In light of the coming workforce shortage in Sweden the competition for human capital will be intensified on the market where employers compete in order to attract skilled labor. The competition will be most noticeable in the knowledge-intense industries, where the employees are seen as the companies? most valuable asset. The purpose of this paper is to examine how small knowledge-intensive companies can improve their position in the labor market by using the HR-model People Capability Maturity Model in order to affect their companies' Employer Brand. We take the basis of the theoretical framework in which we examine and identify the key dimensions of the Employer Brand concept and present the People Capability Maturity Model more closely.

The industry of management training programs is increasing rapidly. Every year numerous organizations sponsor expensive management training programs for their managers, hoping that this will pay off and make the organizations more profitable. The companies that offer these management training programs could be seen as important conveyers of conceptions of leadership. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to identify similarities between a number of management training programs and see how they are related to different leadership theories , and based on this try to recognize the conceptions of leadership that are conveyed. The study is of qualitative nature and is based on interviews with representatives from five management training companies in Sweden along with a text analysis of written material presented by the companies.

In the fall of 2014 a literature review and a scientific study of the topic; "... in the extent to which companies in the industry applies the evaluation of continuous improvement? was conducted at Mälardalen University. These studies are the foundation of this thesis.A strategic improvement is often divided into smaller steps of improvements at each hierarchical level from the top down through the organization. But if there is no response system that can confirm the results of these improvements back through the organization it is very hard to see if the improvements really are improvements or just changes and a waste of resources.

The attention on environmental issues has never been as huge as today. The climate is changing and more and more evidence suggest that the cause behind climate changes is an increase of carbondioxide into the atmosphere. The increase in turn is considerd to be an act of human activity. Therefore some companies have decided to become climate neutral and implement information technology in their business in order to reduce their emissions. This thesis has three aimes: to calculate a small company´s carbondioxide emissions, study whether or not information technology could help to reduce these emissions and furthermore find out why some companies decided to become climate neutral and describe the concept climate neutral.

In the beginning of the 21th century several successful companies filed for bankruptcy. These bankruptcies have been known as large accounting scandals and the largest scandals did Enron and Worldcom stand for. These bankruptcies arose without any warning signal from the auditors about the companies? financial problems and their inability to continue as a going concern. The bankruptcies damaged the reputation of auditors and broad criticism has developed at the auditors? inability to discover companies? financial problems and their unwillingness to reveal a going concern opinion in the audit report.

The purpose of this thesis is to shine some light on how B2C companies in Sweden carry out a viral marketing campaign. Through case studies of two comparably sized companies, Arla and If Skadeförsäkringar, this was examined. This study shows that viral marketing is still a new subject for both marketers and researchers. It is hard to find conclusive methods for how to carry out such a marketing campaign successfully leaving companies feeling that they first have to go through a trial and error process. This is evident in this case study, where viral marketing is degraded to a tool for generating awareness rather than producing actual results as part of a holistic marketing plan and where those results are too uncertain to rely on.

How debt affects companies is an issue that has received much attention. The fact that researchers disagree can make it hard for companies to choose a financingpolicy that maximizes the value of the firm and its return on equity. In a world with investors that are seeking to maximize profits the value of the firm can be affected differently by different economic conditions. The intention of this study is to answer these issues with quantitive methods, with focus on year 2010 and 2009, where the value of the firm is defined as P/E and P/B ratio. The outcome showed that liabilities only affected return on equity significant in one of four cases, and liabilites didn?t affect the value of companies significantly in any of these.

Internet has opened a whole new world when it comes to marketing. Because of this companies can reach out to a broader consumer audience. The idea to write this essay came to mind, when we were asked to design the website of a new registered company named Artoteket. The company?s purpose is to hire out and market art on the Internet to bigger companies such as banks, law firms and industrial company?s etc.

Study objects: JM, Folkhem and ABB.Purpose: The purpose with this study are to examine how the supplier relations are in the construction branch and compare that result with how the supplier relations are for ABB a production company.Theoretical: The theoretical chapter illustrates important and relevant parts of supplier relations, purchasing and supplier strategies to give good overview. The theoretical review will combine information from different fields to consent with the research problem.Method: A case study has been made on three different companies, one of the companies was active in the production industry the other two were active in the construction industry. Data was mainly collected through semi structured interviews on each of the three companies.Conclusions: The size of the company decided which point of view the company had on purchasing, traditional or modern view. All three companies had a centralized purchasing organization but the construction firms were more decentralized than the production company. The reason was that the construction firms were dependent with more flexibility when every construction project is unique..

In recent years, more and more people have started to live double lives. Blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have created conditions so that we increasingly live virtual lives on the Internet. The gathering of people in this way entails both risks and opportunities for businesses. This study aims to explain how the phenomenon of social media has affected trade and service companies in a marketing and communication perspective. The idea for the essay came to us after we had observed how different behaviors in companies? concerning social media could vary a lot, and how we felt that this affected our personal view of the brands.

In relation to the paradigm shift that took place between the marketing mix and relationship marketing, and the emergence of information technology in the 90:s, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become a frequently used concept in marketing. Most definitions and approaches have been generated from previous studies, but the concept is still criticized for the number of failed implementation attempts. Along a discussion of the area has an elaborate theoretical foundation remained as the foundation for the study development and utilized in all the sections of the study. The study, with help from Gartner's eight building blocks of CRM, focus on how Swedish medium and large companies work with CRM, and if this is an indicator of the number of failed implementation attempts. The survey consists of two approaches, qualitative and quantitative, to provide both depth and generalizability of the study.

The linear televison have dominated the supply of moving pictures, but this is about to change with the possibility to consume it via the Internet.I n this thesis we have studied how the two Swedish tv-network companies, SVT and TV4 are working with their web TV and if their online services have affected the linear TV. To limit the size of the study we chose two network companies that provide the most popular tv channels and web services in Sweden. To gather data from these two companies we conducted qualitative interviews with people at the networks. We came to the conclusion that SVT and TV4 doesn't find that their web TV services (called SVT Play and TV4 Play) are competing with the linear TV. They rather regard them as assets to broaden their services.

This paper discusses the strategy and strategic change in the Swedish freight forwarding business and analysis factors that influence the forces of the business. Three companies of various sizes are chosen to be investigated as a case study, outline that cost leadership and differentiation are both important strategies for companies to compete in the market. However, companies outpacing competition do not only pursue either of the two strategies, the need the ability to add one (cost leadership) to the other (differentiation) in relationship to environmental change over time..

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate industrial branding, which as a relatively new concept, both for practioners as well as academia, comprises a less explored application of the brand concept. The theoretical background of the study consists of marketing theory concerning the brand concept, and theory concerning industrial marketing. The empirical foundation consists of case studies of four industrial companies, based on interviews with representatives from the companies. All four companies have engaged in activities which they themselves see as industrial branding. Initially, the study sets out to determine the occurence of industrial branding, according to this study?s definition, and continues to tentatively explore the implications of branding in an industrial context.

The market for management consulting services is changing with an increased level of competition and more specialized service providers. At the same time there is a high level of companies that fail in their efforts to establish themselves on the market. This thesis sets out to give the reader an increased understanding of the complex characteristics of the market for these services, focusing more specifically on which factors that have an effect on the strategy development for companies within the industry. The thesis is also aimed at providing the reader with a deeper understanding of how developing consulting companies can tackle the specific challenges facing them. In order to meet the purpose of the thesis, we have applied relevant theories to a generic strategy model in order to develop a model that is applicable for the management consulting industry.