Background: The fierce competetivness that characterize todays market force the companies to differentiate their offerings to a greater extent. The customers do no longer choose their supplier on the attributes of the products alone. Their purchase decisions also depend on the relationship the customers have with their supplier. With new customer channels like the Internet and advanced computer systems companies can increase the value for their customers through a better understanding of the customers needs and preferences. In this way companies can create longterm relationships with their customers.

En konsult vid företagshälsovården i Norrland använder sig av Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) för att hantera konflikter. Konsulten beskriver metoden som ?att det är inte problemet som är problemet, utan det är lösningen som är problemet?. I OBM fokuseras inte på vad som har hänt eller vad anställda känner, utan på beteendet, d.v.s. det som de anställda gör och säger i en given situation.

The purpose of this study was to examine how SOS Children's Villages as an organization in Swaziland is affected by, and takes into account, the cultural, organizational and societal context in which it acts. Material was gathered through a field study during one month in one of the three SOS Children's Villages in Swaziland. The study has a qualitative approach and is based on the result from 12 semi-structured interviews with village mothers and other representatives from the organization. The other representatives were: social worker, program director, child and youth development coordinator, board member and educational manager. Since this study is both characterized by a specific historical, cultural and organizational context, we decided to connect the postcolonial perspective with an organization theory with focus on the concepts of culture, power and a children?s right perspective.

The aim of this thesis is to study how Denmark and the Danish people has been represented in the Swedish press and which images of them that appears. For this purpose I make use of discourse analysis and discourse theory. By analysing three cases were the debate about the Danish migration policy has been scrutinized in Swedish newspapers I seek to discover different ways of looking at the world. The study concentrates on the descriptions made by journalists and others who contribute to the debate in the media. The results show an image of the Danes as a people reluctant to foreigners and restrictive in their politics.

It is said that concepts of organizational management can pave the way to success. This is not accurate and it is something that will be shown in the following study. Its most prominent conclusion is that the valuation governance to some extent has an impact on the formal structures, but that it had no further effects on the employee?s way of work. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the valuation governance is applied in Medley AB and the meaning of it.

Learning organizations and organizational development are interesting subjects that does not examine municipal organizations and private organizations an equal amount.  Furthermore, there exists little research on the effects of competence development for individuals in a leadership role within organizations. Because of this, we wanted to examine the impact of competence development in business modeling and how it affected local government activities. Competence development is used by organizations to develop their business and achieve a greater competitive advantage, but does competence development for individuals in a leadership role lead to organizational development? This paper examines competence development in the form of a business modeling course via the Bitstreamproject and the effects that occur within three municipalities as a result of the competence development. By interviewing three participants and four coworkers within different municipalities and studied the data from the Bitstream project, we can not conclude that competence development within business modeling leads to organizational development, only that it exists a tendency for it.

Organizational culture has been described as a shared perception of reality and values ??within a group of individuals. Within the group's shared values ??about what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior and shared values ??make it easier for individuals to understand what is expected of them. If the desired culture from the management team is not consistent with the culture of the employees there might be a collision.

Families of children with disabilities often have many different contacts with professional representing different principals. This places high demands on their professional work together to meet the needs of families and use resources efficiently. The method used is a literature review which aims to describe what is needed to achieve good collaboration between different professions around families with children with disabilities, and that from an organizational perspective to examine why there are often gaps in collaboration and how this affects the parents' life situation.The theories in this study originated from organizational and sociological theories. The most central concept in this study is collaboration from an organizational perspective. The results show that the interaction is problematic, due to that collaborative organizations often have rules which are incompatible and a lack of accountability on who is liable makes impairment in the interaction.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the design and function of an engine production management?s control system and its intended function, and to contrast it with the present management control systems in use on an operational level. Interviews conducted with employees from all levels of the engine production are the main source of this study?s empirical foundation. Information has also been gathered from relevant written material such as annual reports, internal documents etc.

Organizational learning has become more and more important in the last decades as the environment in which organizations exist continues to change rapidly and unexpectedly. In order for organizational learning to happen, the individuals within the organization must learn. Just as different individuals possess different skills, each individual also has their own learning style. As the use of teamwork increases, so does the need for techniques to put high performing teams together and with organizational learning as one of the objectives the question is, how do we maximize learning, efficiency and performance in teams? This study uses a quantitative method to examine how teams, from a course at the Stockholm School of Economics, perform on the individual learning, team efficiency and team performance scale based on the individual learning styles within the team.

The Psychology Driving and Barriers to Skunk Work Projects (referred to throughout this thesis as the paper) represents a study predominantly on Tetra Pak from a selective perspective, the innovators. Innovators both past&present whose initiatives contribute to the well being of Tetra Pak as well as one from Ericsson were consulted. As with individuals, organizations possess definable characters that are influenced by the various stages of their life cycle. Theories of corporate life cycle phases and organizational character analysis were therefore employed to identify and explain organizational barriers to skunk work leaders&managers. Predicated on the Organizational Character Index survey developed by William Bridges PhD (himself a recognized leader in the field of transition management) and administered to sixty-one managers within a Tetra Pak business unit established the benchmark.

The bulk of the research within the field of media and communication is concentrated at theforefront of development, studies focus on modern companies and modern communication.However, many people work in the industry, where the conditions for communication are partly different. The aim of this study is to explore the possibilities for internal communication that the employees have at the base industrial company of Billerud Gruvön, Sweden. How important do they feel that communication is? Can the internal communication within Gruvön be described as modern, where dialogue between the staff is possible, or as orders from the top down to the bottom of the hierarchal structure?These are our research questions:Which channels are used for communication within Gruvön, and how are they used?How important do the employees deem the internal communication to be?Can the communication within a hierarchal industrial company such as Gruvön be described as modern, where dialogue is at the center, or does the communication consist basically on orders from the top down to the bottom of the chain?Our research is based on the following theories: Communication, Organizational communication, Internal communication and Organizational culture. We have looked to earlier research such as the doctorates of Simonsson (2002) and Johansson (2003) to further our understanding.The methods used are interviews with operators, middle management and the informationofficer at Gruvön.

Few generations have gotten as much media attention as Generation Y. Growing up in the digital age Generation Y has become very different from previous generations. An interesting topic is if this is reflected in the way Generation Y act as leaders. The purpose of this study is to describe what kind of leadership Generation Y prefers, to explore how individuals belonging to Generation Y act as leaders and finally to investigate if there is a discrepancy between these two perspectives and if so try to understand it. By reviewing existing research and conducting depth interviews with employees and managers at a Swedish bank we recognize preferences in a number of categories, which Generation Y require from leaders.

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how medium-sized construction companies adapt and how they choose to reorganize their operations in relation to the recession. The study has as its theoretical starting point theories about organizational learning, the impact of the economy on construction companies and strategies for dealing with recessions. The method used to conduct the study was semi-structured interviews with representatives from 15 different construction companies. The results of the study show that they used several strategies to adapt and reorganize the business in accordance with the recession. Some construction companies had to make cost savings as a result of the recession.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how employees in the financial sector perceive the leadership behaviors of middle managers, and if these perceptions differ depending on the manager's gender and if so, in what way. The study is based on a social constructivist perspective and theories of gendered organizational structures. It is based on 15 semi-structured interviews with employees who have either female or male middle managers from different companies in the Swedish financial sector. The results show that gender often acts as a framework for how leadership is evaluated and understood. Female middle managers are frequently associated with relationship-oriented qualities.