From the customer?s perspective the only reason for a firm to exist is the value it creates. However, a problem within manufacturing companies is that of the total lead time, only a small part can be considered as value adding. It has further been discovered that when working with improvements businesses often sub-optimizes single processes instead of considering what benefits the entire company. Thus, when improving processes and activities it is important to have knowledge about and understand which factors that affect how the flow can be designed.Several studies have been performed with a wide perspective on process flows in order to obtain a more resource-efficient and value added flow.

Value stream mapping is a tool that is frequently used by many different companies. It is a great tool used to achieve the work that follows the theories of lean production. The tool is used, however, only frequent on the factory floor and the method is also designed based on this type of use.An interest of applying the method on administrative parts of the company has occurred lately. Administrative parts of the company refers to the part that does all the planning such as purchasing, receiving orders, customer contact, contact with factory floor and other work that is made around the actual manufacturing. But the knowledge about applying value stream mapping on the planning part of the company is lacking because the method is relatively new.In this work, a comparison is made between the introduction of value stream analysis on production and planning.

Value stream mapping is a tool that is frequently used by many different companies. It is a great tool used to achieve the work that follows the theories of lean production. The tool is used, however, only frequent on the factory floor and the method is also designed based on this type of use.An interest of applying the method on administrative parts of the company has occurred lately. Administrative parts of the company refers to the part that does all the planning such as purchasing, receiving orders, customer contact, contact with factory floor and other work that is made around the actual manufacturing. But the knowledge about applying value stream mapping on the planning part of the company is lacking because the method is relatively new.In this work, a comparison is made between the introduction of value stream analysis on production and planning.

Ledarskapsforskning och forskning kring ledarskapskulturer har varit ett populärt ämne det senaste decenniet och det finns stor tillgång till uppsatser, artiklar och böcker inom ämnet. Enligt Mats Alvesson är det svårt att sätta fingret på ämnet ledarskapskultur och skapa en definition av just begreppet kultur. En annan intressant utgångspunkt inom ledarskap har varit den forskning som handlar om att försöka se hur tydligt det tidiga ledarskapet och kulturen format ledarskapskulturen som återfinns senare inom organisationer.Syftet är att ge en djupare förståelse för vilka utmärkande drag från ledarskapskulturen och ledarskapet som fanns under 1970-1980 talet på IKEA som lever kvar än idag och beskriva de verktyg som IKEA använder sig av för att behålla kulturen. Frågeställningar som uppsatsen avser att besvara är: Hur mycket av den initiala ledarskapskulturen som är bestående i ett internationellt expanderande företag över en viss tidsperiod? Vilka verktyg använder sig IKEA av för att hålla ledarskapskulturen intakt?Fallstudien baserades på en kvalitativ studie för att kunna ge en djupare förståelse för vilka utmärkande spår från ledarskapskulturen och ledarskapet som fanns under 1970-1980 talet på IKEA som lever kvar än idag.

With a religious psychological perspective this paper focuses on how religion is communicated during an investigation, and how religion might include in the decisions and the implementation of committed honor killings. This study pinpoints the question if it´s reasonable to unilaterally declare honor killings with culture, which is based on a distinction between culture and religion. The study is done on a court case where the offender confessed to a murder that is categorized as a so-called honorable motives. The material consists of interrogation reports during the investigation and several notes written by the offender before the murder. With a broad definition of religion the text material is analyzed with the theory of attribution.

Within system development users have rarely been involved or received much attention during the development. Most of the times, the primary focus within system development lies on insuring functionality, rather than making the system usable. The literature specifies that a non user-centered approach can contribute to a product with low usability, which can lead to an ineffective and unsatisfactory experience for the end users.The purpose of this thesis is to begin an investigation to see if the use of non user-oriented system development methods is a possible cause of low usability in the final system.To achieve the purpose of this thesis, we have conducted a case study. Within the case study we examined the usability of a time reporting system. The case study included seven minor studies; an investigation concerning the development of the system, an expert evaluation of the system, interviews and observations of users, developed paper prototypes and executable prototypes, both which user testing was performed on.The result of this study shows that by working with user-entered methods, the usability in the time reporting system increased after the design had been revised.

Detta examensarbete är genomfört i samarbete med produktutvecklingsavdelningen på IKEA i Älmhult.Ingvar Kamprad startade IKEA år 1943 som en postorderfirma. Idag är företaget ett av världens största möbelföretag med 253 varuhus i 35 länder och med en omsättning på 161 miljarder kronor.Compact living är ett område på frammarsch inom inredningsvärlden. IKEA strävar efter att kunna erbjuda marknadskraftig heminredning inom alla områden. 24 hour Living room och dess delprojekt är en utgångspunkt för framtida idéer inom området.24 hour Livingroom är ett projekt där en urban lägenhet på cirka 40m2 skall möbleras för ett compact living. Nyframtagna möbler och prototyper skall förenkla vardagen för en familj på två vuxna och två barn.

