Inspired by the current debate over the effectiveness of Public Relations (PR), the authors of the following thesis have sought to analyze how PR and advertising differ in terms of how they affect consumers. The subject of the thesis was chosen due to the lacking knowledge of how PR shapes consumer attitudes and intentions. The authors wish to upset the institutionalized myths which dominate in the PR-business. One example of such a myth is that the effectiveness of PR can be measured by the number of press releases an activity produces and that PR?s superiority over advertising is due to its higher trustworthiness.

Social enterprises make up one of the groups of participants that provide welfare services financed by public funding. The object of this study is to describe and analyze from a theoretical point of view which conditions, in what fields, by which division of responsibility and finally through what decisions these social enterprises are allocated a place in the market for social welfare services. The company that has been the object of study offers services in the field of social welfare and in employment. In the study a triangulation of qualitative methods has been used: studies of literature on the subject, recurrent interviews and observations and also reviews of documents. The results have been analyzed from theories on the space available on the market for social services, on social economy and on social capital in the form of strong, weak and bridging bonds.

The ambition of this project is to make an overview of the Swedish upholstery industry and to make a suitable complement to the Carl Malmsten upholstery collection.The Swedish furniture industry employs about 20 000 people in 815 companies. Totally the branch had a turnover of 17,5 billion Swedish krona in the year 2000. Of these 815 companies most of them are small family driven companies with low-tech industry. 10 % of the 815 companies stand for 60% of the production. These are large-scale companies and have a hi-tech industry, even compared with other types of industries.

Introduction: Sleep is necessary for human survival. Difficulty sleeping occurs in about one in four adult person in Sweden, insomnia in every ten. There are several reasons for difficulty sleeping, where stress is one of the most common. The quality of life and health are affected negatively. Treatment with proven efficacy against insomnia is not only sleep medication, but also cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT.

Due to the increase of the emission of greenhouse gas and climate changes more and more customers demand environmentally sustainable products. The increased demand of sustainable products from cradle to grave is something that has affected the food sector. Many retailers within the food sector feel that they are less or more forced to be environmentally friendly. Nowadays many retailers have chosen to show customers and stakeholders that they want to ?do good? by publishing annual sustainability reports. The Swedish food market has been one of many markets investing in being environmentally friendly.

Course: Master's Thesis in Business AdministrationPurpose: The purpose with this paper is to give an insight, and to compare, the project management of two IT-projects ? one which product was implemented and put into use, and one, which was implemented but no longer exists on the market. Furthermore also examine the critical success factors that influence the success respectively the failure of the IT-projects. Method: To attain the purpose with our study we have chosen a qualitative method. We have carried out interviews with two of the project managers of the IT-project of the two large companies.Result: A couple of problems occurred within the IT-projects of the large companies.

Bakgrund och problematisering: Tjänsteföretag på konkurrensutsatta marknader motiveras att anpassa sina produkter utifrån kundernas efterfrågan där utvärdering och förbättring av en tjänsts kvalitet är ett tillvägagångsätt. Fallföretaget Vindsurfing.se studeras med en problembakgrund baserad på hur företag kan utvärdera kvalitet i sina tjänster och vilka positiva och negativa faktorer i produktionen av tjänsterna som går att identifiera utifrån kundernas uppfattningar.Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka den av konsumenterna upplevda kvaliteten på de nybörjarkurser som företaget Vindsurfing.se erbjuder. Detta för att identifiera olika faktorer med påverkan på kvaliteten som kan ligga till grund för utredning av hur verksamheten kan utvecklas i framtiden.Teori och modell: Litteraturgenomgång med utgångspunkt i begreppet service quality, dess definition, tillämpningar och mätinstrument. Nyckelmodeller är bl.a. Grönroos (1984) ?Service-Quality Model? och Parasuraman et al., (1985) ?Service-Gap-model?.

The purpose of this thesis project was to study how different companies are working with LastTime Buy and through that study propose improved ways of working with this for Scania CVAB. The project aimed at studying the work processes from three different perspectives:decision models, quality aspects and liability aspects between companies.To study this, qualitative interviews with one or several representatives from differentcompanies that are affected by or involved in Last Time Buy were used. Representatives wereselected partly from Original Equipment Manufacturers, suppliers, component manufacturersand companies offering third part solutions for Last Time Buy. The companies also reflecteddifferent industries. The interviews aimed to create an understanding for the methods used atthe different companies but also the ways of thinking and the knowledge behind the choice ofthese working methods.The analysis shows that the Original Equipment Manufacturers used very similar decisionmodels for Last Time Buy, but that external factors or the company strategy made them reachdifferent results.

