In efforts to strengthen local economies, business development programs are often a way in which governmental organizations and state affiliates try to facilitate innovation and successful entrepreneurship. There is a mutual interest from both the public and private sector that these funds are put to good use. Extensive research has been conducted with the focus of the general effect of public support programs. However, not much research has been done on what external factors affect the situation for receiving businesses. This study attempts to examine whether one specific such factor, the level of maturity on the markets that the recipients operate in, has a discernible effect on the needs for different types of entrepreneurial support.

The public sector in Sweden has in recent decades undergone a large change due to market and liberalism impact. This change has meant that marketing communication and its concepts have been adopted by administrative authorities. In this thesis, we used governmentality, social constructivism and an interpretive perspective to examine the staff at the County Administrative Board in Kalmar County and their experiences and opinions of the concepts ?customer? and ?trademark?. The study was designed as a case study with qualitative interviews.

AbstractTitle: The Swedish real estate companies choices of valuation within investment properties and its further effects on the qualitative characteristics of accounting.-A study of the Swedish real estate companies listed and non - listed on the stock market, after the application of the international rule board.Background and Problem: From January 2005, all companies, listed on a stock market within the European Union, are required to prepare their consolidated accounts using common set of International Accounting Standards, IAS/IFRS. In Sweden, this opportunity has also been given to non-listed companies, to voluntary implement these rules in their consolidated accounts. One difference between Swedish accounting rules and contemporary International rules, deals with the accounting treatment of investment properties, which foremost affects the real estate market?s accounts. In contrast to the Swedish Financial Accounting Standards Council?s recommendation RR 24, the new standard, IAS 40, permits a choice between different accounting alternatives.

Protecting the environment has with time grown to take a more central role in the society. Agriculture plays an important role in the society since this sector produces our food. More thorough research on how agriculture affects the environment is therefore motivated. This research can be used to improve the agricultural practice from an environmental point of view. This is something that both the farmers and the consumers can profit from. This study aims to form the basis for creating environmental indicators for use of nitrogen and energy on dairy farms. Twenty-three farmers in western Sweden have been interviewed about their farms, both organic and conventional. They produce milk with different intensity, defined as the amount of milk delivered (sold) per hectare of arable land.

When a company seeks to enter a new market, the multiple choices of possible new business relationships exist. Further, establishing new relationships is a time-consuming procedure associated with high uncertainty and high costs. Hence, if the firm does not succeed in pinpointing the most suitable business partners to collaborate with, the firm may both forfeit other possible good relationships, as well as resources invested. Based on this notion the aim of this thesis is to explore how a manufacturing company can base the selection of future dealership Business-to-Business partners by evaluating indicators of a possible business relationship?s potential to become successful. The choice of focusing on the Business-to-Business relationship between a manufacturer and a dealership company originates from being influenced by the issues facing the Swedish agricultural machinery manufacturer Väderstad-Verken AB, who is putting attention to explore the US market.

The market for management training programs is growing and the supply of the service is increasing and getting further diversified. A consequence is a market with a wide variety of definitions of the very concept of development, and subsequently a wide variety of practices and methods to achieve development. The individuals that are subject to these programs seldom know what they are purchasing, or what to expect. When assuming a transfer of the developers view on development to the subject, a need for a greater understanding of the concept arises. The purpose of this thesis is to understand what views on development do exist among management trainers and map underlying dimensions of the views to increase the understanding of the concept of development.

This project has been created with the assistance of Fredells. Fredells is a Stockholm based company with a focus on the retail of building products. Fredells also produces prefab- or prefabricated products which are either completely or partially ready for assembly the moment they arrive to the building site. These prefab-products are primarily delivered to customers within the Stockholm region. The building industry is a conservative market where the incentive to changes has been relatively low compared to other industries.

Abstract The increased focus on social capital theory has made its way into labour economics. This has led to the creation of a vast literature about the use of networks and informal search methods in the labour-market, a literature that to some extent also deals with immigrants search behaviour and their relatively high unemployment rate. Characteristic for the literature in the area is the lack of analysis of actual networks. Which types of contacts do these networks contain; how are the networks used in the labour-market; and which type of network generates a high amount of social capital. These questions are important for the general understanding of how social capital functions, within the labour-market, but also for the understanding of how immigrants use their networks in order to find themselves jobs.

Shopping for groceries often means that, as consumers, we travel to the grocery store ourselves, by ear, bike or on foot. At the store we pick out the groceries that we want, go the register and pay for them. During the last couple of years consumers in Sweden have been given the opportunity to let someone else select and transport the groceries to their home instead, so called home shopping. As this report is being written, the possibility to buy groceries this way is somewhat limited, but many forecasters believe that in the near future it will increase immensely. Because of the large volumes of groceries that are being transported, there is great transport work being done in the supply chain.

The survey describes a number of risks that Swedish farming companies are exposed to. The risk areas covered by the survey are currency risks, price risks and financial risks. The survey further describes why these risks have a great impact on the future development of the farming companies. The survey highlights the interrelation between the risks and the measures which can be used to minimize the risks, so-called financial instruments. The aim of the survey is to put focus on above mentioned risks and describe how these risks can be reduced to prevent the Swedish farming industry from stagnating in the future. The survey is a secondary survey whereby existing knowledge about risks and risk management is applied to farming companies. The written information on price risks and hedging is primarily derived from foreign sources.

Some MNEs encounter frustration or failures when they enter a new market. The main reason is due to a lack of adaptation. There is a lack of theoretical study about the local adaptation phenomenon of Swedish MNEs in China. Most studies are at the level of experience. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out the dimensions subject to local adaptation and their degree for the Swedish MNEs in China.

Background: Knowledge of customer needs is a key factor in companies? struggle to develop successful products. Several studies illustrate that the main reason for failure in product development is lack of customer understanding. Lately considerable changes have occurred. Large-scale mass production is continuously being replaced by customer orientation, especially in the high technological market.

In the society of information that we live in the knowledge of computers and computer system will have a greater influence than we may think. Discrimination is no longer exclusively a term that indicates lesser understanding of different cultures, the discrimina-tion that is at hand will be between ?the have and the have-nots?.This study is about the strategic methods and considerations that is of importance for planning, organizing and finally implement the work with national computer based patient documentation. The strategic planning has been done over a period of time where different actors all had their share of influence. The cost seems to be endless since it has increased after the actual program, in this case, Cosmic from Cambio Healthcare, entered the scene of healthcare.

Abstract New methods, techniques and tools for the building industry are constantly being developed and improved and launched on the market. The problem in the building industry development is not that the products are not good enough. The problem is instead that the existing construction companies do not choose to use these innovations, instead they continue to employ the technologies they already possess and master. This leads to the fact that the construction industry is, in the public eye, beeing seen as a conservative industry. AquaVilla is a company that basically produces houseboats.

In this thesis an explorative study was undertaken with the aim to study how a number of private care providers, as well as politicians and officials from councils in and around the Stockholm and Uppsala counties, think about the future of the Swedish elderly care from a property perspective, i.e. homes for the elderly. The analysis shows that there is a demand for capacity in 6 out of 16 municipalities, and that the property is an important part of this capacity, and the fulfillment of it. This was mainly due to the cost of capital, but also because of several other factors such as lack of land, a wish to guide the design, ideology, and in many cases a wish to use the property as an instrument of domination to control private health care providers.Also, the property was show to be connected to economic competition, to freedom of choice, and to quality. The problems related to the property in the market for elderly care still remains to be solved.