The aim of this study is two folded. We wish to investigate if there is a value premium from hedging jet fuel exposure for American and European airlines. We also seek to answer if airlines can affect their probability to default by using Risk Management. During the period 2003 ? 2006 there existed a value premium for airlines that hedged their expected future consumption of jet fuel.

District heating covers around 80 % of the heating demand in apartment buildings and 10 % in single-family homes in Sweden. In the year 2010 the total input of energy to the Swedish district heating grids was about 70 TWh, which corresponds to 11 % of the total energy input to the whole energy system in the country. Through the combined production of heat and power the CHP-plants often reaches an efficiency of 90 % from energy in the fuel to produced heat and power. In order to keep the efficiency high it is important for the owners of the plant to have good knowledge about the plants performance at different operation points. Strängnäs Energi AB initiated this diploma work together with FVB Sverige ab in order to come up with a program for short term planning of the production of heat and power at the company´s CHP-plant.The work consists of three main parts.

In sectors with high skill requirements, recruiting is a core part of a company's development. Initially, the companies attract talented employees by creating an interest in the organization. Further, the challenge remains to match potential workers expectations with the company?s requirements and conditions. This is crucial since an unsuccessful recruitment involves high costs.

Companies and organizations recognize the importance of collaboration to develop responsibility and ability of change in the workplace. The concept of collaboration was a relatively new idea in business in the late 1980s. In a Nordic context, collaboration is a traditional approach that companies use successfully for competition, survival and development. Collaborative organizational efforts cover management of committed people who can help companies achieve flexibility, customer loyalty, innovation and economic success on a challenging and competitive market. Many theorists believe that collaboration is the key to integrating technology, financial competence and innovation.

I takt med att inköp har fått en allt mer betydande roll inom företag krävs det också att strategier för inköp utformas på ett sätt som möjliggör att de kan efterlevas och följas upp, framförallt när det rör sig om koncernövergripande strategier som kräver samordning. I dagsläget är det inköpsrådet på Saab som styr över och samordnar projekt och initiativ som sker inom inköp. Inköpsrådet ansvarar även för framtagandet av inköpsstrategier och arbetet utifrån dessa för hela koncernen. En första klassificering av Saabs leverantörer utefter Kraljics matris genomfördes år 2010 och i samband med detta har ett ökat intresse påvisats för att på ett differentierat sätt mäta och följa upp leverantörer. Syftet med studien är därmed att se vilka Key Performance Indicators (KPI:er) som är tillämpliga i en indelning av leverantörer enligt Kraljics matris, det vill säga om olika KPI:er är fördelaktiga för att genomföra mätning och uppföljning av olika typer av leverantörer enligt Kraljics matris.En betydande slutsats med indelning av KPI:er enligt Kraljics matris är att studien ska påvisa vilka mätetal som är mest väsentliga att ha vid uppföljning av leverantörer kopplade till respektive kvadrant i Kraljics matris.

The competitiveness and profitability of swedish farm enterprises is frequently discussed in agricultural media. Increased exposure to the surrounding world with greater competitive pressure and considerable price fluctuations in the agricultural markets demand new ways of acting to secure the agricultural sector?s long-term survival and profitability. Structural change and/or diversification leads to increased numbers of stake-holders around the farm enterprise and thereby also the expectations of the farmers ability to lead and coordinate resources. Lean is the name of a management model developed by Toyota, influenced by the lack of resources in Japan during the post WWII period.

The thesis presents an optimally designed kinematic structure for a new 6-DOF haptic devicebased on TAU configuration. The configuration of the TAU-2 proposed by Suleman Khan andKjell Andersson [1] was modified and its mobility was verified by using Grübler criterion tohave a 6 DOF. Analytical kinematic models for the inverse and forward kinematics weredeveloped for the haptic TAU configuration to determine a set of optimal design parameters.Kinematic performance indices such as volume of the workspace, kinematic isotropy and payload index, were defined based on the singular values of the Jacobian matrix. The Jacobianmatrix was scaled to homogenize the physical units. The Jacobian matrix dependent on theposition and orientation of the end-effector gives local isotropy and pay load index, so globaldesign indices were defined, which represent the performance of the mechanism in the wholeworkspace.

We investigate the effects of various types of word-of-mouth (WOM) messages on consumer bahavior. The message is varied along two dimensions where one is valence and the other is whether or not it contains an explicit call for certain behavior or attitude change. We use an experiment in the form of a web-based survey. Five different scenarios were designed to represent neutral, positive, and negative WOM. The latter two came in two different versions - one with a recommendation and one without.

