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.

During the last few years the alcohol consumption has increased and is now the highest in 100 years, one usually count that 10 % of the grown up population abuse alcohol and/or drugs and most of them are hidden abusers with families and work. This leads to great costs for the companies. But the much greater cost for the companies are the much larger group of risk abusers. According to the Swedish law the employer has a responsibility for the work milieu and also for the rehabilitate for the employed and drug/alcohol abuse applies to this.I have done qualitative interviews on four companies in the south of Sweden with one representa-tive for the management and one representative for the union. I have investigated their attitudes to alcohol and drugs and how they describe the alcohol culture at the company.The companies define alcohol problems when they are established and obvious and when it is dis-covered they put in resources and because of this they don't work preventive so much.

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

Problem. Sponsorship has increased continuously during the 21st century, however, at the same time the public interest of traditional promotion has been diminishing. The meaning of sponsorship is a very diffuse and therefore the concept needs to be investigated. Due to the multitude of sponsorship and its impreciseness about its financial value, it is difficult to evaluate sponsorship for companies, especially when there is a difficulty in choosing a decent method for evaluation.Purpose. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the concept of sponsorship, motives for sponsorship and evaluation of sponsorship according to the theory and give empirical examples of how these areas are being managed by companies.Method.

Sales is the foundation for all commercial business and companies that have the best sales process in conjunction with efficient deliveries will do well in the long run. The author of this report was tasked by the Organisation in South Africa to study new/alternative ways of attracting Swedish companies to South Africa and sell the services of the Organisation to these same companies (defined as the sales process in this report) by analysing how similar international service companies do the same. A benchmarking process has been conducted with four similar service organizations in South Africa to examine how these companies work in comparison to the Organization. Surveys have been used for purposes of this study, as the methodology is well suited to provide the author a view on the opinions, perceptions and experiences of the respondents.The project aimed to develop new methods to attract Swedish companies to South Africa or improve and streamline the existing methods. The aim was also to develop new ways to sell the organization's services to Swedish companies.The study concludes that there is little focus on marketing of services within the Organisation.

Research question: How does the industrial company Scania work to get more women in leadership positions?Purpose: The purpose of this work is to describe how companies in a male-dominated industry can work to get a higher share of female leaders.Method: This survey was based on a deductive approach with a qualitative method. Theories have been obtained primarily from scientific articles and the empirical part has been collected through interviews from the companies Wiminvest and Scania.Conclusion: The conclusions the study came up with was different elements that companies in male-dominated industries can work with to get a higher share of female leaders. The first thing that companies can do is to join the project BON or similar projects to work on this issue. They can work with workshops and lectures to disseminate knowledge about the topic.

The aim of this master thesis is to study the integration in Sweden between forestry and bulky industries as fiber- and sawmilling companies. The analysis is based on theories about transaction cost economies and competitive strategy. The studied companies are active on the Swedish roundwood market. The buying actors on this market were divided into two groups; fiber- and sawmill industries. Three companies from each group were chosen subjectively by the author.

Internship is a new form of interaction between the academic world and the market and a phenomena increasingly popular among elite universities in Europe. The educational system has traditionally kept an academic approach where the institutions for higher education have acted isolated without extensive influence from the market. Today pressure from the market has led to intensified interaction between the universities and companies among many European elite universities. We have carried out a situational analysis concerning interaction between the academic institutions and companies in Europe. More specifically, we looked at the potential for Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) to strengthen its position on the educational market by adjusting its strategies and implement internships as a part of the education.

AbstractArtists ? the invisible assets; a qualitative study about the view on music rights and artist brands as intangible assets within music companies.This paper is a study of what view representatives from Swedish music companies have on activating music rights and artist brands as intangible assets. Throughout the paper, a discussion is held regarding what the representatives think about activating these intangible assets. From this, we have identified and analyzed possible pros and cons to such activation.Our interest to this question was brought to us when we realized that most music companies in Sweden have intangible assets without activating them. This is, even though these are their main source of income.

