A crisis situation that has been more commonly occurred in the industry of conveniencegoods lately is the product related crises which thereby has become a challenge for everymarketer to handle. As the negative publicity tend to enlarge the crisis and spread to thecategory as a whole, it's not only important to have a crisis management to handle crisesconcerning the company itself. But also to be ready to make the best out of the situationwhere the company is threatened to get infected by the negative effects caused by acompetitor.When companies get the chance to make a response on the negative publicity on theircompetitor, as well as the category, through media, the question is - shall they act And howshall they act Which response is the most effective to send out to get out of involvement, notget infected by negative spill over's or even - to make the valenced comparison a way togenerate positive effects and gain market share The purpose of this paper is thereby to find the optimal strategy for an organization in theindustry to handle their competitor's crises through a pronouncement in media. Anotherpurpose to address is whether the brand strength is moderating the effects from the differenttypes of responses tested in this study. This purpose aims to find guidelines depending onthese moderating effects.The paper commodiously, strongly supports that there are beneficial effects to be generatedfrom making a response in either positive or negative direction in oppose of actively choosingnot to make a pronouncement at all.

The ability of dairy cows to survive and the economic importance of this have been in-creasing in dairy cattle breeding lately. Increased longevity contribute to an increased pro-portion of cows that produce milk in more productive lactations and reduces the replace-ment costs together with a good health and fertility. Unfortunately it is often argued that longevity has been decreasing due to a strong selection for production traits in dairy cattle.The aims of this study were to find correlations between different longevity evaluations and between different estimates on longevity and other traits in the Nordic Total Merit (NTM) breeding value. The aim was also to compare different traits for cows of two differ-ent longevity groups.The data were Predicted Breeding Values (PBV) from Nordic HOL and SR bulls and records from Holstein (HOL) and Swedish Red (SR) cows estimated by the Swedish Dairy Association.The three Swedish longevity indexes were very highly correlated (>0.89) and the corre-lations between the Swedish official longevity index and the five Nordic Cattle Genetic Evaluation (NAV) longevity indexes varied between 0.73-0.83.In the sire evaluation part, the traits most negatively correlated with longevity for HOL were dairyness, protein and fat index. In SR, milk, protein, and fat index only had slightly positive correlations with longevity.

Often places for children and youth are planned how adults think children and adolescents want them, but we are often wrong. As a result, we find empty playgrounds while our target groups are building dens in the bushes, hanging around shopping areas, and so on. This report is an attempt to create a place for young people based on the opinions of their needs and their environment to better understand how to design a place that suits them well. To gain knowledge about how it is to be young in Simrishamn, a small township in the southwest of Sweden, I interviewed children and young adolescents. The interviews were all carried out in groups, mostly in larger groups inside where the result differed a lot depending on the settings for the interview. Two walkabouts with groups of three children were also made. Most of the children were eager to participate and tell about their reality, but some preferred not to.

Each student in elementary school will under current policy documents have an individual development plan (IEP) from 1 January 2006. The plan should primarily aim for a higher goal achievement, but also to the student to gain a greater understanding of their own learning process and knowledge. My experience is that some students, despite efforts IUP have difficulty seeing their own learning process and it has been the starting point of my study. The aim of the study has been to investigate and analyze teachers work with individual development plans from the first grade to the sixth grade from a teacher's perspective. The goal was to identify strategies and techniques that could help develop IUP as a tool for the student's learning and understanding of their own learning process.

Placing children in foster care is today considered the best alternative for children unable to stay in their biological environment. A nuclear family consisting of a father, a mother and a child is the most common family structure within foster care today. The purpose of this thesis is to gain insight on the family norms that control the foster care system. It's a qualitative study based on interviews with six professional social workers within the field of foster care. This method gave us empirical material, that was later analyzed from two main theories and one theoretical concept.

The intention of this essay has been to investigate how the new digital technology has affected the tourism industry and marketing, as well as how travel agents and tour operators adapt to this. We also aimed to get a broader view of how the future might look like when it comes to marketing and virtual service landscapes. We decided to base our research according to these following four questions:? What affect travel agents? way of adoption to the technical development?? What purposes do the travel agents have for building up their virtual service landscape?? How much does the travel agents emphasize on digital marketing?? What can travel agents do to better adapt to the technological development in the future?We have chosen to use a qualitative research for this essay. The reason for choosing a qualitative research was to gain a wider understanding that would represent a big part of the changes of technology development.

This thesis deals with the compatibility between analysis software Revit Structure2012 and Robot Structural Analysis 2012. The purpose is to become more aware ofinformation management models to be compatible across different softwareapplications. The structural model is made to be optimal for the compatibility of othersoftware Aim is also to gain an understanding of the transferring methods that exist,and which method is most convenient to use and to examine whether the methodswork in practice. Objective of this project is to make the modeling processtime-efficient for constructors. Models do not need to be structured in severaloccasions in different software; it only needs an optimal model that transfers properlybetween software.The method used in the thesis consist cases where the transferring process isexamined.

