During the last decade working with competence has emerged as a more strategically important area. Today the human resources in a company are considered a competitive advance and the HR-units play a significant role when it comes to HR-management. Different motives for investing in strategies that promote competence development and learning also exist. The purpose of this paper was to examine how the process of competence development was managed at a large global company. The empirical material consisted of four persons who were interviewed and the analysis of the material was inspired by grounded theory.From the analysis four major themes or core factors emerged as central to the interviewed persons' understanding of the competence development process; solid preparatory work in relation to competence development, communication, awareness of responsibilities and finally the taking action and evaluation of the action.

Abstract Title: Enabling Smart Research and Development through Knowledge Conversation Seminar date: 2005-06-08 Course: Master thesis in business administration, 10 Swedish credits (15 ECTS) Authors: Andreas Johnsson, Johan Rosendahl Advisors: Lars Bengtsson Key words: Knowledge management, Knowledge conversation, Research and development, Ba, Trelleborg Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to create a model that shows how knowledge management aimed at research and development processes can be used and how the theoretical fields can be connected. Methodology: The thesis is based on abductive perspective where empirical and theoretical material has been mixed to create a foundation for the analysis. Theoretical perspectives: Theories concerning knowledge management and research and development have primarily been used. These have been complemented with material about team structures and incentive systems. Empirical foundation: The empirical material is based on semi structured, mostly qualitative interviews and strictly quantitative inquiries performed at Industrial Hose within the Trelleborg group.

A new phenomenon on the Internet is the online audience response. Mentimeter is a web-based tool where you can create online polls. The users can then cast a vote and the result is shown in real time. We want to test the information visualization in Mentimeter and we base our hypothesis, that a better graph design is possible, on the work of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few. Edward Tufte is an emeritus at Yale University, where he held courses in statistical evidence and information design and has created theories about how visual information should be designed.

According to the theory of elitist democracy civic political participation should be reduced to participation in the democratic elections. This essay examines whether a high rate of institutionalized political participation beyond the elections leads to: (a) that those who are included gets a more favourable treatment at the expense of the common interest, in other words that their self interest threatens the political equality, (b) reduced freedom of action for the politicians and the headmasters, (c) the emergence of vague conditions of responsibility. These hypotheses are examined in an empirical study of user-boards at four schools on three locations in southern Sweden. In these user-boards the parents are in majority and have the right of decision, which has been delegated to them from the local government and the headmaster. The main conclusion is that, based on this empirical investigation, there is no support in any of the hypotheses.

This paper describes the development of direct and indirect service at the former Gothen­burg city library. This was during this period of time not the public library of the town, but a scientific library mostly serving the college, although also open to the public. Furthermore the services offered in Gothenburg are compared with those of the two old Swedish university libraries in Uppsala and Lund. The investigated direct serviceforms are "making material available", "guidance", and "localities". The indirect service areas are "the catalogue" and "the personnel and their competence".The conclusion is that the differences weren't that big and that Gothenburg city library was a modern library providing about the same services as you could find in Uppsala and Lund.

The company Sound Precision has developed a new Line Array loudspeaker system (VHA-40). When using this system, their customers need computer aid to get the best possible sound-quality and control of sound levels for the whole audience. The aim of this thesis is to develop a truly useful sound quality simulator for the VHA-40. The system will help the sound engineers to position the loudspeakers for optimal sound by simulating loudspeaker configurations and visualizing the resulting sound quality and quantity. To solve this a human-centered design (HCD) approach is taken to implement a system that is truly useful for the users, meaning that they will use it more and hence deliver better sound for the audience.

The purpose of this essay was first and foremost to find out the problems that exist around user education in a university library and the opportunities that exist for university librarians to improve their work with students. My method of use was qualitative and more precise qualitative interviews. By interviewing five teaching librarians with five different subject specializations, I wanted to get an an-swer to what they teach when they meet the students and how they view their teaching. Responses resulted then in an analysis using Christine Bruce's theory of information literacy and Carol C. Kuhlthaus theory of librarian roles and her theory of information retrieval process.

Idag är det många företag som misslyckas med sina implementeringsprojekt av affärssystem och många forskare anser att det beror på bristande användarinvolvering. Implementeringsprojekt av affärssystem blir allt vanligare i små företag, men effekten blir dock stor om ett mindre företag misslyckas med sitt projekt. Små företags misslyckanden är oftast relaterade till finansiella och humanitära kritiska framgångsfaktorer. Ett affärssystem kan ge ett företag en rad olika fördelar och möjligheter. Men för att ett företag ska uppnå dem krävs ett lyckat implementeringsprojekt samt att användarna omgående efter driftstart kan använda affärssystemet. Därför måste företagsledare under projektet se till en rad olika kritiska framgångsfaktorer som är relaterade till användarinvolvering.

