High heels ? a fashion that has not gone out of style after hundreds of years. Despite their esthetic advantages, high heels become uncomfortable and harmful after repetitive and long term use. With this as a starting point, Huyen Nguyen ? a student at the Innovation Engineering Program at the University of Halmstad ? decided to make a final thesis project. The project goal has been to combine the esthetic advantages of high heels and bring a comfortable solution to the equation.

In February 2002 the European commission put forward a proposal for a new directive on The patentability of computer-implemented inventions, but which during my work on this essay has not been decided on yet. The directive has divided the decision-makers in the union, the commission and parliament, into two different positions regarding by which range computer-implemented inventions should be patentable. The parliament has amended the commissions proposal in a substantial way and the legal process has caused a heated debate both within the unions administration and among various interest groups both in favour of and against a patent on computer-implemented inventions. The loudest protests have come from a group that feels threatened by a possible software patent: Open Source. In this study I examine both the arguments by the decision-makers and by the lobbying for and against the proposal.

This report describes a Bachelor thesis work in which a robotised laser welding cell has been modelled and simulated for the purpose of making a presentation movie. The report shows that the work has been concentrated on making the movie from the modelling phase through the recording of the movie and ending up with the editing of the final presentation movie. A pre-study was made prior the Bachelor thesis work. In the pre-study a literature study was conducted about measurement and calibration of a welding cell. Measurement of almost all equipment in the entire cell was also conducted in the pre-study.

Syfte med denna uppsats är att kritiskt granska och analysera Irving Janis begrepp groupthink samt bedöma om det är en hållbar teori.De frågeställningar jag valt att behandla är:? Vilken kritik har och kan riktas mot Irving L Janis groupthink teori?? På vilket sätt har groupthink teorin utvecklats sedan uppkomsten?För att besvara frågorna och uppfylla mitt syfte så genomförde jag en litteraturstudie där jag utgick från en kvalitativ ansats.Resultatet visade att sedan Janis myntade begreppet 1972 har kritiken främst riktats mot det bristfälliga stöd teorin fått, dess negativa utformning samt Janis snäva inriktning på när groupthink leder till fiaskon. Utifrån denna kritik och min egna analytiska förmåga kommer jag fram till groupthink teorin inte är att ses som en hållbar teori. Det sätt groupthink teorin utvecklats på är att den gett upphov till flera andra förklaringsmodeller när det gäller beslutsfattande i grupp samt att den verkat som en katalysator för detta område inom smågruppsforskningen..

The environmental debate is more intensive than ever before and the demands on companies increase. There are a number of methods to make it easier for the companies to fulfil the demands. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) end ecodesign are some of the methods that can be used. Syntronic AB has the possibility to reduce the products´ environmental impact in the design phase. Therefore it is important for the company to make it possible to visualize the negative environmental impacts a product can cause in an easy way. It is also important to visualize for there clients if any improvement is possible. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a simplified model.

The production costs have steadily increased within the construction industry during the 21st century. Voices are raised meaning that the construction industry is too unsuccessful in making the production more efficient and to develop it?s way of working. One way to deal with the production costs is to minimise the waste, with waste meaning activities that doesn?t add value to the finished product.

In today's fast-paced, intense and complex media environment, it is hard for non-profit charity organizations to reach out and get their messages heard.In this study we examine whether the theories of advertising signaling also applies for charities. Past studies of the signaling theories indicates that higher perceived advertising expense leads to more positive effects on purchase behavior and brand perceptions. However, we believe that this does not apply for a charity organization. We argue that since charitable organizations have a fundamentally different mission than commercial companies, they will need different ways to signal quality and credibility, and therefore the common signal-theories will not hold for these organizations.To test our hypotheses, we conducted two surveys where the respondents saw one of five versions of the same ad for a well-known Swedish charity organization, or one of two ads for a commercial corporation. The ads had been manipulated to simulate different levels of perceived cost.Our results shows that perceived ad cost only affects attitude towards the ad if a charity was the sender, whereas perceived ad cost affects intentions, attitudes and credibility if a commercial corporation was the sender.

The main purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the existence of criteria and to what extent high school students use these criteria when they are collecting information for a school assignment. I also compare students attending different high school programmes with each other and compare students on different levels of education.I have done a quantitative study with 284 students in which the students have filled out questionnaires.The result shows that the most common way to evaluate information is to compare sources with each other. Students also look at how the information is written, and they want the information to be detailed and easily available. More seldom used criteria include consideration of the authority of the writer, determination of how up to date the information is, and gauging the perspective of the information.The result also shows that students attending a high school programme that prepares them for higher education are better at evaluating information than students attending a high school programme of vocational preparation. Students at a higher level of education are also better at evaluating information than students at a lower level of education. .