The research objective of this thesis was to conduct a holistic evaluation of an operational information system. By holistic evaluation we mean that an equal focus was placed on both the system system perspective and its users user perspective, in the actual environment where the system and its users function contextuality. In addition, the methodological objective of the study was to test a new research approach in a real life setting. The participants of the study were twenty newspaper journalists employed at Göteborgs-Posten GP. The information system NewsLink is a manually indexed full-text database containing all articles published in GP since 1994.

This thesis processes the work of developing CPU code and GPU code for Thomas Kaijsers algorithm for calculating the kantorovich distance and the performance between the two is compared. Initially there is a rundown of the algorithm which calculates the kantorovich distance between two images. Thereafter we go through the CPU implementation followed by GPGPU written in CUDA. Then the results are presented. Lastly, an analysis about the results and a discussion with possible improvements is presented for possible future applications..

This thesis processes the work of developing CPU code and GPU code for Thomas Kaijsers algorithm for calculating the kantorovich distance and the performance between the two is compared. Initially there is a rundown of the algorithm which calculates the kantorovich distance between two images. Thereafter we go through the CPU implementation followed by GPGPU written in CUDA. Then the results are presented. Lastly, an analysis about the results and a discussion with possible improvements is presented for possible future applications..

The purpose of this bachelor-thesis is to investigate the possible effects of lease accounting on the estimation of bankruptcy. This is done by estimating the risk via prediction models based on accounting ratios for a sample of 43 listed firms in Sweden. Estimation is conducted twice for each firm, once base on unadjusted data as it is presented in the annual report of 2012, and one with data adjusted for operational leases (that is data is treated as if all leases present were to have been reported as financial leases). In the next step it is tested weather the predictive ability of the models is affected by this adjustment or not. For this purpose translation of bankruptcy risk into synthetic credit ratings via interest coverage ratios is done.

Uppsatsens titel: Technology-to-Performance Chain: Game ModelInlämningsdatum: 2006-05-26Ämne/Kurs: INF 630 kandidatuppsats, 10 poängFörfattare: Marcus BjörckDennis JonovskiHandledare: Hans-Christian StoltzNyckelord: TPC, TTF, GameFlow, tid, upplevelseSyfte: Att ge spelutvecklare en grundläggande och överskådligmodell som är anpassningsbar inom spelutveckling.Metod: Vi har använt oss både av kvalitativa och kvantitativa metoderpå en grund som kan liknas vid en abduktiv ansats. Primärdatainsamlas genom en pilotstudie, en enkät samt två intervjuermed spelutvecklare från spelutvecklingsföretag.Teori: TPC och GameFlow ligger som underlag för vår teoretiskareferensram och grundar formandet av en ny modell vid namnTPC G. Vidare ger TPC G en gemensam bild av hur de tvåförstnämnda teorierna integreras med varandra.Empiri: Utifrån enkäten och intervjuerna har det framkommit attupplevelsen är det primära för användaren av datorspel och attdetta ger svar på hur bra egenskaperna kombineras i spelet.Resultatet av enkäten visar att många datorspelsanvändareupplever tidsåtgången som besvärande. Då tidsaspekten är enavgörande faktor för hur datorspelet uppfattas som helhetmedför detta problem även för spelutvecklare.Slutsatser: Genom att applicera TPC G hjälper systemutvecklingsmetodikspelutvecklare att uppfatta hela utvecklingsprocessentidigt i utvecklingsfasen. I modellen ses även tidsaspektensom en avgörande faktor där spelarnas och utvecklarnasuppfattning inte överensstämmer..

This thesis analyzes the consequences of ?Lex Uggla? ? a law concerning the boundaries between firm and individual with respect to wealth taxation ? for small businesses, with more than 3 million SEK in over-liquidity. There are two main findings of this thesis. Firstly, the wealth taxation of non-operational assets seems to be an inefficient tax which costs the Swedish welfare system much more than it generates. Secondly, the change in actions among entrepreneurs following the extensive news coverage following the tax authority?s charges against the company of the well-known artist, Magnus Uggla (hence ?Lex Uggla?) illustrates that neither changes of rules nor new applications of rules is necessarily sufficient for an agent to change course of action.

This thesis processes the work of developing CPU code and GPU code for Thomas Kaijsers algorithm for calculating the kantorovich distance and the performance between the two is compared. Initially there is a rundown of the algorithm which calculates the kantorovich distance between two images. Thereafter we go through the CPU implementation followed by GPGPU written in CUDA. Then the results are presented. Lastly, an analysis about the results and a discussion with possible improvements is presented for possible future applications..