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to analyze what suitable hardware platforms there are on the market in order to build a low price control and information system for mobile applications, called small display module. The thesis will be underlying material for making a decision for further development. The result of the thesis consists mainly of a Windows CE kernel and a schematic for a CPU card, on which it would be suitable to build the display module. Another major part of the report is the introduction of different techniques that could be of interest when designing a processor based system. The processor architecture that was chosen is the x86.

This master thesis is a study of how city cemeteries can be used and contributes to a socially sustainable urban development. Today sustainable development and sustainable urban development is something that more or less every organization is working with. Therefore it is also relevant to integrate our cemeteries in this work so that they can become a part of the sustainable urban development process.The thesis gives a basic understanding of sustainability as a concept and also defines socially sustainable (urban) development. The work then immerse itself in various types of park structures and how the relationship between the human individual and the public space work, to satisfy the needs that different people have.The literature study that has been made is also the base for the design of the walking interview that has been made for the two city cemeteries. The cemeteries that where studied where the Assistens cemetery in Copenhagen and the Eastern cemetery in Gothenburg.

Process standardization is a topic that has generated a lot of research and literature. At first, the focus was on production; today processes are used in all different kind of business areas.The aim of this study has been to analyze how processes can be applied on development businesses and how IT systems affect the result of the process. To accomplish this, we have asked questions such as what standardization is in a development process? Why are the processes standardized? What difficulties can appear with standardization? And how the IT-systems affect the result of the process?To answer these questions, we have preformed a case study on Saab. Saab is a well know Swedish company who are working with a project called the GMS-project, where they develop processes to cover the whole company´s business areas.The literature gives the reader an understanding of processes and standardization.

This essay deals with the principle of surprise warfare and its development as well as the adaptation of military action that had to be made to surprise the opponent in the modern era.The concept of surprise is divided into its components in order to clarify what is required to implement a surprising maneuver, to understand the complex concept and form a theoretical framework for gathering facts in the case study.Development and adaption are demonstrated by a comparative case study where Pearl Harbor illustrates an example of historical surprise and Operation Desert Storm illustrates a modern surprise. The product will then be analyzed in order to detect the development and how military conduct is forced to adapt in order to carry out a surprising maneuver. The results shows that the military action of performing a surprise attack has had a major development and is now carried out in a different stage of the attack..

Development and accuracy tests of advanced exchange trading systems require well adjusted tools for testing. Aptness of these tools are probable to have a major impact on identification of bugs and verification of new functionality. Identifying erroneous parts and bottlenecks of the trading system is of outmost importance for the exchange as a whole since stability and correctness are two of the determinant factors its viability is measured by. This paper covers how this test-tool was created and the motivation behind the design choices made. The tool was created with the goal to be broad enough to cover the majority of cases that could arise, fast enough to be able to test the trading systems speed limitations (i.e.

This master essay deals with the changes in the use of and the abandonment of the Avebury monument and the change of the surrounding landscape during the late Neolitihic, about 3000 B.C, and into the Bronze age, about 1500 B.C. The change in the way people supported themselves, the development of agriculture, brought along many other changes as well. I am in this paper dealing with these issues, how and what lead up to these changes, the peoples own part in the development, and I am also looking into the fact that these changes might not have meant an end of old ideologies, but rather a development in the expression of beliefs where the monuments of the neolithic no longer had a place in society..

Physical activity can reduce the risk of developing dementia, and studies show that people who already have some form of the disease can get a better memory function and find it easier to perform daily tasks if the activity is performed regularly. People who are diagnosed with dementia are generally not offered physical activity to a high extent, nor is there a wide range of equipment developed to suit the target group.The Bike Around project was launched during a workshop in Copenhagen and was organized by HCH and Techna Science with the aim to develop new training equipment for people with dementia. The workshop resulted in the development of a customized training bike where the user can get a biking experience from his wheelchair or favorite chair. By integrating the pedal movement with a prerecorded movie projected on a screen, the memory can be stimulated both visually and by the activity itself.Our assignment in the project consisted of three parts: design of the bike, movie playback and software programming. During the project a prototype has been created that meets the requirements of ergonomics and usability..