Knowledge is of great importance for organizations and it is seen as an important competitive advantage to effectively preserve knowledge within an organisation. The upcoming retirement of employees born in the 1940s poses a threat because it is believed to result in a knowledge drain. The problem of preserving knowledge within the organization lies in the fact that it is partly tacit, and therefore not possible to write down or communicate in words. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how tacit knowledge is created in the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the implications thereof. We examine the following research questions: Of what significance is the creation and reproduction of tacit knowledge for the Swedish Foreign Ministry? Which factors influence the creation and reproduction of tacit knowledge and why? A case study of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs has been conducted.

An excessive input of nutrients to lakes and other water bodies has created a problem with eutrophication in Sweden. Untreated, or partially treated, domestic sewage is a major source for discharge of phosphorus (P), which is the nutrient most frequently responsible for eutrophication of most fresh waters and the Baltic Sea. The waste water can be cleaned by filter materials, which have a high P-retention ability and which after saturation may be used as fertilizers. Four potentially suitable filter materials were tested in batch- and column experiments in this study. In the batch experiments, the following materials were shaken with waste water in time series ranging from 5 seconds to 60 minutes: coarse (1-4 mm) and fine (0-2 mm) Polonite® (heated bedrock from Poland); Filtralite® (light expanded clay aggregates with limestone added before burning); water cooled blast furnace slag (BF-slag) and BF-slag mixed with 10% burned limestone.

Wetlands play an important role in the ecosystem. They reduce the impact of flow flux in the drainage area, acts as upholder of biodiversity, as an esthetic and recreational component in the landscape and they have the ability to reduce nutrients such as nitrogen, and help preventing eutrophication in costal areas.The number of wetlands in Scania have, due to the intensified agriculture been reduced to maximize the area suitable for crops.However since the mid 80th the consequences of this has been acknowledged, and many wetlands have been restored.This master?s thesis aim to see what impact this development have had on wetlands in Scania over the last 60 years. And also look at some of those factors important for the efficiency of nitrogen removal in wetlands. During the process a detailed manual for inventories of this sort was created.The material used to execute the inventory of wetlands where aerial photographs over Scania from the 1940th, 1980th and 2000.

The focus of this thesis is positioning and customer retention in newly started small service businesses. The thesis is based on the case study of two small newly started service businesses: Kåffe In that is based in Skellefteå and Lundström Aaro Design! which is based in Umeå. The thesis presents the conclusion that newly started small service businesses, regardless of industry, seem to work in accordance with the theoretical framework of the thesis..

Background: To be better able to meet the new competition, companies are seeking new competitive advantages, wich is forcing them to review and, in time, change both working methods and corporate structures. This has led to an increased interest in the development of strategies within the field of Knowledge Management. Objective: The objective of this thesis is to improve understanding of how learning in a company occurs over internal boundaries and to investigate whether individuals need to be motivated in this regard. We also aim to give recommendations as to how this can be developed. Furthermore, we will work out a model that explains the learning process.

Companies learn through their employees. In this paper I make research into how knowledge transfer and learning occur at Metso Paper Karlstad AB, which is a partly project based organization.The result is that there are many factors that affect the knowledge transfer in a company. Knowledge transfer occurs mainly between individuals within the company, but also between departments and other actors outside the company. In the gaps between these actors, there is a risk that knowledge is not transferred, which is an obstacle to learning. A great deal of the knowledge transfer and the learning is carried out through individual?s own drive and motivation.

The purpose of this study is to identify the points-of-difference that should form the basis for Bryggarsalen?s future marketing efforts. Bryggarsalen is a newly established conference business in Stockholm. To be able to identify these points-of-difference, Bryggarsalen?s marketing problems have been studied from the resource-based view, claiming that the source of sustained competitive advantage derive from a firm?s unique bundle of resources.

AbstractThe aim for this study is to establish how teachers and supervisors at the Child and Recreation Programme interpret the concept ?vocational knowledge?. It is also about how they substantially can see that the pupils are developing vocational knowledge, during their work placement training. The aim of this thesis is to create a base for teachers to work with continuing development in teaching practice. The empirical part of this study is based on interviews. Interviews were analyzed in three categories: definition of vocational knowledge, substantially developing in vocational knowledge and success factors. The result shows that knowing how and knowing why is salient in vocational knowledge.

