Product development cycles become shorter and shorter. The time from idea to market has become an important competitive factor. Despite this, methods used for making the product development process faster are surrounded with uncertainty about their efficiency. The purpose of the thesis is to describe the pros and cons of ?best practice? methods for shortening lead times and how these methods effect the lead times in research and development.

AbstractThis paper will examine the co-operation culture in teacher work teams in a primary school currently undergoing reorganization in the Stockholm region. This inquiry is based on qualita-tive interviews with teachers and work team leaders, and is aiming to answer how teachers co-operate during the reorganization process, to find the factors that affect co-operation. Our results show that the two teams practice communication, leadership and participation very differently. Currently there are clear differences in the work team?s tendency to develop and to work with the reorganization process, pedagogic methods, social and emotional awareness and ideological beliefs.

The background to the study was that the school agency published a report stating that students, after completing school, did not meet the criteria to receive the grade ?Pass? in mathematics. The study presents the reasoning of work teams from five different preschool departments?, about ways to work with the subject with children in the ages four to five. The study may help future teachers to develop new attitudes regarding mathematics in the preschool, by letting them take part of others pedagogues? thoughts and experiences.

In an environment, demanding both innovation and flexibility, higher requirements of competitiveness and productivity is a necessity. Changed conditions of today's working situations have resulted in an actualization of new ways and methods of working. This has contributed to a development of participating working processes in form of groups and teams. The purpose of these communal working processes is that they ought to result in an increased knowledge and understanding among the group members which in turns will generate positive results in the daily work. This drives the search for new knowledge and development possibilities to handle these changed working processes.

Denna rapport identifierar den könssegregering som förekommer inom ledningsgrupper i den svenska skogsbranschen. Detta görs genom en kvantitativ undersökning där fokus ligger på att numerärt beskriva fördelningen av kvinnor och män inom ledningsgrupperna. Mer specifikt har kvinnlig dominans identifierats bland HR- och informationschefer och en jämlik fördelning mellan könen på tjänsten ekonomi/finans-chef. På resterande tjänster inom ledningsgrupperna finns en kraftig dominans av män. Vidare fördjupas analysen genom en kvalitativ undersökning och litteraturstudie.

This thesis has been carried out to the Technology Group at industrial plant Tube Mill2012, which belongs to the Sandvik AB. Technology Group is a unit that takes care ofall requirements and suggestions regarding investigations, test runs and designmodifications. The main objective is to identify and analyze the existing initializationprocess to see where improvement opportunities exist and to come up withsuggestions for improvement, supported by previous research and literature. Anextensive literature search and case study has been conducted to provide a solidfoundation to refer to during the work. Completing the interviews and the workshopgave a clear picture of their unstructured work and approach, how the lowrequirements on the received orders caused problems for the group as well as thelack of a standardized resource allocation method provides major delay factors.Solution proposal then became a very easy process model in five steps with all theinformation gathered in one place.

The aim of this study was to understand how three selected football associations in three counties in Sweden work to include children and adolescents with disability in the age of 7-20 in their organization.  For this study we have used a qualitative method. The data have been collected through using semi-structured interviews with coaches and representatives from the board. When analyzing the data, we used Charles Tilly's theory Durable Inequality and research within the area of inclusion within sports, the significance of activities and the inequality within sports. The conclusions of the study showed that there was a stated lack of knowledge in the associations when it comes to their work with young people with disabilities and also in their work with the policies.

The aim of this master thesis is to study the integration in Sweden between forestry and bulky industries as fiber- and sawmilling companies. The analysis is based on theories about transaction cost economies and competitive strategy. The studied companies are active on the Swedish roundwood market. The buying actors on this market were divided into two groups; fiber- and sawmill industries. Three companies from each group were chosen subjectively by the author.

The visual representation of management (board of directors, chief executive officer and executive management) in annual reports is an area of scholarship that has not been explored much. In the present study a sample of 87 annual reports from business enterprises within a Swedish context, comprising about 300 photographs, was analyzed using an explorative method of analysis based on semiotics and grounded theory. The influence of the context on images raises a question discussed in the study: Should the photographs in the annual report be categorized as portraits, advertisements and others or should the annual report be regarded as a genre of its own? The photographs showed patterns of homogeneity regarding gender, dress, gestures, colours, pictorial compositions et cetera. The position of the (male) CEO is privileged, but he is also connected to the group through various means like dress and style, thereby further underscoring management as a male enterprise and demonstrating the importance of the suit and necktie in creating homosocial bonds.

AbstractThe purpose of my essay is to describe how some educators perceive the cooperation that takes place every day in the team to wich they belong. To do this, I have implemented six qualitative interviews with educators at two diffrent workteams. I based my questions on three scientific questions:- How does the cooperation in the team work?- How has the cooperation between the various kind of educators developedsince the pre-school class and the leisure-time centres was integrated with the school?- Which conditions exist for a good cooperation?The result showed that there were both similarities and differences between the teams, but common to both teams was that the educators felt that there have been some major positive changes to the cooperation in the teams in the last few years and that they were fairly satisfied with how the cooperation of their teams function now. Mostly they cooperates during school hours with various school projects, but questions concerning the pupils wellbeing is also an important area of cooperation.Since the integration was implemented, the cooperation has become more equal and the various educators have found their respective roles.

As a result of globalization, multinational teams are being more frequently used in today´s businesses. This specific type of team can be described as heterogeneous when it comes to nationality and linguistics. The aim of this study was to explore the concept of multinational teams. This was made using culture as a main concept, and nationality, linguistics, and organizational culture in order to describe it. We intended to say something about how this type of team´s efficiency; when it comes to satisfaction and performance; was affected by national and linguistic heterogeneity within the team.

American football is a well-known sport in America. In addition to the design and rules of the game and the surface it is played on, there are also other differences that are not directly visible. One difference noted in this study is how the teams in the game provide players. Each team has a board of directors together with the team's leadership and they will determine which players are most suitable for the team. These players are recruited to the team after graduating from a U.S.

Systems development methods has always been an important part of the systems development process. It affects not only the product, but also the organization itself. Today more and more companies are abandoning the more rigid traditional methods for the more flexible agile ones. A transition like this is bound to affect the product and the organization, but in what ways? Is it a difficult transition to make, and how does it affect social environment and dynamics? Does it change how people communicate information to each other? This study was conducted at a local branch of a larger international IT-company.

Global Software Development (GSD) is based on a geographical distance where teams are spread throughout the world. The related research have for a long time addressed the challenges presented by geographical distances. GSD is basically a necessity for many businesses to use in order to reduce development costs, reduce production time and to maintain high quality. The study aims to investigate the relationship between the reality of a specific maintenance project. Thus, our research question: How do distributed maintenance teams experience temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distances? To achieve the purpose of the study, we chose to perform a case study of a global consulting company which recently started a new system maintenance project.

In today's changing society, companies need to work with continuous change and improvement to evolve with the market. It is therefore important for managers to learn how to manage teams because they are expected to streamline selected products or processes in the business. Employees and teams need to develop in line with the changing environment in this process feedback is a tool and an important pillar. Leaders must learn to manage and transform feedback into something useful.The purpose of this study was to create an understanding of how systems-based feedback in the form of employee surveys can be a support for the leader in team development. We wanted to identify relevant behaviors and actions of the leader that may increase the work with feedback.