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.

Driveability analysis of terrain data offers an important technique for decision support for all kinds of movements in the terrain. The work described in this report uses a high resolution digital terrain model generated from the laser radar data and further processed by the Category Viewer program, and information from the Real Estate Map. Properties of features found in a filtering process are calculated and compared with a set of rules in a knowledge base to get a driveability cost. This cost is then visualized in a graphical user interface. An evaluation of what driveability is and what it is affected by is performed, and a general cost function is developed, which can be used even if not all relevant information is available.

There is a shortage of organs available for donation worldwide. There have been several campaigns to try to increase the numbers of registrered donors. The topic has been brought to the forefront but more work is still needed to distribute information to the public.The aim of this literature review was to examine what influences people in their decision to donate their organs or not, and what role nurses play in providing the most current information available. The study found that there was several different reasons given for not donating their organs. A great number of people were convinced that their religion was against organ donation.

The aim of this study is to examine the market reaction when information about a company?s foreign direct investment is announced and how that affects the shareholder?s value. Also of interest is whether the market reacts differently depending on which country the investment is established in and which mode of entry is used. This will be achieved by using an event study approach. The selection that was used consisted of 206 companies registered on the Nasdaq OMX Nordic homepage, which had during a time period stretching from 1999 to 2009 established a foreign direct investment in the regions BRIC, Europe or the USA using the mode of organic growth, joint venture or acquisition.

This study is a first attempt to try to understand what the variables could be that make the person responsible for the grave sign up for grave gardening services by the church or to maintain the grave by him- or herself. There has been almost no research done within this subject. This study has been made by a qualitative research method and interviews have been performed with both persons responsible for the grave who have gardening services made by the church and with those who maintain the grave by themselves. The characteristics that are affecting consumer behaviour and the buyer decision process are presented in the theoretical part of this study. That is done so it can be seen if a comparison between the results of the study and the basic theoretical concept is possible, resulting in an understanding of how the costumers think and argue about this question.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate what kind of motives where behind the long term decisions for the Swedish military defense in 2000 and 2004. This leads to the questions that the essay is meant to answer; 1. Were the motives behind the two decisions for the Swedish military defense of economic character or an adjustment of security and defense policy? 2. Was the parliament united in the two decisions and if they were not, why? 3.

The first four AP-funds have a well-diversified Swedish portfolio, which is managed in similar way as the largest Swedish bank funds. Up until today, there has not been any comparable study that focuses specifically on this part of the AP-funds. Our aim is two-folded; First we will look at how well the AP-funds have managed their Swedish assets compared with Swedish funds of the four largest banks in Sweden during 2002-2006. This will be done by looking at some important key ratios and both absolute and active return. Secondly we will present a descriptive analysis of the management structure within the respective organisations, to be able to draw conclusions regarding the possible deviations in investment return.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate what kind of motives where behind the long term decisions for the Swedish military defense in 2000 and 2004. This leads to the questions that the essay is meant to answer; 1. Were the motives behind the two decisions for the Swedish military defense of economic character or an adjustment of security and defense policy? 2. Was the parliament united in the two decisions and if they were not, why? 3.

Background: outsourcing is one of the most obvious and continuous trends that has been able to study during the past ten years and also has had a strong development in the industry. What consequences will follow from an extended outsourcing? Purpose: the study?s overall purpose is to investigate what possibilities and risks that can be connected to an outsourcing decision and how the order of the service will handle the risks. The study will also investigate what management philosophy that will be used and regulate the outsourcing relation and how the company?s strategy will affect the decision and how the process of outsourcing will look like.

This thesis aims to examine the viability of various techniques for increased electricity generation in CHP plants and the effect of electricity price fluctuations on the profitability.The techniques examined are fuel dryer, pellet production, methane production, combined methane- and pellet production, seasonal heating storages in caverns and pit heat storages and condensing tail. Using Excel and Matlab, the prerequisites for investment costs, revenues and expenses were calculated.What affects the price of electricity is a combination of economic and technological development, energy prices, economic structure, population changes and weather. Different scenarios for the electricity price were therefore examined. In the base case, the electricity price was given by the Nord Pool electricity price statistics of area three in 2011. Thereafter, WiMo was used to design the electricity scenarios for 2030, which was then applied to the data to obtain the viability of various scenarios. The techniques examined were found to give greater profits to the CHP plant by increasing and optimizing the production of electricity.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute with knowledge regarding the connection between the socialization process and the organizational commitment perceived by junior accountants. Based on Van Maanen and Schein's (1979) model, we intend to identify and describe how selected socialization strategies affect junior accountants? perceived affective, continuous and normative commitment during the initial five years in the firm.Research methodology: Semi-structured interview was chosen as the key approach for gathering essential data. Interviews were conducted at three major accounting firms with a total of eight interview participants. The study has a qualitative approach because of the ability to go in depth on the studied phenomenon.Conclusion: The socialization process consists of individual, informal, sequential, fixed, serial, and investiture strategies.

The company Betsson opened its first physical gambling shop in Sweden in May 2008, thereby defying the Swedish government?s legal gambling monopoly. The legal case that has resulted due to the violation of the Swedish gambling law has attracted immense attention from mass media, thus generating vast amounts of publicity for the company. This paper aims to evaluate and describe the company?s decision to open the store, as well as to examine the relationship between market driving practices and market driven practices.

The energy that the earth receives from the sun hourly has potential to cover a year?s energy demand in the world. Further, this type of energy is environmentally friendly, natural and free of cost. This report covers solar energy in an urban environment and consists of a case study of installations of photovoltaic cells in a part of the city of Stockholm. It is mainly the economic aspects that are covered but there is also a discussion about the practical consequences and the sustainability as a result of integration of solar energy in an urban environment. The aim of the study is to present results from economic calculations for utilization of solar energy in chosen buildings in Kungsholmen in Stockholm.

The current debate regarding organizational strategies for sustainabledevelopment is influenced by the theory of global governance. Decentralizedstructures of the global society are taken to use in the realization of a sustainabledevelopment. New roles of transnational networks and partnerships raisesquestions of the ability of global governance to co-ordinate and implement longtermsolutions without assistance from centralized and hierarchic structures basedon government. The aim for this thesis is to illustrate the current conditions forwell-functioning networks of sustainable development and examine therelationship between global governance and government. Issues of participation,decision making and compliance are examined by a case study of the Marrakechprocess, a global process to support the implementation of sustainableconsumption and production.

To be competitive in the corporate climate of today it is important to have effective logistic activities. A common resource within the internal logistics is forklift trucks, which are used to lift and transport material. It becomes more and more important to decide whether to buy, lease or rent the forklifts to obtain an optimal economic situation. Many companies have issues with internal pricing. It is difficult to price products and services correctly. It is common to price the overall instead of what it really costs.The purpose of the thesis is to present a model for the acquisition of forklifts for internal logistic operations, regarding financing and internal pricing, to obtain economic effectiveness and an optimal forklift fleet size. The study focused on a specific research question, and for this purpose interviews with experts were held, observations were made and a literature study was done.