Purpose: We wish to gain a deep knowledge about product development processes in relation to the aspect of time in companies in highly technological and rapidly changing markets. The purpose is to establish how organizations better can employ time as a resource to make the product development process more efficient. Conclusions: Information we gathered from theory and primary data show that information flow, synchronization and time profit when seeing time in three dimensions are factors which should be reflected in the architecture of a product development process. To illustrate our findings, we decided to create a model..

The transport sector is one of the biggest pollutants in the European Union. In relation to transport policies and environmental policies, intermodal transportation solutions are of high relevance to establish a sustainable transport sector for the future. Intermodality which is defined as smooth transition between transport modes is a key figure for how modal shares are divided between the modes of transportation. The aim of this bachelor?s thesis is to examine the research gap whether policies intended for a specific transport mode affects each other in relation to EU policies intended for intermodality.

The aim of this master thesis is to study electronic publishing, and our main purpose is to examine different strategies of publishing such as: markup languages and page description formats. We examine in what context these strategies are used for publishing, when it comes to scholarly documents produced by Swedish universities and university colleges during the spring of 2002. We apply a sociological perspective as the theoretical framework for to identify the main purposes for scientists to publish their work. We also discuss properties belonging to the different formats: XML, HTML, PDF and PostScript. By doing a content based survey of the websites at Borås University College and at Gothenburg University, we have found that the most common form of electronic publishing, regarding scholarly documents, are lists with bibliographical information on publications and presentations of current research.

Kommunikation mellan konsumenter om produkter, word-of-mouth (WOM), kan påverka konsumenters köpbeslut. Därför är det viktigt att förstå varför konsumenter sprider information om produkter. Tidigare forskning har till stor del undersökt drivkrafter bakom WOM som ett generellt koncept, men på grund av att vi allt mer kommunicerar via elektroniska kanaler kan motiven bakom att sprida WOM ha förändrats. Forskning om detta kan bidra med ny kunskap inom området, varför denna undersökning syftar till att studera vilka drivkrafter som finns bakom electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). En självadministrerad enkät besvarades elektroniskt av 150 respondenter för att undersöka sju olika drivkrafter.

The aim of this study has been to describe the ongoing region enlargement process in the region Mälardalen, located in the east part of Sweden, and to investigate how this process can affect the local level. The study is especially orientated on public communications and accessibility. The intention has also been to examine how the local accessibility can affect the re-gional development in Mälardalen. The local investigation object that has been chosen for this research is the city Strängnäs, situated in the province of Södermanland. The city of Strängnäs and the cities in it?s near geographic surroundings has been the benchmark for this casestudy, in which the local accessibility with public transportation has been investigated.

The consumer society exploits the earth?s resources more than the earth itself has capability to produce. This over-consumption causes a mass production of products, which mean that more greenhouse gases are being emitted to the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why the earth?s temperature is rising, where the result of it is worldwide disasters.

The main subject with this master thesis is to take a closer look on how some of the university libraries of Gothenburg have evaluated their electronic services (such as search-systems, Internet-based services, CD-ROM etc.). The information technology has made its way into the library field during the past century and needs to be evaluated and quality measured to ensure the best possible service to the users. Since evaluation of electronic services is a new area in the evaluation field, some problems has arisen in terms of choosing evaluation strategies and finding the appropriate performance indicators for the evaluation process. The main questions asked in the thesis are; - Which are the most common theoretical strategies for evaluation? - How do some of the university libraries of Gothenburg perform evaluation in practice? - How does the various strategies for evaluation apply to the context of this thesis? The results show that specific strategies for evaluation aren't used in the reports discussed in this thesis.

The goal with this project was to develop a graphic template for a new magazine about running, STARK Löpning. Besides the looks of the graphic elements, sections in the magazine would be developed. Finally, a discussion is made about how the magazine can be remade into an electronic format.Content analyses has been made regarding magazines with both a main and a specific orientation, to review the graphic relationship between them. A content  analysis regarding a competing magazine about running was also made.An unstructured interview was done with Art Director Petrus Iggström, to find out his way of working when he creates new graphic templates for magazines.The discussion concerning the electronic format was done based on previous research in the subject.The graphic relationship between main and specific magazines turned out to not be significant, they had few similarities. It was often showed that elements regarding the magazine s?identity had been changed, for example text fonts.

