The purpose of this study is to describe if and how a seasonal based company named SkiStar, learns through the exchange of experience and knowledge. We have analyzed gathered qualitative and empirical data to explore this subject. We conducted three semi-structured group interviews with employees from the SkiStarshop division. They described their routines and procedures in SkiStarshop. The collected data was processed and analyzed through our theoretical framework.

The market is developing and a growing competition increases pressure on companies to maintain their competitive advantage. Working with cost savings is a way to enhance earnings in a short term but also in a longer perspective. Volvo Powertrain Production Köping has an overall goal; to reduce costs by nine percentages in three years. To achieve the goal, Volvo Powertrain Production Köping works with World Class Manufacturing where the Department of Processing Technology constitutes an important part.Volvo Powertrain Production Köping lacks a standard for how savings within the metal cutting tool area are to be calculated. This makes it difficult to control and monitor their business outcome but it also causes difficulties in controlling the tool suppliers? outcome.

Results have shown that flow batteries may be a solution in the future as an effective and environmental friendly method to an energy storage system (ESS). The technology is reliable and has a high efficiency that comes with low energy losses and a long lifetime. The range of possible fields is suitable for cutting energy peaks in the power grid, by always have a ready and available energy storage that balances the production. By comparing the advantages of flow batteries with conventional batteries it is mainly the fact that they can conserve energy for a long time without being self-discharged thanks to that the storage capacity is in principle endless and limited by the size of the electrolytes tanks that makes them a great energy storage system. The batteries won?t take any damage or decrease in performance when charging or discharging it or if you exhausts it to 100 % and leave it discharged for a long time.

The dishwasher is a wide spread product that occurs in many households. It saves the user time,water and energy. When using a dishwasher instead of doing dishes by hand a lot of energy issaved.The importance of lowering the energy consumption does not only come from the consumerwinnings but also from an environmental point of view. Scientists are certain that the globalwarming comes from the emission of green house gasses that is created by human consumptionof oil, gas and coal.Dishwashers today are a lot more energy efficient than older dishwashers, but there are stillmargins to lower the energy consumption. The aim with this project is to investigate thedishwasher and it?s washing cycle, noting different phases and components that contribute towaste of energy.

This thesis takes as its starting-point the different stands on the ever ongoing growth of multinational corporations (MNCs) and its consequences. Two opposing branches of theories, arguing that the establishment of MNCs in developing countries is good respectively bad for these countries, are tested for the aspect of state capacity. A quantitative method is then used to test if there exists such a relationship at all and if so, which of the two notions that are right.The presence of MNCs is measured as FDI of GDP while state capacity is defined as a combined index for three of ICRG's Political risk indicators. The two variables are analysed, mainly by cross tabulation, using an extensive dataset of 130 developing countries measured for a period of 20 years.The outcome is though ambiguous: No solid correlation can be found, but countries with a higher rate of FDI of GDP tend to have a slight worse rate of state capacity throughout the analysis. Thus the result points in favour of the notion that MNCs are bad for developing countries? state capacity.

During the 19-century a global warming has been observed, which includes increases in global air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of ice and snow, and rising global sea level. There is a clear connection between emissions of greenhouse gases caused by the human and the increase in temperature. Climatic changes caused by global warming can be stopped trough decreased emission of fossil fuels, for example by an increased use of biogas. Biogas is a renewable energy source which is produced through anaerobic (oxygen free) digestion of organic material. The gas is a mixture of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) and can be among others used as fuel in vehicles.

The aim of this paper was to investigate how 40 typical speakerswith Finnish accent, aged 65-84 years, performed in speech assessmentthrough Dysartribedömningen, a Swedish dysarthria assessment instrument.Their results were compared with results of a matched Swedish nativespeaking reference group. Both groups were assessed in areas offunction/structure, prosody/intelligibility and through a survey oncommunication. Results indicated that the performances of the Finnishparticipant group were estimated as more deviant than the Swedish,considering all areas. The Finnish participants were deviant in articulationand they had a significantly lower speech rate in reading. They also hadsignificantly lower scores in intelligibility compared to the reference group.The results of the survey of communication showed that the Finnishparticipants estimated their levels of activity and participation to besignificantly more limited compared to the reference group.

