For many years, the construction industry in Sweden has not developed much of an integral approach for design across disciplines. The sector?s impact on society, economics and environment is huge. To make the interactions within the construction industry more efficient, a relatively new concept called BIM (Building Information Modeling) has been introduced. The idea with BIM is that the different actors of the construction industry will work through intelligent CAD software, with common file formats and more cooperation between different actors during the various steps of the building and construction process.The technical consultancy company WSP Sweden is working actively to implement BIM within the frame of its activities.

The aim of this study is to look at censorship and attempted censorship of books about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) people in public libraries in the USA. People from the public can submit formal challenges to a book at the library when they find the material offensive which can lead to those books being taken away from the library shelves. The questions asked are why GLBT- literature is being challenged, and sometimes banned, and how do the libraries deal with the challenges to the books.It is nowadays the people from the public, rather than the government or the librarians that are behind many cases of removal of books with homosexual themes. The study presents some of the fictional GLBT- literature that has been cause for much controversy in the USA. All the five examples mentioned are children?s books concerning GLBT- themes and are among the most challenged books in American libraries in the past twenty years.

In modern society globalisation is a fact within all industries, the textile industry included. Due to improvement in areas such as logistics and communication international trade have developed fast. As changes occur rapidly on the global market and companies must adjust and revise their processes in order to stay competitive.Because of the global price reduction consumers around the world expect low-price products, which mean that the companies have to find new ways to produce in a cost-efficient way. To maximize profit most of the textile production is situated in low-cost countries due to its labour-intensive character. It is crucial for fashion companies to allocate their activities in their value-chain effectively in order to reduce lead-times.

This paper examines family owned tourism businesses with a special focus on succession. In Nordic countries tourism has been widely promoted and used in rural development as a replacement economy for ?traditional? livelihoods based on rural production. Because the tourism and hospitality industry, especially in rural areas, is dominated by family enterprises, the topic of succession is of great relevance for tourism and tourism destinations. This paper looks at family businesses? special characteristics, challenges and advantages in terms of ownership structure, lifestyle, motivations, employees and destination impact.

One of the most distinguishing features of contemporary globalisation is production fragmentation, a splitting up of the manufacturing of a good into several different stages. Production fragmentation creates new opportunities through vertical specialization; a country incapable of mastering the entire production process may specialize in the manufacturing of one separate part. The aim of this thesis is to examine to what extent international integration affects a country?s ability to engage in vertical specialization in an industry characterized by production fragmentation. The analysis focuses on the european integration process over the last decade, where countries in eastern Europe with relatively low labour costs have been integrated with more capital abundant western economies.

During the last 20 years, the Swedish health care system has faced major changes. One of them is the increasing pressure to generate economic profit due to private businesses entering the market. Health care units are forced to make some structural changes in order to become effective and efficient. As a result merger and acquisitions has become a part of the health care sector, and seems to be an increasing phenomenon. Mergers and acquisitions have mainly been studied in the industry.

AbstractThe banking industry has during later years gone through several technological changes (Svenska Bankföreningen 2014). These big changes have led to several advantages seen both from a customer ? and corporate point of view. Advantages in easier usage, increased availability and more competition have made the banks more cost effective at the same time as the customer is being offered better prices. Even though the advantages seem to weigh over the disadvantages there are still those who thinks that things where ?better in the past?.

This master thesis was done for a company called BRUKS which is active in woodprocessing,bio-energy and bulk material handling industry. The idea for the master thesis wasto develop a new reclaiming method for silos where wood chips are being stored. A mediumsegment of between 1000 ? 5000 m3was defined as the segment with the most sales potential.Two different concepts were produced, one for new constructions and one for rebuildingalready existing silos.In the beginning of the master thesis a lot of time was spent on visiting different BRUKSoffices and customers to get an overview of the industry and the product. This informationwas the basis when the idea generating phase began.