In this paper five different commonly used methods of making a mount for a costume in along term display was investigated: The shaping of a mannequin and a polystyrene dressstand, the making of a gypsum torso, support made out of plexiglas and polycarbonte and athree dimensional mount on a board. The materials of the mounts were thoroughly takeninto consideration and described in the paper. One of the methods was put into practice in acase study of a Russian uniform dress coat. A gypsum torso was considered to be the mostappropriate mount in this case. The dress coat was to be displayed at the Garnisons- ochluftvärns museum in Halmstad.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a genre of computerized systems which allows system development corporations to efficiently and more easily manage, maintain and handle the applications lifecycle. These ALM systems have a wide variety of tools which can be integrated to enable and support collaborative work, while they act at the core of the organisation. Todays ALM systems support flexible system development methods throughout the entire development process. This paper focuses on a case-study of a Swedish business- and technology corporation and their use of two ALM systems with an aim to unravel the differences between these systems and their functionality to serve as a basis for decision making regarding their utilization of best practice with their ALM-Systems. Meanwhile we studied their approach to ALM systems to see if they were using them according to the initial idea of ALM systems.

The purpose of this essay was to examine six high school welfare officers' experiences and work with students suffering from social phobia and discuss the welfare officers' view on social phobia from a psychiatric, cognitive and a knowledge theory. The study consists of qualitative interviews with welfare officers from several different high schools and attempts to answer the following questions: What previous experiences do welfare officers have of students with social phobia? How do welfare officers become aware of students with symptoms of social phobia and bring forth their problems? How do welfare officers describe their social work with students suffering from social phobia?The welfare officers' experiences of students with social phobia varied but turned out to be less salient than the amount of research in the area would suggest. The theoretical knowledge also varied, as did the acquiring and use of theory. These findings were then analysed on the basis of Rosmari Eliassons thoughts on knowledge, leading to the conclusion that the interviewed welfare officers do not construct their work on praxis-knowledge.

Goal: To describe which evaluation method is used by Swedish retailers to assess a potential retail location and to describe to what extent the retail brand effects this strategic decision. Design: Analysis of ten interviews with companies within five retail sectors in Sweden. Main study: Indication of what methods are used to evaluate a location and how a company's retail brand affects the decision. Results: Retailers use a mix of theoretical methods to evaluate the location attributes and possible profit. Most common among mixtures was an application of the analog method, residual method or the checklist method in combination with a financial assessment.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and identify a selected number of key factors in successfully implementing open innovation. More precisely, it looks at how value is maximized using open innovation practices. The scientific approach taken is based largely on the network perspective, which puts relations to other companies in focus. An extended view of the resource based view (RBV), different from the traditional one by taking also external resources into account, is in addition central to understanding the use of external resources to create internal value. The two main research questions strive to look at how the company locates relevant partners and what the relations that are established with these partners should look like to get the most of open innovation.

Arbetsmarknaden är idag ansträngd. Faktorer såsom effektivisering av organisationer, skepsis mot att nyanställa samt hög arbetslöshet medför att konkurrensen om arbetena har ökat. Därtill är sjukskrivningstalet högt. Långvarig sjukskrivning kan medföra mänskligt lidande bland annat på grund av att individen kan uppleva känslor av utanförskap samt otrygghet som ett resultat av att denne går miste om den gemenskap som vanligtvis återfinns på arbetsplatsen. Hög sjukfrånvaro genererar samtidigt höga kostnader för den statliga kassan.

The creation of value is considered the core purpose and central process of economic exchange. Value creation is now conceptualized as shared by both producers and customers, and value is seen as fundamentally derived and determined in use, the integration and application of resources in a specific context, rather than in exchange, embedded in products and manifested as price. The field of research is abundant with publications but these do not fully further the understanding of value creation and co-creation in a way that is meaningful for theoretical development and decision making in business and marketing practise. Without a thorough understanding of the factors characterising value co-creation, the nature as well as content and locus of co-creation cannot be identified. In that case value co-creation easily becomes a concept without substance. Until now, individual publications on co-creation have focused on few or different aspects, have emphasized the process from either the customer?s or from  the firm?s vantage point, have different theoretical approaches and have ignored the complexity in interactions between actors.The purpose of this essay is to analyse how five fundamental aspects of co-creation of customer value are perceived in contemporary marketing literature. Discussing the different views on co-creation, this essay concludes that thoughthere are evident points of agreement, finding one generally valid doctrine of predestination or value co-creation is improbable.