The purpose of this investigation is to study how librarians experience bookcrossing. We focused on the two following questions: Which variations are there in librarians conceptions of bookcrossing as literature exchange and reading support activity? Which variations are there in librarians conceptions of bookcrossing compared to other methods of literature exchange and reading support? Bookcrossing is an international book club where you share your books by leaving them at public places. The thesis is focused on librarians? conceptions and not the conceptions of members of bookcrossing.

We acknowledge the lack of empirical studies of the performance of analyst target prices in the Swedish stock market by examining the profitability of target prices for stocks publicly traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. We use consensus target prices issued between 2006-2010 and create two different strategies to observe the abnormal returns generated during this period. Going long in the top decile stocks with the best target prices and going short in the bottom decile stocks with the worst target prices generates a statistically significant abnormal buy-and-hold return of 8.9%. An active strategy with daily portfolio rebalancing and a timely response to target price changes generates a less significant monthly alpha of 1.4% against CAPM. The results show to be robust against the size effect discovered by Fama and French.

The web as an arena for news reporting and information sharing to consumers has grown for many years in the expense of the traditional newspapers. The revenue stream has however not followed the same transformation which has led to a remarkably lower profit when news and articles are distributed through the web. Banner advertising is a method that is commonly used by online magazines to generate profit where advertisers pay to expose their message. One method to measure banner ads effectivity, and indirectly, what the advertiser would pay, is through Click-Through Rate (CTR), how many clicks a banner ad receives in relation to the amount of banner views. One of the variables that play an important role in the banner ad effectivity is the placement of the banner ad.

The decomposition of organic carbon in drained peat soils is a major source of carbon di-oxide in Sweden. A big part of these drained peat soils are used in agriculture and it is a big challenge to slow down their decomposition. It has earlier been thought that less tilling and higher water table levels would decrease the activity of soil microbes and thereby the decomposition, but recent experiments has showed that this has little or no effect. In this bachelor thesis a field experiment was made on drained peat soil with ley, outside Björklinge, Uppsala municipality, Sweden. The experiment was carried out in May 2011. The objective was to develop a method to examine how the net exchange of carbon diox-ide from plant covered peat soil is affected by temperature and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR).

Problem: How does the organisational culture affect the internal communication between the middle manager and his or herssubordinates?Purpose: The most common way is to study how the communication affect the organisational culture. In our study we have examined the reverse perspective. The purpose of this study would be to explain how the organisational culture affect the internal communication between the middle manager and his or hers subordinates.Theories: The basic theories in the study are The basic model, Internal communication, Levels of culture, High-power culture, Socialconstructions, Organisational structures and Leader Member Exchange Theory.Method: The study is based on the qualitative approach. We have used interviews for our collection of raw data.

 Problem   Are there any abnormal changes in the parent company's share price at the news of a spin?off.ObjectiveThe main purpose of the study is to investigate how the news of a spin-off affects the parent company's share price. In other words if the news of the Spin-off gives an abnormal return on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during the specific period of 1998?2008. In addressing this, the paper will also investigate the following sub sections: are there any differences in the abnormal returns in various sectors and what the reasons to perform a spin?off in the Swedish market are.MethodAn event study in which market data is used to measure specific events? impact on the value of the company and on the effects on the stock market.

AbstractMaster Thesis in business administration, School of Business and Economics at the Linneaus University, financial control, spring 2010Authors:Stefan Hellman and Ewa Warnquist Supervisor:Magnus Willesson Title: Reward systems - a study of public companies? variable compensation system Background:Our interest of the variable compensation system in public companies was brought by the recent extensive discussions of bonuses in the time of a financial crisis. This has led to that the word bonus has been given a negative connotation and we wanted to find out how the system of variable compensation is structured in the companies at Stockholm Stock Exchange. Problem:How is the variable compensation system structured in public companies? Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to study how the variable compensation in public companies is structured.

Uppsatsen är producerat och examinerad under 2007.