The purpose of this thesis was to illuminate how companies work with their brand identity and particularly how it is applied in their positioning. The empirical data has been collected through interviews with two companies in Sweden working with brand identity as a stated strategy. The study shows that companies discover, develop and build their brand identity based on their core identity and core values. The core value can be strengthened through customer satisfaction surveys. In order to develop the brand identity in companies, management has to be aware of their brand person- ality, as an essentiality for survival.

Denna studie redovisar den frivilliga information som svenska VD och koncernchefer tar upp i VD orden i sina årsredovisningar. Syftet är att analysera var Sveriges redovisningsutveckling är på väg, genom att bland annat ställa de svenska VD orden i jämförelse med utvecklingen av öppenhet i årsredovisningar inom detta område i framför allt USA och Storbritannien. De undersökta VD orden kommer från årsredovisningarna hos de 18 svenska börsnoterade företag med högst värde på sin aktieomsättning år 2005. Eftersom det fortfarande inte finns någon fullständig teori inom detta område har ett induktivt förhållningssätt använts. De metodologiska val som gjorts är inspirerade av det som Glaser och Strauss (1967) kallar för grounded theory..

From an investigation by Finansinspektionen and KTH (2009) it is apparent that financial advisors and their clients develop relations, believing that they understand each other, while in fact, they do not. The media tends to notice the conflict of interests between advisors and retirement annuity clients. The aim of this study is to create a greater understanding as to why misunderstandings occur between advisors and clients. This will be accomplished by a quality study of how advisors and trade unions assess how the relationship functions. The theoretical part consists of theories concerning relations and uncertainty.

The recent accounting scandals in large companies in both USA and Europe, such as Enron and Scandia, have led to a huge debate about the quality of financial reports approved by auditors who, at the same time, offer consultancy service to their audit clients. Many researchers and experts argued that there is a role conflict when an auditor offers consultancy service to audit clients. They argue that the main duty of an auditor is to verify the truthfulness of the company's financial statements. Giving consultancy service to the audit clients will impair the auditor's role to examine the company's books independently because of the economic bond between auditors and audit clients.As a result of the Enron scandal, the legislators in the USA have made restrictions to how auditors provide non-audit service to audit clients. However, the legislators in Sweden, unlike the US, did not choose to introduce such restrictions.

This thesis tries to explore how different strategies of internal communication are used in actual situations within an organization. Specifically, the purpose is to investigate how the internal communication within the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) has been carried out during their work to change their organizational structure, and, how this can be understood in terms of existing theories for strategic communication. The research questions explored are:What are the chosen strategies used to communicate the changes internally?How can these strategies be understood in terms of existing theories?What are the views of the employees on the communication and what are the relations between their views, the chosen strategies and existing theories?The theoretical ground work chosen is mainly the work by Cornelissen (2008), Dalfelt (2005), Johansson (2011) and Larsson (2008). The method chosen for the empirical part of the study is semi-structured qualitative interviews.

Denna uppsats beskriver fenomenet shared services, varför företag satsar på shared service centers (SSC) och hur de går tillväga när de designar dem. Studien har genomförts med hjälp av en litteraturöversikt och en fallstudie av TeliaSoneras nu pågående implementering av ett shared service center, FSS. Fallstudien består av fyra intervjuer och en genomgång av TeliaSoneras egna informationsmaterial och medarbetarenkäter. Litteraturöversikten visar att shared services utlovar väsentliga förbättringar av ekonomifunktionen och besparingar, att det finns en stor tilltro till dessa löften men att det saknas underbyggda bevis för hur stora besparingarna egentligen är. Designen på TeliaSonera FSS visar sig följa litteraturen relativt noga, förutom vad gäller placering.

Modern technology and fast development of heat pumps, the hunt for savings in energy consumption and the strive for environmentally friendly energy sources, convenience, and financial profit, have made heat pumps a reasonable alternative for the heating of houses.When the heat pump starts it will consume a considerable amount of current, which may result in a short-lived voltage-drop if the power grid is weak compared to the start-up current.The company Fortum Distribution which owns and administrates electrical network is interested in an investigation that deals with heat pumps affect on the quality of electricity.The purpose of this investigation is to study fast electrical fluctuations (flicker) as a result of start-up currents for single as well as multiple heat pumps on the same electrical station and from this evaluate whether there will be any problems installing heat pumps..

This study aims to explore purposes of daily workshops for persons with disabilities. The method used was qualitative interviews. An inductive research strategy was used. Half-structured interviews with six managers of daily workshops were carried out, wherein they expressed their intentions with the daily workshops and the reasons for people to participate. The interviews were analysed with Antonovsky´s salutogenetic perspective, in which Sense of Coherence, SOC is a main concept, and with the normalisation principle.