Immersion is a construct that measures how deeply engrossed a user is with any mediated situation. In the field of game design, immersion is a significant aspect of what makes a game enticing, and as such it is of pivotal importance to create and maintain it to keep the player's mind off the real world while inside the confines of a game framework. According to the GameFlow theory, it is one of seven key tenets of evaluating and implementing a successful game design. Yet, certain multiplayer online games are designed in a fashion that in some cases seem to break immersion, where the player is frequently put out of action, sometimes for minutes on end. In this study, using online questionnaires, we discover that players, despite claims otherwise, seem to be in several ways affected negatively by this breaking of immersion.

Companies within the e-commerce industry currently try to overcome the disadvantages of not being able to provide a physical inspection of products, and this is especially an issue for the apparel industry. One way of trying to overcome this issue is by presenting apparel with a short video of a model wearing the garment. The aim in this thesis is to investigate how these video presentations affect consumers' emotions, cognitions and intentions. Since previous studies have found that different shopping scenarios can moderate the effect of stimuli in the atmosphere on the consumers' emotions, we also aim to see if a video presentation, depending on the shopping scenario, could have a negative impact on site visitors. Moreover this thesis investigates the moderating effects of involvement on consumers' cognitions.

Purpose: Our purpose is to describe and understand how a project-based, knowledge-intensive firm in the high-technology industry creates and transfers knowledge, seen from two perspectives.Methodology: Our qualitative case study has an explorative approach since earlier studies within our positioning are absent, thus we look at KM abductively. To gain more depth to our study, we mirror our findings from our case company with data collected from three additional organisations.Theoretical perspectives: We see a clear distinction between researchers, either seeing knowledge as an object or a process. Thus, we review theories from both sides, either focusing on the creation or transferring of knowledge. In addition, theories on KM in project organisations areaccounted for.Empirical foundation: The study is based on the empirical foundation which consists of the data received through six interviews with employees at our main case company and, additionally, two interviews at each of our three mirrorcompanies.Conclusion: The study found KM being seen from both perspectives in all four firms. Through this, we found implications for how our case company could proceed in the future..

In the last decade, member states of the European Union have adopted a range of measures to decrease the dependency on fossil fuels. This has led to an increased use of biomass in heat and power production. In some countries, the lack of forest resource has led to large scale power producers importing their biomass needs. Due to high energy content and homogeneity, wood pellets have become an internationally traded commodity used for large scale power production. The Baltic States have emerged as one of the largest wood pellet exporting regions in Europe.

The economic situation in the Swedish agricultural industry is currently experiencing a development towards larger units. This progress occurs simultaneously as farmers in cooperation more frequently make investments to decrease risk exposure and to improve the financial result. The purpose with this thesis is to study which advantages and problems a group of farmers experience after a common investment in a small-scale seed production. The aim with this investment is to increase the level of vertical integration in their respective agricultural firms and the results will be analyzed from an economic point of view. At present, the farmers are all seed producers with considerable cultivation areas.

ABB and Prevas have initiated a collaboration to sell a system to optimize steel industry furnaces, called FOCS. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate possibilities for integrating Prevas FOCS and ABB 800xA.The result of the investigation is used for an implementation of a prototype of the integrated system. The study shows a general method that can be used when implementing two software systems. The prototype of the integrated systems is made with usability principles in mind. This is a very important aspect in order to create a good working environment for the operators of a steel plant.

This essay examines the limits of marketing strategies in the online casino industry, focusing on how data-driven and advanced marketing practices influence consumer behavior and contribute to problematic gambling consumption. By observing the online casino industry, the study identifies how companies use sophisticated data analysis methods and psychological techniques to attract and retain customers, raising significant ethical and social issues. The study highlights three key perspectives: the consumer's, the producer's, and the legislator's. From the consumer's perspective, it explores how various consumer behaviors, from responsible gambling to problematic overconsumption, are influenced by marketing and gaming experiences. This includes an analysis of how cognitive limitations and psychological biases can lead to irrational decisions and an increased risk of gambling addiction. From the producer's perspective, it examines how gambling companies use marketing strategies and technologies to increase profitability and what incentives they have to take social responsibility according to modern Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) principles. It appears that companies do not see CSR as a business goal beyond the risk of current and future regulatory compliance requirements and policy changes. From the legislator's viewpoint, the current regulatory framework for the gambling industry is discussed, including the changes that occurred in 2019 when the special monopoly form we had in Sweden was transformed into a license market.