In this thesis we will discuss the importance of human resource development in smaller companies and if it will change from when the Swedish economy was in an economic boom and later on came to be in a recession. We choose to use a more qualitative approach for this research in order to conduct a more in-depth study of five smaller sized companies located on Gotland, Sweden. In order to limit our research we had as an ambition to answer these following questions:? What obstacles are there when it comes to human resource development and knowledge transference within smaller sized companies?? What can simplify or enable human resource development and knowledge transference within smaller sized companies?? Does the teaching process change to a more tacit human resource development between co-workers when there is less room for conventional human resource development?The result of the research came to show that the biggest barrier, when it comes to competence development within smaller companies, is time. However, our research also showed that a majority of the companies has changed from a more external educational plan to a more internal educational plan which focuses on keeping the human resource development within the company.

Today, social media is used mostly by people in their private life. However, companies are more and more tapping into the area of social media. To this date, mostly B2C companies have been successful in their social media strategies. This qualitative thesis aims to investigate how B2B companies can benefit from using social media as a means to communicate and build relations with their customers. The medtech industry has been chosen as the object of study.Through depth interviews with people in the medtech industry and social media experts, data has been collected in order to answer the questions of (1) how ready customers in the medtech industry are to receive information through social media and (2) how companies can build the best possible social media strategy.

The aim of this essay is to study the decision making process and implementation of the principle of political participation and influence for Roma minority in Sweden. The results regarding the decision making process is structured through a discourse influenced policy analyses. Problem picture and recommended measures in the political documents representing the decision making process are analysed through theories of minority rights and equality. The implementation is seen through, by the author given minority discourse and the work in the roma council and analysed by the same theories already mentioned.The results show that regarding the decision process the aim of art.15 in the framework convention is based on the idea of equality while the Swedish documents relates more to an idea of the right to speak for the group. Regarding recommended measures, the framework convention gives several recommendations on specific measures for political participation while the Swedish documents focuses on the general politics of the state.

These days most companies conduct some form of work for the external environment, quality and safety. In connection with this work, some companies have chosen to get management systems certified by any applicable standard for one or more of the fields while other companies have chosen other ways that are not associated with certification.In light of the fact that the individual systems are becoming unmanageable an increasing number of these companies are faced with the decision whether to integrate and coordinate these different systems or not. In order to study the possibilities of a company?s system coordination an assessment of elements particularly interesting for the company was performed. The key elements and focuses in the evaluation were staff access to information, experiences from other companies and environmental work status for some of the organization's companies.

Background: The increasing competition on the market demand both companies and supply chains to find optimal solutions. The edeavour to reduce inventory levels is a part of this. Earlier, inventory was seen upon as valuable assets, but today they tend to be more and more negative in the eyes of the companies. Inventory demands capital, handling, and space. Therefore inventory creates unnecessary costs.

Sales is the foundation for all commercial business and companies that have the best sales process in conjunction with efficient deliveries will do well in the long run. The author of this report was tasked by the Organisation in South Africa to study new/alternative ways of attracting Swedish companies to South Africa and sell the services of the Organisation to these same companies (defined as the sales process in this report) by analysing how similar international service companies do the same. A benchmarking process has been conducted with four similar service organizations in South Africa to examine how these companies work in comparison to the Organization. Surveys have been used for purposes of this study, as the methodology is well suited to provide the author a view on the opinions, perceptions and experiences of the respondents.The project aimed to develop new methods to attract Swedish companies to South Africa or improve and streamline the existing methods. The aim was also to develop new ways to sell the organization's services to Swedish companies.The study concludes that there is little focus on marketing of services within the Organisation.

Background: In recent research literature, some researchers mean that companies in fast changing markets have to act proactively while others find that companies have to adapt to conditions and to react. This makes it interesting to study how software companies act strategically and also to study to what extent a flexible organisation is required by companies who proact and by those who react. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is the study how different types of software companies act strategically and what this requires of the company in terms of flexibility. Delimitation: The study treats only Swedish software companies with more than ten employees. Proceed of the Study: Representatives from four case companies as well as a consultant have been interviewed.