The main purpose of the study is to investigate Sweden's four large banks, concerningrisk and return, to see if there are any differences between them. The paper will alsoinvestigate the following sub sections: are there any differences in how the banks havesucceeded in managing geographically targeted funds and if there are any differencesin how funds are performing according to the fund size.The study is based on a quantitative method and has a deductive approach. Theselection consists of all of the four banks Swedish and Nordic funds (according tomorningstar.se 's categories "Sverige" and "Norden"). The study is based on secondarydata gathered from sources such as Morningstar, Affärsvärlden, Dagens Industri andthe Swedish National Banks websites.Swedbank Robur has performed the highest results in the case of Swedish funds.Handelsbanken has performed the highest results in the case of Nordic funds and thetotal of all funds that are in the study. Based on the results of the study it was possibleto distinguish a link between fund size and the annual return. .

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what consequences the discussed Balken-case have had with regards to freeze-out prices decisions for cash bids. In order to evaluate this, a comparison with a previous study is made. Last but not least, the aim is also to see what kind of arguments the minority successfully can make use of in order to reach a higher freeze-out price nowadays. Underlying the results is basically an empirical survey based on arbitrations disclosing the tendencies after the Balken-case compared to before. The empirical investigation shows that practice has become more clear and uniform after the settlement of the Balken-case where a movement from theoretical values towards market prices is recommended.

There is an increase of financial integration, which can be seen in recent mergers of banks, financial institutions etc. in the European Union especially in the Nordic countries. However there are some weaknesses in providing consumers cross border services in the sector of banking, such as cross border bank account transfer of payments. The existing transaction costs do not encourage cross border services. Nevertheless a customer of a global or European bank can anticipate to be treated the same way in all of its branch offices inside the EU countries.

Forskning visar att företag idag bör engagera människor emotionellt snarare än rationellt för att förmedla budskap. Storytelling är ett effektfullt verktyg med fördelen att kunna engagera människor på en emotionell nivå samt att det kan nyttjas inom flera användningsområden. För att genomslagskraften ska bli så stor som möjligt måste företagen ha kontroll över vad det är för budskap som sänds ut. Diskussioner förs dock gällande att dagens företag inte anses ha den rätta kunskapen om storytelling samt att det saknas dokumenterad teori om ämnet. Detta gör att fler studier inom området är av betydelse för storytellingens framtida utveckling.

Denna kandidatuppsats studerar förekomsten av olika typer av IT-investeringar. Detta görs inom ramen för en tidigare framtagen klassificeringsgrund för denna typ av investeringar. Klassificeringsgrunden är framtagen av Thomas Falk och Nils-Göran Olve och presenteras i deras bok IT som strategisk resurs. För att ytterligare dela in IT-investeringar efter deras funktion har vi även kategoriserat IT-investeringar som antingen nyinvesteringar eller återinvesteringar. Studien är gjord i samarbete med IKEA-IT som också utgör studieobjekt.

This essay is a case study about the Swedish Armed Forces during the years 1988-2004; when it transformed from a force constructed to meet an invasion, to an international force with the primary mission to help subdue conflicts around the world. The essay uses texts and documents to examine what happened between these years and to find out what drove that change.By asking the questions A) ?What happened between the years 1988-2004?? and B) ?What is the difference between the Armed Forces in 1988 and in 2004??, it is possible to also ask C)?Why did the Swedish Armed Forces change??.The essay is divided into three main parts; 1) a theory-part focused on three main theories of international relations: liberalism, realism, and constructivism, 2) a historical case study examining the evolvement of the Armed Forces during these years, and 3) a conclusions section that uses thethree theories of international relations to examine why this change happened.In examining the historical period and making conclusions about the differences between these years it was also necessary to construct a scale of military power, on which the historical case study is based..

Globalisering är något som de senaste åren blivit ett allt mer igenkänt begrepp bland oss människor, detta är något som berör både oss individer samt företagsvärlden. Den främsta anledningen till att detta är något som ligger i tiden beror på att numer finns möjligheterna, tekniken har tagit oss framåt vilket skapat ett behov bland oss människor av att se världen. Vi blir inte tillfredsställda förrän vi utnyttjat de möjligheter som finns. Det är bland annat företagen, och då främst världsföretagen, som format de möjligheter som uppkommit, genom bland annat sin företagskultur, ett fenomen inom ekonomi- och verksamhetsstyrningen. För att undersöka vilken egentlig påverkan denna företagskultur har på individer, som i allt större utsträckning rör sig på en arbetsmarknad som är av det globala slaget, har vi beslutat oss för att göra fallstudier på den svenska jätten IKEA.

The ambition with this study is to look into and create an understanding for how an intranet can work as a support system in work processes in capacity as a source of knowledge. We want to enhance the understanding for which kind of knowledge that can be coded in and transmitted by an intranet, and which that is lost in this process. We also want to clarify what it takes to get this knowledge, in collaboration with the intranet, to support the work in an organization. It is a qualitative case study at a Swedish bank. It consisted of semi standardized, half structured interviews with five people in one of the bank?s local offices.