As a result of global competition, companies within the automotive industry are required to improve their production systems to achieve sustainable and competitive production. To attain operational excellence, companies have adopted concepts like lean and World Class Manufacturing (WCM).In order to deliver, companies need to increase the availability and reliability of production equipment. This demands focus on both operational and strategic maintenance, and efficient equipment acquisition and management. The main objective of this thesis is to identify processes and success factors that are necessary for improved maintenance performance. By conducting a case study and by performing a literature review, the following has been studied: 1) how companies within the automotive industry work with maintenance and maintenance strategies, 2) implementation of maintenance strategies, and 3) new acquisition and spare parts management for maintenance. The results show that basic maintenance concepts and related terms are well defined in the literature.

Surrogate boycotts are highly threatening for corporations in terms of both economical cost and image damage. All corporations are due to our globalized environment and increased stakeholder fragmentation gradually more risking to become victims of surrogate boycotts, which of nature is hard if not impossible to predict and prevent. Corporations are generally recommended to build clear and strong corporate identities, which should be reflected in their most important stakeholders, as this will secure minimum damage on the corporate image. Even a surrogate boycott situation can have positive effects on corporations, especially in terms of image, as such situation increases the brand involvement and thereby make it possible for corporations to connect with important stakeholders on an emotional level. .

This thesis intends to analyse conditions for a successful implementation of consociational democracy, as a democratic model in Afghanistan. The lack of critical reviews regarding the democratisation-process in Afghanistan initiated the purpose of this study.Lijpharts democracy model was used as the basis in the comparative study. Along with empirical evidence regarding how the complex process of democracy in Afghanistan is progressing, the study investigated whether the identified conditions occurred or not.The choice of which democracy model to use can be crucial for the democratic possibilities to even survive and become established in conflict-affected communities. The principle of consociational democracy is that it is an empirically based normative model that aims to organise the state in a way that works against the risks of majority domination and oppression against the minority.The empirical case study revealed that a majority of the conditions were not met, which then can counteract the possibilities for consociational democracy in Afghanistan. The study has critically examined the prospects for the success of consociational democracy in Afghanistan, and it can be assessed that there is a limited probability for a successful applying of this model..

The report assesses the typical questions regarding Corporate Social Responsibility within the automotive industry. An attempt as to whether Corporate Social Responsibility has an impact on growth companies is demonstrated. Volkswagen Group is within the required analytical criteria, which are to be studied. Also, the fact that they recently launched ?Strategy 2018? makes it even more interesting to immerse into.

Abstract Over the years the consciousness of risk has grown. It?s hard to influence risks, therefore there are guidelines stating that significant risk must be included in the annual report. This paper is a case study; the purpose was to examine how four Swedish listed companies chose to disclose their internal and external risks. Risk is initially described in general sense and then it figures to what constitutes an economic risk.Through a case study of four Swedish listed companies? annual reports we have, through qualitative methods found how the companies chose to disclosure their risks.

Title:                                  CRM ? A case study of Nordea Private BankingAutors:                               David Johansson & Mikael Westin        Advisor:                             Ulf AagerupLevel:                                 Bachelor thesis in International marketing, (15 ECTS), Spring 2013.Keywords:                         CRM, Relationship marketing, Private BankingQuestion:                           How does Nordea Private Banking work with CRM to get high customer loyalty?Purpose:                            Study and to learn how Nordea Private Banking is working to bring in new customers and keep existing customers loyal. We also want to see if Nordea uses additional strategies that goes beyond the theory and what their customer relationship strategy is.Method:                             The study has a qualitative research method with an inductive approach. Interviews with leading and skilled profiles at Nordea Private Banking has been interviewed to provide answers to our research question.Theoretical framework: The chapter starts with theory about what relationship marketing is and what is driving customer loyalty. Thereafter theory that define CRM and its pros and cons are addressed, and finally the chapter describe the implementation phase.Empirical framework:     In the empirical framework we present the qualitative interviews that were done with employees at Nordea Private Banking.Conclusion:                       The result from this study shows that Nordea Private Banking uses strategies that are common in theory of CRM to gain high customer loyalty and the use of recommendations from satisfied customers is of a much higher significance in Nordea Private Banking?s case than of what the theory is implying.

This thesis is seeking to explain why policy change come about. This is done by applying a part of Karin Lindgrens dissertation Vad styr ledaren?. The research evolves around the term pressure and the hypothesis are that policy change come about when there is middle range pressure on the decision-maker. Low and high pressure results in no or small policy change.The thesis is done as a case study where the economic crisis in Thailand 1996-1999 makes my case.

