The purpose of this study was to investigate, through a qualitative survey, the need of knowledge and strategy in organisations today and tomorrow. The empirical investigation is built on a semi structured interview that was conducted on nine different companies in Gislaveds community. The companies were from three different branches namely: tree, metal and polymer. Three interviews were conducted in each branch.The result from the interviews showed that the globalisation had put the companies under hard competition which had made the need for rationalisation and effectivness more apparent. Having said this, the demands on the organisation and the individuals within it will constantly increase.

The working alliance between therapist and client has been proven important for the treatment outcome in psychotherapy, as well as the therapist?s characteristics. The aim of the current study was to examine the experience of important characteristics when forming a working alliance, among psychotherapy trainees. Eight psychotherapy trainees at Umeå University were interviewed and the material was analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Characteristics described as positively impacting the working alliance were interested, empathic, warm, genuine, secure, flexible and accepting.

This final thesis is carried out at BAE Systems Hägglunds in Örnsköldsvik. The mission was to construct and integrate a new semi-active damping unit in the terrain vehicle BvS10. Questions that came up during the process, among others, was how to mount the damping unit to the vehicle in a flexible way without exposing it to unnecessary wears.A generation of the concept is made in 3D using CATIA V5 of a possible solution to the problem. The idea is to weld the unit to the skid girder which is one of the main constructions of the track system. In this way the damping unit will come closer to the track system, which will partly protect it from impacts from below and minimize current problems with breaking forces in the torsion shafts.The complete construction was then analyzed, first by theoretical calculations and then with the FEM-tools in CATIA V5.

We have decided to conduct a case study of German and Swedish mid-level managers within the automobile industry. Primarily we used a qualitative method of investigation and a phenomenographical methodological approach in order to conduct an in depth analysis. We conducted semi-structured interviews with six mid-level managers each in Germany and Sweden. The semi-structured interviews allowed us to conduct flexible interviews which enabled these managers to speak relatively freely about their own view of leadership. Throughout our investigation we have based our results on the empirical findings and at the same time sought explanations to different phenomenon in relevant secondary data, such as management literature, thus used the abductive method of investigation..

SharePoint is a web based platform designed to provide internal communications and file sharing for businesses and organizations.In this project, we created a system consisting of multiple applications to be used together with SharePoint. These applications are meant to simplify the workflow for internal orders of products. The system is targeted towards companies that do not have a flexible approach to digital orders or companies that want to integrate this functionality into their SharePoint platform. The project includes, in addition to the creation of the system, installation of the software and the servers needed to run a SharePoint environment and their configurations.The system consists of four applications where one of these, the store application, is required for the system to be used at all. The other applications are an order management application, a purchase application and an incoming delivery application. Of these four, we have implemented the store application and the order management application. Our hope is that users will find the system easy to use and graphically appealing..

Since a few years back television has been on a verge of an enormous digital change. Web-TV is now growing at an incredible rate and is said to completely change the way we consume TV. The purpose of this essay is to determine and gain an understanding of how representatives of the broadcast industry looks at the phenomenon of web-TV and especially the different kinds of online video services and how they believe this will affect the television. Methods used are qualitative interviews which we compared with previous studies on the subject and acknowledged communication theories. The respondents were people with good insight and understanding of the media and TV industry.

It is important for firms to continually develop their offerings as the business landscape develops in order to sustain their competitiveness (e.g. Schumpeter, 1934; Ansoff, 1979; Porter, 1985; Trott, 2012). In a context of globalization, rapid technology development and changing customer needs, the paper packaging industry is urged to enhance its product development activities (Hansen & Niskanen, 2007; Björkdahl & Börjesson, 2011). However, there is little research about paper packaging firms? product development processes (ibid).

Stockholm is constantly growing and changing. Despite this, for various reasons, it is difficult to execute large building projects. With starting-point in decision making theories we have tried to investigate these difficulties. More specifically we have chosen to study why it has not been possible to rebuilt Slussen in Stockholm. To help us structure our study we have based our research on another large comparable building project, the Globen City project.