Over the last 25 year IT development has greatly influenced the waycompanies are managed, the tremendous growth in the information society has made a huge amount of information extremely accessible. This has resulted in the problem of information overload where the large amount of information can affect the quality of a decision basis collected by a controller.The purpose of the study is to examine how a controller is affected by information overload and how this influences the decision basis. We intend to highlight the important elements to represent a high quality of information.A survey was conducted through a case study within a global affiliated company in the packaging industry. An adductive approach has been applied with a qualitative research method. Collected empirical material from interviews has been put into relation with existing theories.The case study indicates that there is no relationship between the problem of information overload and flawed decision basis.

Fuel pellets are a refined bio fuel mostly consisting of residues from sawmills and wood industry. At Rindi Västerdala AB's combined bio energy plant in Vansbro fuel pellets are produced, while the waste heat from the process is used for district heating. The pellets are produced from sawdust, wood shavings and dry wood chips that is dried, milled and pressed into small cylindrical rods. The advantage of refining the wood material in this manner is that the energy value is greater per unit volume and unit weight, thereby the cost of transportation per energy unit is reduced. Also, less storage space is needed.Pellet manufacturing is a complex process since many parameters affects the final results.

Operators and Internet service providers invest in broadband to be able to deliver new services that require higher data transmission rate. A way to make this possible is to use ADSL, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, as the access technology. To be able to handle this technology, the service providers should do a pre-qualification. Methods and tools are needed to analyze the local copper lines and decide if these qualify for ADSL with respect to service availability and possible bandwidth through the lines. This report brings up some methods for pre-qualification of ADSL, the important quality parameters and how to gather them from the available services today.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att underlätta för små och medelstora svenska företag som planerar en affärsetablering i Kina genom att ge ökad kunskap om vad en nätverksagent kan erbjuda samt vilka problem som är vanligt förekommande när företag vill etablera sig i Kina. Utöver detta syftar uppsatsen till att ge ett teoretiskt bidrag till nätverksagentens möjliga funktion vid foreign market entry Slutligen vill vi även bidra med eventuella rekommendationer till både företagen och nätverksagenterna om vad de kan behöva tänka på och förbättra för att lättare kunna uppnå sina mål..

AbstractTitle:                           What is the interaction between information providers and decision makers like? A case study on management accounting in Swedbank.Course:                              Master?s thesis in Business economics, 15 ECTS.Date:                                                        2009-06-01Authors:                            Daoud Ghorbandi and George TekmenSupervisor:                        Paula LiukkonenLanguage:                         SwedishPurpose:        The purpose of the paper is to study the relationship between information providers and decision makers regarding the quality of information for economic decision-making in companies.Method:                     The authors use the qualitative method approach. The essay's primary data consists of data collected through interviews, while the literature that the authors have made use of for the interpretation and analysis of the paper form the essay?s secondary data.Theory:                      It includes a main theory and four other theories supporting the paper. The main theory is the agent theory, while theories on information quality, the theory of outsourcing of management accounting, theories of calculation methods and regulations on management accounting is to support the analysis and conclusions made in the paper.Empirical base:          Interview Responses forming the essay?s primary data is presented in its entirety in this chapter.Conclusions:              The authors conclude that there are no major problems or obstacles in terms of internal management accounting in Swedbank, at least not in the departments such as the HR and the GF.

The paint market of today is a jungle whit an enormous range of different paint types; there all has different properties and different compositions, some with big influence on the environment and some whit less influence on the environment. It could even be difficult for an expert to always know what should be used on which surface and what would be the best out of the environmental point of view.This work is not intended as a total review of all the manufactures range of colours; only as a deeper dissertation about distemper paint in general, in particular Falu Red Paint. Whit focuses on the environmental issues.The work is especially for those who are ready to paint but don?t know what paint they should chose and people that has a interest in paint and environment, perhaps it also could be of interest for professional painters even when there probably isn?t any big news for them. The information is compiled from the Internet and downloaded brochures from the Internet..

Problem formulation: This paper will examine how the capital structure of firms affects their market valuation by applying the Modigliani-Miller theory on Swedish listed companies in a boom and a recession. The study will examine whether it is possible to draw any conclusions as to whether companies with high debt to equity ratios are valued lower in a recession, in comparison to companies with low debt to equity ratios.Purpose: To empirically test the Modigliani-Miller theory of capital structure in a boom and a recession in order to see if the companies? market value is affected differently depending on whether they have a high or a low debt to equity ratios.Methodology: The essay has a deductive and a quantitative methodological approach. Data analysis was done through a correlation analysis, a regression analysis and a hypothesis testing.Theory: The Modigliani-Miller theory of capital structure with taxes states that companies with a high debt to equity ratios has a higher value. One of the risks with a high level of debt could be that during a financial downturn companies have more difficulty realizing capital and are thus more likely to go bankrupt.Conclusions: The study shows results that are contrary to the Modigliani-Miller's theory; all the correlation analyses between debt to equity ratios and market value are negative.