In recent years, the demands for effectiveness and evidence in social work have increased in all work areas, including that of healthcare. This has sparked the discussion on concepts such as practical- and theoretical knowledge and their respective roles in social work. In the light of this, the purpose of this candidate thesis is to investigate healthcare social workers understanding of practical- and theoretical knowledge in the working process as well as their respective influence and importance. This candidate thesis is based on three interviews with social workers from different departments in Norrlands Universitetssjukhus in Umeå, Sweden. To provide range to the thesis, the interviewees were chosen from a purposeful sampling.

This paper aims to provide a description of how knowledge can occur in Apoteket AB, anorganization that is operating on the Swedish pharmacy market. The purpose of this paper isalso to describe how the organizational learning occurs in the organization, and how theoutcome of this learning can be stored in the organizational memory. This subject is ofinterest since Apoteket AB experience changes in their external environment in that they nolonger have monopoly to sell pharmaceuticals on the Swedish pharmacy market. Earlierresearch claims that organizations need to develop new knowledge in order to take action, andthis development needs to be supported by the management within the organization.The collection of primary data was done by two qualitative interviews with employees withinthe organization of Apoteket AB.Our conclusions are that knowledge can occur in many forms, such as tacit and explicitknowledge. The vast majority of the knowledge within the organization is the information thatcan be found in the electronic database Aponet within Apoteket AB, and that is useful for theemployees in their daily work, and therefore is known as explicit knowledge.

In this project a LC-MS-method for the analysis of gamma-hydroxybutyrate, gamma-butyrolactone, 1,4-butanediol, amphetamine and methadone was developed.Initially, the efficiency of the ionisation of the analytes was evaluated with respect to the ionisation technique (ESI, APCI and APPI) and the composition of the mobile phase. In the next step a number of different columns was tested in order to find the one with the greatest potential for separation of the substances in question. Using the selected column, the separation was optimised by means of experimental design and the software The Unscrambler 7.8. The parameters studied were the flow rate, the column temperature and the mobile phase composition. The response variables were the resolution between the target compounds and the retention time of the last eluting compound.These experiments showed that, in order to obtain the best ionisation, the mobile phase should consist of 5 mM formic acid in water and acetonitrile.

AbstractThe aim is to find out the teachers´ different point of views regarding what and why it´s important to teach children about the human body and in what way educationists can teach this knowledge. Seven teachers are asked, through qualitative interviews, about their point of views on teaching the human body in pre-school.The teachers don`t seem to reflect upon the subject, which shows that a development of knowledge needs within the area.Fist of all the children´s spontaneous questions direct what the educationists talk about with the children. The most frequently mentioned questions are about the circulation of the blood and the digestion organs. The teachers think it´s important that the children get knowledge about the human body in order to get a better opinion of their own bodies and themselves. It´s also important because this is the basis of other kind of knowledge, for instance the knowledge about animals..

Workers are more demanding than ever and stay a shorter amount of time within the same organization. For this reason we wanted to look further into how organizations work with motivation in order to create success in Knowledge Intensive Firms. The complexity of knowledge workers formed the base for our interest within the subject. The purpose of our thesis is to reflect upon what is written about the motivational effects of recruitment and reward strategies in Knowledge Intensive Firms. Further our essay is based on an abductive advocacy.

The authors of this thesis have studied the handling of personal information in various kinds of organizations, because the perception is that the knowledge in this area is weak relative to the weight of the subject.The purpose of this paper has been partly to shed light on how knowledge of this area in the organizations that we have visited during the study but also to answer questions about handling, knowledge and security, and identification of individuals in different systems. What kind of problems the processing of these data creates and why these problems occur.In the beginning of our study we understood the importance of using the correct identifier and therefore chose also to examine what the various identifiers used by the organizations and why they chose these particular identifiers.In the qualitative analysis, Datainspektionen´s general rules and advice has been used as a basis together with the laws applicable to the organizations to get a good picture of how management of personal information is in these organizations.What we have found in this paper is that knowledge about how personal data is handled and what laws and rules are saying is very much dependent on how central the information is to these organization's activities. The police use so many different types of records for their organization to function well and they have very good knowledge of laws and regulations. In contrast, schools that do not handle as much of personal data themselves nor have the same knowledge among staff and do not have enough resources to cope with keeping the same knowledge base as the police. This is something that applies to all types of handling, depending on how important the information is for the organization, the better the security and knowledge in handling the data is..

In today?s fast changing environment it is important for knowledge intense companies that want to stay competitive to actively work with their knowledge, knowledge sharing and Knowledge Management (KM). Barriers decrease the efficiency of how knowledge is created, stored and shared, and they are therefore important to reduce or preferably remove making the KM activities result in as much value for the organisation as possible. To achieve this, it is important that the KM activities become a natural part of the employees? daily work.