The purpose of this survey was to discern possible similarities and difference between how teachers in preschool and pre-class respond to children?s own initiative out of a power perspective. The results of this study is collect by observations that we have done in free and planned activity in both preschool and pre-class as well as a few interviews with some of the teachers. The results have shown that teacher?s responses to children?s own initiatives in preschool and pre-class to most part is similar, despite the difference in their commission.

In a global context the traditional democratic process is facing new challenges. Scholars are talking about a transition from government to governance, where local and regional networks as well as international collaboration are an important part in how regional policy is produced and implemented. In this paper the processes in regional projects funded by the European Union are considered, and related to the traditional democratic process. The study has been fulfilled through informant interviews with representatives from four EU-projects. The interviews are supplemented by a qualitative text analysis of current statutes.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how students who study with Problem-based learning PBL in a distance learning course perceive the support from the university library. I first went into adult education, PBL and distance studies, one at a time, and then took a look at the combination of problem-based learning in distance studies. During the investigation, I conducted five interviews using a phenomenographic method to understand how the students perceived the support they received from the university library. The university library gives a lot of support but what I noticed while I was writing was that it is difficult to reach the students with the information regarding the help that is available to them. I give some example on how to develop the support and find that the students have a wide range of different needs for support from the library depending on their individual situation, social context, academic ability, location and course of study.

This investigation is a pilot survey whose main purpose is to investigate with work evaluation and attitude analysis whether the orthopedists and surgeons work can be equaled, why the wages differences exists between women and men, and also which preventive measures the organization can use to even out the wages differences between the genders. In relation with the investigation I have applied the reflexive way of thinking to establish which difficulties come up in the work of gender-equality.The result?s from work evaluation displays that the works are equivalent but the salaries are not, which can depend on value discrimination,gender discrimination and the organization theory.Wages differences between women and men depend on, according to the informers, partly by historical explanation and partly by the old directors who was allowed to retain regular salary when theypost transformed. The common point of view is that men have a larger work experience and therefore a higher salary.The managements attitude towards gender-equality issues is of absolute importance in order to achieve and bring a change within the organization.The measure positive special treatment is proposed to be used as an improving method to achieve (gender)equality between the posts and to even out the wages difference between the sexes.To establish whether or not gender discrimination exist in the investigated organization there needs to be done a whole lot supplementary studies like a complete wage (salary) mapping which includes all supplements and more interviews among the organizations all occupation groups..

This paper deals primarily with the developmental potential and use of court -based mediation in Swedish law, and its relation to court-based conciliation and the judicial procedure as means to end a conflict.  In Chapter 42, Section 17 of the Swedish Code of Judicial Procedure, a judge, before the parties have their main hearing, can act as a mediator between the parties to settle the dispute. The judge should, according to the law, always try to make the parties come to an agreement before the main hearing. This obligation can be fulfilled either through the use of court-based conciliation, or court based mediation. Mediation as such is rarely used in Sweden, and one of the goals of this essay is to try to provide a tentative answer to why that might be the case.  The second goal is to try to find a consistent, yet flexible notion, of the concept of ?jurisdiction?, and to provide an explanation for the relation between mediation as an alternative method for dispute resolution and the judicial procedure.                                                                                                                                            .

The Volvo Trucks plant in Umeå is a highy complex manufacturing facility where the same production line handles a variety of different models. This require flexible and agile processes with high quality standards. This thesis studies the flow of material through a production line and how Volvo can use their existing manufacturing monitoring system to optimize the flow of materials.The goal with the thesis is to identify eventual problems with the flow of materials and to deliver a few proposals on how the production line can improve its productivity. The theory of LEAN, Just-In-Time and Supply Chain Management serves as the scientific reference to this project. By analyzing the flow of material, performing interviews and observing the processes a few problems are identified.

This is a thesis on the Intranet use in the European Parliament. We investigated the use from a multilingual point of view, but also from a communication perspective. What we wanted to know was how a multilingual group, with presumably different computer skills, in the organisation handle the Intranet information. What are the positive and negative effects of a multilingual information exchange over an Intranet? To find out, we sent a questionnaire as an e-mail attachment to all members of a chosen committee and their assistants.