This study describes what impact activity within Wifstas, Matfors,Grönstas and Nolbys water protection areas have on the quality of the drinkingwater. It considers the use of the area, environmentally dangerous activitiesin the past and present, the geology?s part, what harm hydroelectric power damsmay cause if they break and how climate change might affect the area in thefuture. It also takes into consideration activities outside the waterprotection areas which might have a suspected impact on the water quality. Theresults of the study are that pollution from infrastructure such as roads, orwastewater from treatment plants may cause occasional contamination of thedrinking water, foremost due to flooding.

Social media constitutes an increasing part of organizations and businesses today, regardlessif its segment is B2B (Business to business) or B2C (Business to consumer). The use ofsocial media has been self-evident for many companies, especially throughout the B2C area.The study examined attitudes towards Web 2.0 and social media in the B2B-segment, andwhat advantages and disadvantages that might exist with the use of the implementation. Inorder to answer the research question a qualitative case study on the company IFS (Industrialand Financial Systems) was made..

In 1989 the United States choose, after years of conflict, to carry out a military intervention in Panama, to remove Manuel Noriega, convicted for drug dealing and for threatening the lives of the Americans living in Panama. The aim of this study is to examine whether George H. W Bush?s arguments for the military intervention comply with the principles of the just war.The method chosen for this study is a qualitative literature study, based primarily on secondary data. It is a case study with two complementing theories, the theory of the just war and the world system theory.The result showed that the American intervention both can be justified and unjustified following the principles of the Just War Theory.

This study investigates if, and in that case, how design theory is applied in practice in the web development field. Prior research has focused on methods used in the web development field. We wanted to study the designers role in a web design process by comparing existing designer roles with design theory literature. We did qualitative interviews with two practitioners at two different communication agencies in northern Sweden. Based on our qualitative data and literature review we have concluded that a designer has to devote a lot of energy on requirements engineering in order to develop a clear understanding of the design situation..

This paper is a case study on Bradley E. Manning, famous for leaking classified intelligence to media, or in the charge sheet?s words: ?knowingly give intelligence to the enemy, through indirect means.? My opinion is that this sort of dilemma is a question of values, how you view the world and, most important of all, human rights and the philosophy of rights. Therefore I decided to sort out the arguments regarding the issue of freedom of speech versus the state?s need for protection.

This thesis is a case study of the search function on the University of Uppsala?s web site. The search function in this study was chosen since it exists on a large and complex web site and there were apparent lacks in the old version of the search function. The thesis highlights some of the problems that can appear in the development of a search function on a local site. One interesting find is that one of the most difficult issues is organizational and not technical.

This thesis discusses the theory of securitization in relation to the issue of irregularmigration, from EU level to national level. By using discourse analysis, the purpose isto explore whether the discourse leads to practice when it comes to nationalimplementation of EU debates on return policy. The material used in this workconsists of policy documents regarding the Return Directive from the EuropeanCommission as well as the Reva Project in Swedish migration policy. The mainobjective of the Reva Project is to make the process of returning irregular immigrantsmore effective and it has been strongly criticized, both by media and public opinion.The conclusion of this case study is that even if the security rhetoric may appearstronger on the EU level, the main elements of the security discourse are stillportrayed in the implementation on the national level. Based on this analysis we canmake the presumption that discourse develops into practice in the case of returnpolicy in the EU-member state relation..

AbstractTitle: Level/Degree/Grade:Authors:Supervisor:Research question:Purpose:How the bank may improve its financial counselling ? A qualitative case study.Bachelor Thesis; Business administration; Corporate finance.Andreas A?strand, Anton Persson, Kristoffer Wedebrand.Hans Mo?rner.How may the bank improve its financial counselling to private investors using portfolio theory?Our purpose is to examine the advice, with basis in portfolio theory, the bank?s financial advisors provide to their clients, the investors, and how they can improve. If we can identify and point out areas of improvement in the financial counselling, we hope to raise the question and contribute with an improved financial counselling. Another positive effect we are hoping for is to improve the situation for the investors whereas all parties benefit from an improved portfolio selection.This study is conducted through a qualitative case study, where we used a deductive approach and collected our data through personal interviews.The conclusion that emerges is that the financial counselling could potentially be improved if financial advisors improve their knowledge in portfolio theory.The originality shapes through the opportunity to investigate a specific bank and because of that an opportunity to examine a specific case more thoroughly was created. Our thesis contributes with opening La?nsfo?rsa?kringar?s and other banks? eyes to how their financial counselling could be improved through new knowledge in portfolio theory.