During the 90s most companies organized and adopted routines for their environmental work. This work included for example eco-efficiency improvements and the introduction of environmental managing systems. At the UN conference in Rio in 1992 the concept Sustainable development was defined, but it was not until about the year of 2000 that companies in Sweden shifted their work from environmental management to sustainable management. A consequence of this is that they now have to focus on environmental aspect in conjunction with social and economic aspects.The purpose of this study is to gain understanding of what a change of focus to sustainable development means for companies. Has the environmental work suffered in the competition with social/economical aspects under the new sustainable focus? How will the new way of working affect the balance between environmental and social aspects? Changes were studied in five companies by analysing their annual-, environmental- and sustainability reports and through interviews of sustainable Managers.

Foreseeing future changes in economic activity is of up most importance to a wide array of actors. The time lag in the presentation of official GDP statistics means that to somewhat accurately capture a tendency of where the business cycle is heading one need turn to qualitative sentiment indicators such as Purchasing Managers? Index (PMI) and official sentiment indicators for valuable clues. This thesis uses in-sample and out-of-sample methods to evaluate how well PMI and official Business Tendency Surveys (BTS) in Sweden and Denmark fair against the year-on-year growth rate of industrial production. Moreover, various Swedish regional sentiment indicators get examined and a case study of the indicator for the Öresund region is performed.

The market of today consist of products/services who resemble each other, the differences are small. Their for it?s necessary for the companies to provide added values to the product so it will stand out from the rest of the products and lead to purchase. A well used strategy in the fashion industry is marketing with celebrities, this is considered successful because it brings attention and strengthening to the brand. Because of this, the strategy also branch out to other industries, but the question is if it?s as successful there? There?s also a serious down-side with the strategy and that is that there?s a great risk with using celebrities.

This master thesis was performed at Scania Research & Development. The given mission was to see where the department Systems Development should focus to improve their development work. Thus the purpose was to map the product development processes in which the department works today and within them identify improvements. To fulfil the purpose a theoretical study of relevant terms, such as improvement work, product development and processes, initially was formed. The mapping method used is called "walk trough" and meant to let the people working in the processes be guides in their own process.

Product development cycles become shorter and shorter. The time from idea to market has become an important competitive factor. Despite this, methods used for making the product development process faster are surrounded with uncertainty about their efficiency. The purpose of the thesis is to describe the pros and cons of ?best practice? methods for shortening lead times and how these methods effect the lead times in research and development.

Many sources point to the same conclusion; throughout the history the research sphere, mass media, governmental industry policies and public life in common have not paid the same attention to medium-sized companies as to small, new or large companies in Sweden. Yet, there are some researchers claiming the need for the medium-sized companies to grow, becoming tomorrow?s Swedish new large companies. Hence, the need for understanding the specific growth conditions of the medium-sized companies are definitely clear. This study aims firstly to identify whether there are specific requirements and obstacles for growth in connection to being a medium-sized company.

Despite ongoing efforts toward equality, persistent wage gaps between men and women in Sweden still remain, particularly within male dominated industries, such as finance. Gender equality is a prominent topic in public discourse, yet progress towards achieving equal pay between men and women continues to be slow. This study aims to contribute to the research area and offers a unique perspective by examining gender related expectations from both men and women, Managers and employees. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether, and if so how, gender related expectations influence salary setting processes in the financial industry. Through a qualitative study based on semistructured interviews, the study explores how both employee?s and manager?s gender related expectations affect attitudes, salary negotiations and potential outcomes of salary setting.

The forest owner cooperative has observed difficulties with keeping women as forest advisers/ buyers. This is a problem because the organisation wish to have both men?s and women?s qualifications. The organisation?s purpose in their equality and multiplicity plan is to increase the knowledge and awareness of equality and multiplicity, increase the credibility to the members and customers, and to be well prepared for the future need of qualifications. The purpose of this paper is to identify if there are any conditions that may limit female employees at this particular service.