AbstractThe future of ethanol is depending on good solutions for the production. ENA energy power plant produces electrical power and district heating by heating biofuel. By building an integrated bioenergy plant surplus steam could be used to produce ethanol as fuel to vehicle.This would mean that ethanol is produced renewable energy and the energy for the process derives from the surplus of power.  ENA energy, MDH (the University of Mälardalen) and the energy authority has initiated a research project were different bioenergy combinations integrate with existing power plant.  As a part of the project which size an integrated factory should be to gain the best efficiency for the plant was investigated. Consideration will be taken to the cost of the production in order to be competitive to the price of imported ethanol.  Etanolens framtid vilar på bra lösningar för framställning.  I ENA energi kraftverk i Enköping produceras el och fjärrvärme genom eldning av biobränsle.  Genom att bygga ett integrerat bioenergikraftverk där skulle man kunna använda överskottsånga till att framställa etanol som fordonsbränsle.

 AbstractThe background for this study is that there were a great amount of buildings constructed in Sweden in the years 1965-1975 in a program designed to create one million apartments in a time-period of ten years. These buildings are now, somewhat forty years later in most cases in very poor condition and the need for renovation is great and urgent. This has become a growing problem and more and more voices are being heard pointing towards the vast and extremely expensive task of renovating these buildings. Lately, it has also been more and more important for buildings to be energy-efficient and sustainable environment friendly.In recent years there has been an atempt to solve these problems by renovating such buildings but at the same time making them very energy-efficient. This is in some cases being done by isolating the shell of the building and changing the ventilation-system and so forth.

Currently many organizations are transitioning from the traditional approach to the agile approach regarding systems development methods. It is evident that research has mainly focused on smaller organizations transitioning, whilst less focus has been given t0 larger organizations. We find this interesting and the purpose of this study is to gain a deeper and broader knowledge concerning the following research question: How is system development work affected by a change from traditional system development methods to Scrum in large global organizations. We also investigate how Scrum can be adapted to complex projects with an internal client. The study is based on a case study, which takes a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews for information gathering and was conducted on a major Swedish telecom company.

This is an investigation of a mobile prefabrication factory´s competitiveness and profitability which also will result in a suggestion for a design of the factory. The mobile prefabrication factory is an idea of a new concept for production which is meant to be used in the manufacture of slab. The main intention with this concept is that by using a fast established prefabrication factory to produce elements near the construction site, thus avoiding transport from the factory to the building site. This means not only an environmental and economic gain, but also that you can avoid risking damage the elements which often occur during transportation. The contractor is owner of the mobile prefabrication factory and can thus avoid long waiting times and cyclicality.

AbstractThe future of ethanol is depending on good solutions for the production. ENA energy power plant produces electrical power and district heating by heating biofuel. By building an integrated bioenergy plant surplus steam could be used to produce ethanol as fuel to vehicle.This would mean that ethanol is produced renewable energy and the energy for the process derives from the surplus of power.  ENA energy, MDH (the University of Mälardalen) and the energy authority has initiated a research project were different bioenergy combinations integrate with existing power plant.  As a part of the project which size an integrated factory should be to gain the best efficiency for the plant was investigated. Consideration will be taken to the cost of the production in order to be competitive to the price of imported ethanol.  Etanolens framtid vilar på bra lösningar för framställning.  I ENA energi kraftverk i Enköping produceras el och fjärrvärme genom eldning av biobränsle.  Genom att bygga ett integrerat bioenergikraftverk där skulle man kunna använda överskottsånga till att framställa etanol som fordonsbränsle.

The purpose of this study has been to examine online travel magazines as an information source and as a virtual service scape. The traditional travel magazines are facing a change due to the technological development and the web has become an important platform for both customers and companies. The virtual service scape opens new opportunities for interaction and we found a great interest in examining which possibilities and limitations travel magazines are facing. This study is based on a qualitative approach because we wanted to gain a deeper understanding and a complete picture of our chosen subject. We have completed six interviews; three of them were consultants, one publishing director, one editor and a research student.

The aim of this essay is to examine three separate Swedish public libraries and their respective websites on the grounds of the usability sciences. I firstly had to summarize the main properties of the usability-field in order to gain an extended knowledge of its purposes and possible usage for today?s library systems. I was then able to apply the extended knowledge in the examination of the three library websites and the purpose of determining whether or not they were designed according to the standards set by the usability-sciences.Usability is a rather new science that deals with the dissection and examination of computer-based systems, in order to find the key components that make systems user-friendlier. With user needs being the main focus of its research, usability tries to meet all the different needs of the modern user and construct systems that are less system-centered and more user-centered.

This study discloses home-care organizations in one municipality in Sweden and five units work with implementing the social services legislated value base for elderly people. The aim of this study is to gain an understanding of personnel and managers perception of the value base and its implementation in the practical work with the elderly. A qualitative method has been used to analyze the questions raised by the aim of this study. The empirical data was retrieved by semi-structured interviews with managers and their personnel in homecare service The empirical data was analyzed on the basis of the neo-institutional theory, Michael Lipsky?s theory concerning street-level bureaucrats and previous research regarding implementation of social policy and the practical home-care work.