This thesis studies the way valuation of investment properties is conducted in accordance with IAS 40 and how reliable these valuations are. This has been conducted by studying ten Swedish real estate companies listed on the NASDAQ OMX, during the period 2005-2008. The study shows that all companies use valuation models to determine the fair value of investment properties. Two different types of models have been identified. Companies that use the cash flow model show inconsistencies in time horizon, and how they determine the horizon value.

The financial crisis in the beginning of the 1990´s the financial crisis had a strong impact on the Swedish economy. Some of the main actors in the crisis were the largest banks of Sweden which brought a huge amount of losses on themselves. One of the main reasons for this was that the banks focused on volume increases rather than on credit losses. The credit analysis process is performed differently these days and it is the development of this process that is the focus for the authors.This thesis is about the credit analysis process in the four largest banks of Sweden. The purpose of the thesis is to highlight which factors the banks include in the credit analysis process and in how small and medium size companies are treated in this process.

 We have chosen to write our thesis within a transport company. The work was carried out at DHL activities in Uppsala. DHL is one of the leading transport companies worldwide. Our interest lies in more efficient and advanced transportation and terminals, as globalization and new trends require effective solutions.The aim of our work is to explain the need for information technology applications in road haulage and associated terminal operations. Furthermore, we analyses terminal and applied information technology.

Borglund et al. (2012) argues that today it is becoming increasingly important for companies to work with CSR because stakeholders are more engaged in issues related to social responsibility and the environment. However, much research shows that it does not play a major role how companies work with CSR issues if the information does not reach the final consumer. The focus of this paper is therefore to examine how some of the major clothing companies communicate about their work with CSR issues and if consumers believe that they have the information needed to make an informed purchasing decision that support sustainable development in the garment industry. Our study has among other things found evidence that companies doesn?t reach out with information about their work with CSR.

An increasingly globalized market is leading to hard competition among manufacturing companies, which means that they are forced to become more customer focused to survive in the market. A Customer Relationship Management system is a system that will be of assistance to help companies succeed in building long term relationships with their customers. Best of Breed and ERP-based are two types of CRM systems. The study has focused on analyzing and examine the need for CRM systems at manufacturing companies. Our question formulation has been:? What need do businesses want to satisfy with a Best of Breed-based and ERP-based CRM system?? Are there any differences in the use of Best of Breed-based and ERP-based CRM system?In this study, we have chosen to carry out interviews and quantitative surveys with manufacturing companies to get their view of CRM-systems.

Credits are considered as a natural financing form for all types of companies. The financial market in Sweden is dominated by four banks and the credit appraisals that are done by these banks are partly based on credit reports from external companies. This thesis? purpose is to increase the knowledge of which the consequences of payment remarks can imply for companies in relation to the banks. A qualitative study has been done to relay to the purpose, through the means of interviews with four companies, four banks, one rating institute and a collecting agency.

The aim of this thesis is to accomplish an understanding on how librarians experience their professional role at private companies. The study is based on qualitative interviews with persons who have a degree in Library and Information science, but does not work as an ordinary librarian. To answer why the respondents work at private companies, this thesis dwells on how the education in library and information science prepares their students to face an alternative career; why the respondents wants to work at private firms instead of a library; if the salary is a key factor in order to choose a career; if the respondents think the companies appreciate their qualifications, and finally, if the respondents think they intrude on other professions' territory? Working at a private company, with a degree in library- and information science, is not, according to the respondents, easy. Although appreciated by their knowledge in the field of information, the interviewees think that the title librarian is hard to cope with.

Introduction: More and more companies have realized that keeping and using the knowledge in their companies is getting more important to get or keep a competitive advantage. The companies? organizational culture and knowledge management are essential to create knowledge transfer. Also that the employees and the leaders of the company knows how knowledge- and information transfer arknkoe done best for them. That is why we chose our purpose to be:The aim is to understand the differences between managers and employees perception about knowledge- and information transfer in a manufacturing company.