3 Sammandrag Titel: ?Chefers uppfattningar av sitt ledarskap med anknytning till motivation inom Skånes universitetssjukhus? Nivå: Kandidatuppsats Författare: Magnus Svensson Utgivningsår: 2012 Handledare: Jonas Lundsten Då tidigare forskning inte fokuserat så mycket på ledares uppfattningar av vad som motiverar medarbetarna, fann vi chansen att göra en studie om hur ledarna på Skånes universitetssjukhus (SUS) uppfattar hur de jobbar med motivationsfrågor inom den egna organisationen. Syftet med undersökningen är att, med utgångspunkt i ledarskapet som chefskap, undersöka hur anställda med chefsbefattning inom SUS uppfattar sitt ledarskap med anknytning till vad de tror motiverar medarbetarna inom den egna organisationen . Vi har med en kvalitativ forskningsansats och åtta stycken semi-strukturerade intervjuer identifierat fem teman; kommunikation, delaktighet, anpassning drivkraft och struktur, som cheferna anser vara viktiga motivationsaspekter, och dessutom funnit att dessa uppfattningar om ledarskapet följer ovanstående gemensamma mönster. Vår studie visar på att de uppfattar ledarskapet som att verka för och tillsammans med sina medarbetare mot de gemensamma verksamhetsmål som satts upp.

Fall accidents are a big problem in the construction industry today and stand forapproximately 23% of all accidents. Skanska is a construction company that has avision toachieve zero accidents. Eliminating fall accidents is one step on the way towards theirvision. The state of Skanskas fall safety has been analyzed in this thesis to show whichimprovements are possible in fall safety.A literature study has been performed in which Arbetsmiljöverkets (The Swedishwork environment authority?s) laws and rules, together with Skanskas own rules havebeen studied.

Stress i arbetslivet har blivit ett allt mer aktuellt ämne genom dess påverkan i dagens samhälle. Forskningen visar att en stor del av stressen i vardagen uppstår i samband med avlönat arbete. Arbetstagare i positionen som mellanchef i offentliga organisationer bär på en viktig roll för att hantera krav mellan ledningen och de anställda. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka faktorer som påverkar stressupplevelsen hos mellanchefer i offentligt verksamhet. I undersökningen har vi använt oss av Karaseks krav-och kontrollmodell, det sociala stödet i arbetet, tillgänglighet samt stress som teoretiskt ram.

The main subject for this essay is victimization at work. The first question concerns victimization and the responsibility of the employer when bullying and harassments occur. The second question regards agreements between the employer and the employee, where the latter is paid to quit the employment because he or she is subjected to victimization, but also if any specific group of employees is especially affected. The purpose of the essay is to create understanding and clarification within current law, but also awareness of the possibilities where employers can create agreements with employees in order to make them finish their employments. In order to manage finding information some labour market parties were asked questions about their experiences of victimization at work and agreements among their members or employees.

Although women express a desire to be Managers and although they constitute the majority of Sweden's newly graduated academics, they are still heavily underrepresented on senior management level in the Swedish private sector, where men hold as much as 95 % of the top positions. Considering the massive waste of resources that this implies, this thesis sets out to investigate the underlying reasons for the skewed gender distribution on senior management level in two Swedish professional services companies - an industry where the described problem has been palpable. Additionally, the thesis explores the effects of actively working for increased gender equality. With a basis in gender and organization theory, a broad theoretical framework has been compiled and applied to a qualitative case study design. The thesis reveals seven distinct impediments, which together create a parable of an obstacles course, that prevent women from advancing the corporate ladder in the same manner as their male colleagues.

An increased use of social media has enabled a new arena for HR functions and the work with HR issues. Proponents are critical of this, as it can lead to ethical and legal dilemmas. So far the research on this area is limited. On this basis I found it interesting to study how social media is used in connection with the recruitment process. Those who will benefit from this study are primarily those dealing with recruitment, but also others working with HR issues.

In the media world today it is important for TV-companies to differentiate since the number  of competitors has increased. The competition is more complex today because of the  possibility to broadcast throughout satellite and cable. As a company you need a strong brand  in order to differentiate the company from the competitors. The brand of media companies are  set by the content of the offer, which means that the program and the people connected to the  television program has an importance for the sake of how people experience the company. For  a commercial TV channel the content is also important because it attracts the viewers and as a  consequence, also attracts the advertisers.