This Master Thesis within Marketing and Strategy investigates the values customers perceive within the Real Estate market in the inner City of Stockholm. The dependent variable is customer satisfaction, and it could be explained by 1) the feeling of light and uniqueness of the apartment, 2) that the apartment is of a satisfying size, 3) the address of the apartment, 4) and the economics, the common areas of the building, and the bidding process. The feeling of light and uniqueness, combined with the number of square meters, and the monthly fee of the apartment, are also identified as the price driven functions of this market. A quantitative method is used to investigate the market, where 107 apartment buyers completed a survey..

This study is based on a statistical analysis of fundamental key ratios on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during the period 2004-2012. In total 35 financial ratios of 90 companies were tested, ultimately five ratios remained within the 5% significance level. These ratios were ROA, P/B, Total Yield, EV/EBIT and Operating Margin. A custom made investment model was created based on the purpose to achieve a risk-adjusted excess return. The results in general did not show any significant difference in return between the model's portfolio and index.

Objektorienterade mönster och omkonstruktion är två olika designstrategier som har ett gemensamt mål: att göra mjukvarusystem mer förändringsbara och mindre komplexa. Mönster tillämpas för att förebygga utvecklingen av komplexitet i mjukvara. Omkonstruktioner görs för att reducera komplexitet som redan uppstått i mjukvarans inre struktur. Denna rapport identifierar fyra grundläggande strukturproblem som gör mjukvara onödigt komplex och svår att förändra: duplicerad kod, villkorslogik, långa metoder och bristande inkapsling. Rapporten visar hur objektorienterade mönster kan införas i mjukvara genom omkonstruktion och göra mjukvara mer förändringsbar genom att reducera de fyra nämnda strukturproblemen.

During the twentieth century, mergers&aquisitions have occured in waves where times of low activityfrequently has turned into periods of high activity. M&A:s have been of increasing numbers and growing size, which was extra evident during the last wave during the 1990:s. What are the motives that has made M&A such a widely used strategy? Are there similarities within and across industries regarding merger motives? The empirical material consists of primary and secundary data collected from two mergers in three industries respectively; manufacturing, banking and IT. The analysis make use of three different perspectives, the reason for this being to create understanding and furthermore illuminate the complexity of the problem.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how officials within the Swedish public libraryorganisation view the IT-development, how the IT-development progresses within theorganisation and if there is a need for a national IT-strategy for the public libraries in Sweden.Four unorganized interviews with officials within the regional- and county libraryorganisation and one within the national organisation where conducted. This study is aqualitative examination where the phenomenographic approach has been used as inspirationfor the analytic model. The analytic result has been compared to the system theory of how anoptimal system should be constructed to perform in an optimal way and to be able to producegood results. The results of this study show a wish for a better national cooperation regardingthe IT-development for the Swedish public libraries. Today?s library structure should bereviewed over in order to enable the libraries to produce even better results from the cooperation?s..

Sahlgrenska Academyat University of GothenburgDepartment of Internal Medicine and Clinical NutritionAbstractTitle: Alcohol consumption after training and its effects on muscle gain and recovery adult menAuthor: Frida Carlstedt, Puck JanssonSupervisor: Frode SlindeExaminer: Anna WinkvistProgramme: Dietician study programme, 180/240 ECTSType of paper: Examination paper, 15 hpDate: April 09, 2014Background: Today, the Swedish population exceeds the recommendations for alcohol intake while advised to move at least thirty minutes a day. It is well established what happens if you drink alcohol before a workout or if you workout the day after an alcohol intake, but it is less well established how muscle gain and recovery are affected by an intake of alcohol in the phase of recovery.Objective: The objective of this review is to investigate if there is a relation between alcohol intake after a workout and effected recovery and muscle gain. This was performed by measuring the outcomes cortisol, testosterone, creatine kinase as well as different measures of muscle strength. The issue was ?Does an intake of alcohol after training affect recovery and muscle gain??Search strategy: A systematic review in the databases PubMed and Scopus with the MeSH-terms: exercise, muscles, recovery of function, training, athletic performance, performance, sport, alcohol drinking, alcohols, alcohol and ethanol.Selection criteria: Criteria for articles to be included in this review were that they would be RCT- and human studies in healthy subjects as well as containing an ethanol intake after a physical activity that consisted of weight training in the form of resistance training or other forms of activity that promotes strength.Data collection and analysis: A systematic search for literature as mentioned above (search strategy) was performed as well as an analysis with the SBU quality review template for randomized studies, and a quality review for each measure of outcome according to Gothenburg University summarized evidence template for measures of outcome.4Main results: Many studies are authored by the same group of researchers and/or are of a lower quality.

This paper studies how peer assessment is used as a strategy to improve young learners' results in Swedish as a school subject. Nine teachers are interviewed about their use of the method on 7-12-year-old pupils. Comparisons are made between the interviews and Swedish and international discussion on peer assessment. There are similarities between the practice of the teachers and what is said in the litterature about the method and its advantages and drawbacks. The teachers tend to emphasize the social aspects more, though.