increased more than CPI during the period but the competitive tendering has resulted in lower government subsidies after the deregulation.

In this thesis, we are concerned with the many different professional roles that a public librarian, working at a small library, has. More specifically, the purpose is to find out which different roles that librarians believe they have, and which view they have upon those. Furthermore, we are exploring the tendencies that librarians discuss in relation to these professional roles. To pursue this goal, we have used the methodology of focus group interviews, with the unconventional twist that our interviews were done using web chats. This may have the advantage that the informants may present more honest views than when using ordinary interviews due to the anonymous character of chatting.

Ombord på moderna fartyg finns möjligheten att navigera med enbart ECDIS. ECDIS är beroende av många olika delsystem för att kunna fungera optimalt.Failure Mode and Effect Anylysis (FMEA) är ett verktyg med vilket man kan undersöka ett specifikt system för att upptäcka eventuella konstruktionsfel och brister i produktionsdesignen. Detta examensarbete har med hjälp av en FMEA undersökt ECDIS simulatorerna vid Sjöfartshögskolan i Kalmar för att ta reda på hur ECDIS påverkas när ett eller flera av delsystemen kopplade till ECDIS fallerar. Syftet med denna undersökning har varit att upptäcka konstruktionsfel, brister och begränsningar i ECDIS systemet vid simulatorerna i Sjöfartshögskolan i Kalmar. Det kunde påvisas att ECDIS i vissa fall ej har avgett de larm som enligt tillverkaren skall varsko navigatören att ett delsystem har fallerat.

It is easy to see that oil has a big part in our economy, by looking at the repeated news from the media and at the stock market, where they follow the oil price very closely. Behavioral finance is about investors making small or big mistakes in the stock market. Behavioral finance describes the importance of understanding your own faults, as well as others investor?s faults. Behavioral finance emphases the importance of not assuming that the financial market is a flawless environment, but to understand the psychology behind investment decisions.

The design of the building envelope affects the energy consumption of a building. As the energy requirements for new buildings are becoming more demanding, the performance of the building envelope must be improved. Energy efficiency and durability are important attributes to consider.This report includes investigations of the building envelope, moisture and passive solar energy. It is based on the analysis of two different buildings with different designs. These buildings stand as reference for two of the companies who are working on a new, climate smart, residential area in Uppsala, Sweden.Studies and analyses on energy consumption and moisture transportation were made.

A global world and international business induces not only opportunities for organizations such as increased possibilities to reach new markets but also challenges to maintain a coherent business. To meet these challenges, organizations need to harbor a global workforce where employees are sent abroad. These employees are called expatriates and receive very lucrative compensation packages to cover their increased expenses. Compensation packages are not only expensive but represent in their totality also a complex strategic challenge for both the organization and the expatriate. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which components of a compensation package that are important for different segments of expatriates.

In the future network-based Swedish Defence (NBD), attaining information superiority will be of great importance. This will be achieved by a network of networks where decision-makers, information- and weapon-systems are linked together. As a part of the development of NBD, we have performed a study of user interface design for a future network-based tool package for analysis of sensor systems, referred to as the C2SR-system. This thesis was performed at Ericsson Microwave Systems AB, Sensor and Information Networks, during the autumn 2002. A pre-study concerning the requirements of usability, trustworthiness and functionality of a user interface for the C2SR-system was performed.

Title: Migration and Labor Market Integration ? the German Reunification Since the German reunification former East Germany has been struggling with rising unemployment numbers and extensive emigration. The East German Länder are still well behind the West German and even though Germany unquestionably is united politically the old border divides the economy ? and the labor market ? in two. This thesis aims to describe the reunification process of the East German and the West German labor markets, and in particular the role of migration in this process.