Background and problem discussionThe temporary employment industry has grown extensively during the past two decades since the market was deregulated. Companies today need to be flexible to meet fluctuating demand and economic climate in society which has made the market expand. When using employees not directly employed by the company there is a risk that long term effects appears that the companies have not thought of.Aim of studyTo create a model of what negative aspects companies should consider when making the decision to use temporary employees.Methodological frameworkThe study performed through an abdicative literature study and with an empirical data collection method of a qualitative approach where we interviewed five hiring companies and one temporary agency on the decision of hiring temporary employees.Frame of referenceProblem areas with the use of temporary employments were identified through four perspectives of the organization; the structural, human resource, symbolic and political perspective. The problem areas we address are organizational learning, motivation, risk of eroding human capital, belongingness and conflicts. These will be described and presented together with management control to counter the problems.EmpiricsThe empirics are focused on what aspects the companies of the study considered when making the decision to use temporary employment, what the companies? different reasons for using temporary employment are and what they do to minimize possible negative effects.Analysis and conclusionsCompanies use temporary employees mostly to become more flexible, both numerically and in their competence.

The Department of Forest Products and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has received means from Vinnova for a preliminary study of the organisation of logging work of today and how a better logging organisation should be brought about. This thesis reports results from qualitative interviews with nine forest machine contractors regarding the situation of their companies. The interviews have been analysed with respect to the genesis of the companies, which tasks they perform or that they could consider perform-ing, business relationships of the companies, relationships between the different partners of the companies, and the state of competition experienced by the contractors. The companies have developed either from the contractor previously being machine operator employee or from that the contractor in making has owned a machine and needed work. Their primary business is mechanised logging.

Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is: to determine key success factors for an organisation?s internal process of internalising future trends forecasting. Methodology:A qualitative approach has been chosen by examining three different companies (Electrolux, H&M and, Sony Ericsson) through interviews and other data. The empirical material have been analysed by using valid theory as a platform from where the analysis can be performed. This has created a conceptual analysis that enables the use of the conclusions in other similar companies.

Continuously grazed grasslands have remarkably high plant species diversity. In Sweden this type of habitat has declined for the last two centuries. Changed land use has caused habitat fragmentation and loss of habitat quality. This has caused a great number of plant species to end up on the verge of extinction. To try to save this unique habitat and the species that are tied to it, lots of resources are laid on restoration of abandoned grasslands. In this study, plant species richness of continuously grazed, abandoned and restored grasslands were related to degree of overgrowth, time since overgrowth started and rate of overgrowth.

I dagens Sverige konsumeras årligen stora mängder kläder. Nyproduktion av textil har en betydande miljöpåverkan med bland annat stor åtgång av vatten samt mängder av kemikalier. Ett alternativ till allt nyproducerat skulle kunna vara andrahandsmarknaden för kläder.Syftet med studien är att undersöka om de kvinnliga kunderna hos butikerna Myrorna och Beyond Retro konsumerar färre nyproducerade plagg för att de konsumerar second hand- och vintagekläder.Vi har använt oss utav en kvantitativ undersökning där vi intervjuat totalt hundra stycken respondenter i anslutning till Myrorna och Beyond Retros butiker. Vidare har vi genomfört fem stycken kvalitativa intervjuer med vana konsumenter hos ovannämnda butiker, för att fånga deras resonemang bakom svaren.De kvantitativa intervjuerna visar på att en liten majoritet anser sig konsumera färre nyproducerade plagg för att de konsumerar second hand- och vintagekläder. Samt att det överhängande motivet bakom köpen var att second hand- och vintagekläder är unikt och trendigt.

Background: The literature concerning M&A has thus far concentrated on the merging companies, and on what kind of effects an acquisition has on these companies. The effects on the involved companies´ (customers and) suppliers have largely been ignored in the M & A literature. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse how the suppliers relationships to the aquired company are influenced by an acquisition and how the suppliers handle the following situation. Method: The paper has been carried out in the form of a case-study and we have interviewed some suppliers to the automotive industry. Results: The full effect on the suppliers relationships to Volvo has not been seen yet, due to the fact that only two years has passed since the acquisition and that the current products have a lifecycle of 3-5 years.