In this study, we examine the presence and consequences of CEO overconfidence in the Swedish market. We identify overconfidence with two insider-trading based measures and find that overconfidence is apparent among one third of CEOs in companies listed on the Swedish stock market. We also find that these CEOs are more prone to carry out acquisitions, as the probability of conducting an acquisition increases by 27 % if the CEO is overconfident. However, we do not find evidence that acquisitions by overconfident CEOs are more value-destroying. This finding contradicts results from previous studies conducted on Anglo-Saxon markets that suggest that overconfidence has a negative impact on the value-creation in acquisitions.

Title: A Business Perspective on Reducing the Climate Impact from Tetra Paks Transportations of Goods. Authors: Pär BerglundSebastian Lyngström Supervisors: Lars J Nilsson, Environmental and Energy Systems, Lund UniversityNils Månsson, Department of Business Administration, Lund University Problem Analysis: Increased awareness concerning climate change will put pressure on companies to reduce their climate impact. Problems arise when trying to reduce the impact from transportations due to companies? limited control on forwarding agents and difficulties measuring the emissions. Purpose: From a business perspective, this report will enable a reduction of the climate impact that arises from Tetra Paks transportation of goods.

Road transports stand for a great part of Sweden?s total CO2-emissions. Transports are expected to increase over the coming years, and with those the emissions. A greater environmental awareness leads to increased demands for environmentally friendly transport. The aim of this thesis is to study the consequences of changing transportation modes from road to railway.

The demand from Swedish companies of new potential markets to enter is increasing. One of these companies is Väderstad-verken which has the vision to grow approximately 15 percentages every year. To make this possible they must find new emerging markets to enter to be able to grow. Together with Väderstad-verken we have chosen India as a case study. Mainly because of its big agricultural sector that hasn?t yet been developed to modern standard.

Introduction: Interplay between all the different subsystems of the financial markets is currently considered as an important internal force in the market. In a financially liberalized economy exchange rate stability is a basis for a wellbeing stock market. If these interactions between all the different subsystems of the financial markets are not detected, this means that there is information inefficiency in the markets.Problem: Can we find any correlation between changes in currency, interest rate and bonds with the stock market index? If so, how do these changes affect the Stockholm Stock Exchange?Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine if there is any linkage between the interest rate, currency and bonds with the stock market. The researchers wanted to find out how these variables affect the stock market index OMX S30 which consists of the 30 largest companies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.Method: This research has been based on a quantitative approach.

This thesis has focused on digital born personal archives; how they are different from analog paper archives and possible ways to overbridge these differences. It is also studied how archivists and librarians are dealing with digital archives, what they think about new proactive solutions when collecting private papers and collections and positive and negative effects with this way to work. The thesis is delimitated to only private collections and digital created material. It do not concern digitized material or electronic documents in government or business organizations.The challenges in digital curation and administration are discussed in aspect of the Records Continuum Model. The empirical material is also put in relation to research in Personal Information Management and identity theory.

This master thesis is a study of a new electronic library reference service-project called Speak instantly to a librarian and the purpose of the thesis is to investigate a new electronic reference service and how the librarians who work with it experience it. This should be seen from an informational society point of view. The study is conducted from two questions: - What needs do the libraries have and how do they argue for the project and the chat-reference service Speak instantly to a librarian? - How do the librarians experience the personal work situation in the new reference service, and its use of chat technology? Together with interviews of a selected group of librarians from the public libraries of Göteborg, Malmö, Nacka and Stockholm, this thesis includes aspects such as the theory of the informational society by Manuel Castells, as well as literary studies of the history of library reference, the development of electronic reference service and the virtual library, and the background and the beginning of the studied project Speak instantly to a librarian. The thesis also contains an overlook of other similar library projects in the United States of America.