Human capital is professional service firms' most valuable resource and its quality is closely linked to the quality of its services. The purpose of this study is to investigate how professional service firms appraise their employees. A comparative study between an architecture firm and a management consulting firm is conducted with the aim to identify and explain similarities and differences in performance appraisal. Two qualitative case studies are performed and interviews as well as documents are used to explore the area. The thesis builds on a critical perspective and it has an explorative approach.

iProspect is a global digital marketing agency and work primarily with search marketing. They were the first search engine marketing agency in the world when the company started up 1996 in Boston, Massachusetts, and the first in Sweden to offer services in search marketing after establishing themselves on the Swedish market the following year. iProspect can be found in the södermalm office in south central Stockholm. They are a comprehensive agency within search and offer everything from search engine optimization and sponsored links to advertising on social media. They?re goal is to lead developments in search marketing and to keep ahead of competition.

The purpose of the following study is to examine whether or not differences can be found between a group of aspiring police students (N=59) and a student group (N=20). Comparisons were made between the following variables: general illhealth, subjective experienced stress, trait anxiety and the three coping strategies, which are emotion focused coping, problem focused coping and seeking social support. In addition the results were compared with former research on the general illhealth and trait anxiety of the police students with that of a group police officers with several years of experience (N=69).The result of this showed that the police students had a significantly better level of general than the studentgroup. Several positive relations between the variables were found, among others between illhealth and trait anxiety, subjective experienced stress and trait anxiety and also between different types of coping strategies and subjective experienced stress..

The purpose of this thesis was to describe how service producing IT- companies handles their internal marketing. We wanted to understand how management deal with internal marketing activities and how different companies create a working environment to encourage employees to motivation and well-being. To be able to find out we did a case study on a service producing IT-company. Two personal interviews were done with two of the managers. Our empirical research showed that the company used internal marketing on a daily basis.

The web is a constantly growing medium that presumably plays an increasing role in public library reference services. In order to provide high quality reference service the librarians need to be able to master this medium. Therefore it is interesting to get an understanding of how librarians actually use the web. The aim of this Master s thesis is to investigate what web search tools are used by public librarians in reference service. Furthermore, the aim is to get an understanding of how the librarians think about those tools and what background factors influence their selection of tools.

The study has shown that retailers in the mid-price segment differentiate their brand through developing a strong company identity around the brand. The personality involves store atmosphere, merchandise and advertising. Larger companies have chosen to lay the responsibility on management level, which facilitates on store level. By controlling the strategies on a central level the company can make sure that the stores are steered in the direction that the company wants them to be steered in, and also that they follow the positioning-concept. The company can also devote its efforts to working with its core value, which is service.

The study has shown that retailers in the mid-price segment differentiate their brand through developing a strong company identity around the brand. The personality involves store atmosphere, merchandise and advertising. Larger companies have chosen to lay the responsibility on management level, which facilitates on store level. By controlling the strategies on a central level the company can make sure that the stores are steered in the direction that the company wants them to be steered in, and also that they follow the positioning-concept. The company can also devote its efforts to working with its core value, which is service.

The purpose of this study was to find out what are the information needs of the nurses and if the hospital library can satisfy these needs, and see how the hospital library reaches the nurses with their information provision. The main questions are: what kinds of service exist at the hospital library? What kinds of needs have the nurses concerning the hospital library? How are the needs satisfied by the hospital library? What marketing strategies are used by the hospital library to reach out to the nurses? Is it enough to achieve the goal? The method in this study was a case study with the emphasis on the qualitative interviews. The study was conducted at the hospital library at Södra Älvsborgs Sjukhus in Borås. The interviews concerned the nurses views on the hospital library, information needs and marketing.

Municipalities in Sweden are responsible for physical planning by developing a general plan. This plan contains intended land and water use for the area. This study aims to investigate the level of integra­tion of environmental issues in the general plan of Arboga municipality and also how well adapted the municipality is for climate change. Further on, the study intends to examine the focus of the gen­eral plan and at what rate the national environmental strategies are implemented in the local physi­cal planning of Arboga municipality. Methods used for this study are interviews and reviewing of the general plan itself and other key documents.

Bakgrund: Prestationsmätning syftar till att implementera ett företags strategi. För att lyckas med det krävs tillgång till relevant information för att ta rätt beslut. Nya alternativa organisationsformer som shared service centres har lett till en ökad efterfrågan på ny anpassad ekonomistyrning. En förfrågan om att utvärdera P2P-processens prestationsmätningssystem på IKEA AB, Finance Services ledde till utvärderingsstudien.Syfte: Syftet med utvärderingsstudien är att utveckla en modell med dimensioner, för att analysera prestationsmätningssystem på shared service centres. Analysmodellen kommer appliceras på P2P-processen inom IKEA AB, Finance Services.

This study takes its starting point in ongoing changes and differences in the global power dynamics. The liberal rules-based world order that has been acknowledged for governing the world with the US as the hegemon of power has been strongly challenged during the last decades. Russia?s invasion of Ukraine can be seen as an example of ongoing changes in the world order, with Russia as a challenger to the US as the hegemon of power. The changes and instability that this has led to for Sweden's national security situation can be seen as a concrete example of how ongoing changes in the world order affect Sweden?s foreign policy.

Att konstruera ett tidtagningssystem för enduro i skogen leder till flera frågor som måste undersökas och besvaras. Vilken kommunikationsteknik ska användas och vilken systemarkitekturisk lösning passar bäst? Att dra kabel ute i skogen är ett bra sätt att lösa det kommunikationstekniska problemet, lösningen är säker och relativt billig. Visst påverkas priset av distansen mellan olika klienter ute i skogen, men alla positiva egenskaper hos tekniken gör denna kostnad värd sitt pris. De geografiska variationer som kan finnas är de som kan spela ut de övriga teknikerna i form av stabilitet.

The customer behavior is constantly changing along with the developement of new technical improvements. Together with knowledge and higher demands the physical store has received a viral competitor. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the phenomenon e-commerce and how it has developed in recent years. The study will focus on identifying different success factors relevant for this field of interest. Furthermore the purpose is to analyze how relationships, service and value in the e-commerce sector and how they are connected to each other.

The ski resort is a business unlike any other. While providing the customer with a service, it produces the service in a manner that in many respects resemble the traditional producing company. Therefore, since the challenges facing the ski resort are a mixture of what can be found in these different environments, this study aims to investigate the applicability of Lean principles in this context. With a qualitative approach based on direct observation, combined with survey data from 2819 respondents, we evaluate the expected effects on customer value of ten commonly defined Lean principles. The study finds that although Lean theory can help disseminate customers throughout the resort and provide greater transparency, the nature of the operations calls for caution.

Asymptotically flat spaces are widely studied because it is one natural way of describing an isolated system in general relativity. In this thesis we study what happens to the Lanczos potential at spacelike infinity in such spacetimes. By transformations of the Weyl-Lanczos equation, we derive expressions for the limiting equations on both the timelike unit hyperboloid, and the timelike unit cylinder. Finally the Newman-Penrose formalism is used to get a component version of the equations..