Service branding is a subject that has been excluded from the traditional branding theory. Our main purpose with this paper is to distinguish what characterizes service branding. To do this, we have looked in to both service marketing theory as well as branding theory. We have also looked at the existing theory concerning service branding. Six qualitative interviews have been performed to explain what characterizes service branding.

This thesis investigates how inventory management is practiced at a Swedish sawmill company, how practice differs from theory in this field and how the company could make more use of this theory. To do this we have performed a study on relevant literature and compared our findings with a field study on Moelven Valåsen AB. Our analysis shows that a large gap between theory and practice exists. We identify several reasons to this, including some sector specific problems when calculating cost rate for timber inventories. Suggestions on solutions to these problems and an example of how a cost rate can be estimated with relatively simple means are presented.

There are many different ways to control an organisation. In cultural organisations, it has become more common to have several directors working simultaneously. Often, different individuals possess different cultural and economic experience, thus a variety of backgrounds provides a more thorough scope of expertise and knowledge. This type of management is prevalent in the cultural sector.This thesis will research how leaders in cultural institutes work in a dual leadership, ?co-leadership?, when their backgrounds are different.

This master of science thesis is focusing on how the fault handling on hardware connected toa control unit on a Scania vehicle is working. To the hardware counts buttons levers, sensorsand CAN. The work has been concentrated upon how the fault handling is working and if it ispossible to find any new fault modes.The control unit that has been studied is called the Coordinator and is the core in Scanias threenetworks of control units. The Coordinators work is to transmit messages between the threenetworks and to process signals from buttons, levers and sensors. The values is then usedinternally or is sent to other control units on the CAN networks.

 Background: Euthanasia means help to die. Some terminally ill patients wish for euthanasia. Purpose: Illuminating terminally ill patients' desire for voluntary euthanasia. Method: A general literature study. Seven articles were reviewed and analyzed.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate which the main determinants of capital structure in Swedish listed firms are and to identify which incentives lies behind managers choice of capital structure determinants. Further, the study investigates whether the Post Keynesian theory and theories which incorporate behavioral aspects can be used to explain the capital structure decisions or if the traditional Neoclassical theory give an better explanation. We have used a qualitative method to analyze the determinants of capital structure and the managers incentives behind capital structure decision. We conducted a survey which was sent to 83 Chief Financial Managers and financial executives in Swedish firms listed on Mid Cap or Large Cap. The questionnaire was on-line which enabled for the respondents to quickly and convenient respond.

The purpose of this thesis was to illuminate and create a deeper understanding of how small niche retail businesses within the apparel industry position themselves. We aimed to investi-gate how these small niche retail businesses create their position and how they communicate these positions to their target market. To be able to investigate the positioning-process within these small niche retail businesses a case study was conducted based on interviews with two respondents from two different companies and observations of these businesses physical envi-ronments. The study indicated that the small niche retail businesses mainly make use of emo-tional aspects and their assortment range to create their position. To communicate their posi-tion to their target market they mainly use their in-store personal selling and their assortment range..

This thesis paper is based on Ian Manners Normative Power Europe-theory with a focus on EU?s military operation in Somalia. By examining documents from EU institutions in the form of reports concerning EU NAVFOR ? Operation ATALANTA ? EUTM Somalia ? EUCAP NESTOR. This study shows that the Normative Power Europe-theory can get expressed and that the EU continues its normative statements in Somalia. This result is an interesting contribution to the theory of Normative Power Europe witch have gotten a lot of critic about how a military operation should effect and diminish the theory..

Tidigare forskning har påvisat vilken positiv verkan olika sorters samarbeten har på innovationer. Interorganisatoriska samarbeten är ett samlingsnamn för olika typer av samarbeten mellan organisationer och dessa kan exempelvis vara nätverk, allianser och forsknings- och utvecklingssamarbeten där det sistnämnda behandlas i vår studie. Organisationer som är involverade kompletterar varandra istället för att konkurrera med varandra. Interorganisatoriska samarbeten uppstår när organisationer söker effektivitet och konkurrensfördelar. Genom att ingå i ett interorganisatoriskt samarbete uppstår en samarbetsfördel som uppnås genom att organisationerna kan tillverka och bistå med olika faktorer som andra organisationer inte kan eller har möjlighet till.

Tidigare ombesörjde organisationen karriär och karriärutveckling för den anställde och karriärkontraktet byggde på livslånga anställningar. Det nya karriärkontraktet bygger istället på en så kallad proteisk karriär (Hall, 1996), vilket utmärks av att individen ser sig själv som ansvarig för och drivande av sin karriär, att egna värderingar får styra samt att psykologisk utveckling är främsta mål. Studiens frågeställning var att undersöka om personlighetsfaktorer i termer av self-efficacy, självkänsla, locus of control samt neuroticism kan predicera proteiska karriärattityder. I studien användes kvantitativ metod och en enkätundersökning genomfördes på studenter. Korrelationsberäkningar visade att samliga personlighetsfaktorer samt proteiska karriärattityder var korrelerade.

This report evaluates whether an interpreted high-level garbage collected language has enough information about its memory behaviour to make better cache decisions than modern general CPU hardware.With a generational garbage collector, depending on promotion algorithm and generation size, around 90% of all objects never leave the first generation. This report is based on the hypothesis that, because of the low promotion rate, accesses to higher generations are sufficiently rare not to benefit from caching.To test this hypothesis, we built an operating system with a Scheme interpreter in kernel mode, where the interpreter controls the cache. Generic x86 PC hardware was used, since it allows fine-grained control of cache decisions.Measurements of execution time in this interpreter show that disabling the cache for generations higher than the first does not give any performance gain, but rather a performance loss of up to 50%.We conclude that this interpreter design is not an improvement, but cannot conclude that the hypothesis is false in general. We suggest building a better CPU simulator to gather more data from which to make better caching decisions, moving internal interpreter data structures into the garbage collected heap and modifying the hardware to allow control in the currently rigid dimension of where data is cached---for example separate control of instruction and data caches and separate data caches for different areas of memory..

SELF CONTROL är ett undersökande examensarbete i textildesign. Med en textil hantverksmetod undersöker jag mötet mellan kontroll, tidsåtgång och material. Detta med utgångspunkt i en feministisk diskurs. Jag ser kontroll som något som exkluderar, censurerar och begränsar möjliga uttryck inom textilt hantverk på samma sätt som kvinnokroppen kontrolleras i ett patriarkat. Jag har använt mig utav en performativ och repetitiv metod som aktivt har gått ut på att bryta mot föreställningar om hur hantverket ska utföras.

Today there are many applications of digital terrain models (DTM) and the requirements of low uncertainty increases. Most of the DTM are produced with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), airborne laser scanning (ALS) and total stations. Guidelines for the preparation and verification of DTM are found in Swedish Standards Institute ? Technical Specifications (SIS-TS) 21144:2007 and SIS-TS 21145:2007. These were defined in collaboration between Swedish National Rail Administration, Banverket, and Swedish Road Administration, Vägverket, to satisfy the needs of requirement formulations in the production of DTM planning, design and construction. The purpose of this paper is to produce and control DTM over Åkermans kulle, located west of the University of Gävle, according to SIS TS 21144:2007 using GNSS with network-RTK, TLS and ALS.

Over the last decade the conversation on entrepreneurship has been both worldwide and intense. In Sweden, as in many other countries, this conversation has also concerned women?s entrepreneurship. Parallel with this conversation has been the debate on women in leading position in large corporations. This thesis aims to find out why and how women use entrepreneurship to handle existing conditions in life (such as the hardship of combining a traditional career with a traditional family life) and to create new conditions that suit them better.

This study investigates the corporate sustainability activity, linked to the company's core business, which is a relatively unexplored field in a Swedish context. The study examines how the organization has used management control for its sustainability activity within two social initiatives; and whether these initiatives have generated value for the organization and involved stakeholders. Management control of social initiatives are examined within the theoretical framework of The Sustainable Balanced Scorecard and the organization's value creation contributions are outlined in accordance with a definition of the concept of Creating Shared Value. The method used for the implementation of the study is a qualitative study, embodied in an illustrative case study of a large Swedish company operating within financial sector. The empirical data was collected through 12 in-depth interviews with representative interviewees within the organization and with other stakeholders involved in the company's social initiatives.